| The world has laid to rest one of the great revolutionaries of our time. Rosa Parks, mother of the civil rights movement, passed away quietly in her Detroit home on October 24 at the age of 92.
It has been 50 years since Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus to a white passenger. Her disobedience of the law resulted in her arrest and a 381-day boycott by African-Americans of the municipal bus system, led by then-unknown Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott, which captured a place in history as one of the most successful challenges to segregation, led to a court ruling deeming segregation on Montgomery buses as unconstitutional.
Parks went on to leave a legacy of anti-discrimination work. Her death prompted recollections by news media around the world of her brave act and of the powerful civil rights movement that marked the 1950s and 1960s in North America. Central to these tributes was the glaring question they all ignored: how far have we come since Rosa Parks began her crusade for universal civil rights?
Perhaps this ignorance was on purpose, for fear that the answer to this question may reflect poorly on all that Parks dedicated her life to. Such fears are unfounded; while Rosa Parks earned her place in history for triggering the civil rights movement, the racial inequity that persists in our society today simply demonstrates that her efforts remain far from finished.
Hurricane Katrina spoke to the role that racism continues to play in structuring the social relations of American society. As the world watched in fascination, thousands of citizens of the world’s richest country waited patiently for days in the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, amid dead bodies, feces and garbage. It took days for water, food and aid to reach these stranded people. They were the people who couldn’t leave the city during the mandatory evacuation for lack of transportation. They were New Orleans’ weakest and most helpless in the face of a natural disaster. They were also overwhelmingly African-American, which begs the question as to whether they would have received the same treatment had they been a different race.
But that’s the United States. Canada is different – it’s the "mosaic" of cultures to the United States’ "melting pot." Yet racism is a reality in Canada and it shapes relations just as distinctively on this side of the 49th parallel.
In 2003, Statistics Canada reported that more than one-third of visible minorities in Canada had faced racism in the last five years. Incidences ranged from racial taunting to being asked to use more "Canadian" names in the workplace to hate crimes and beatings. In Calgary, where visible minorities constitute roughly 17 per cent of the population, this racism flaunts itself in the face of anti-racist material being included in school curricula and the many activist groups who tirelessly advocate against racism.
"The whole thing has evolved. People are more educated on issues of racism. We definitely have a clear understanding that racism is not right and a better tolerance around people who are different. However, it doesn’t mean that racism and related discrimination does not exist. It is still there," says Dr. Daniel Lai, professor of social work at the University of Calgary. He points to recent allegations of racism in Calgary as evidence that our existing infrastructure is not enough to protect society from racism.
Since September 11, racism has become a reality for many. Daily the "war on terrorism" equates itself to racial harassment of certain ethnic groups in the media. Airports and border crossings have become a dreaded experience and name-calling is a substantive risk of wandering the streets of our city for these ethnic groups.
Last year, media reported incidences of youth being excluded from Calgary bars and nightclubs based on race. Calling for a zero tolerance approach to racism, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation urged Mayor Dave Broconnier to immediately suspend the operating licences of any establishments using racial profiling.
While the prevalence of overt racist acts like these have drastically decreased in the last 50 years, Lai argues that the face of racism has also transformed. "Racism has gone beyond the surface of the institution. We now have systemic racism," he says, referring to institutional policies and practices that place certain racial or ethnic groups at a disadvantage. Statistics show that immigrants with a university degree earn about 56 per cent less than their Canadian-born counterparts, revealing systemic racism in the failure of professional licensing bodies to properly recognize foreign credentials and the continued practice by employers of demanding that applicants have "Canadian experience."
The recognition of racism as everyday, normalized acts embedded in our institutions and social practices offers a new challenge to anti-racism activists. How do you remedy a system whose ravages often go unnoticed? How do you fight against a wide target that appears to have no one responsible for it? Where does change begin?
"We need to educate people on this and take additional efforts to make people understand that what appears as normal may have racist ideas underneath," says Lai.
As residents of Ontario’s Kashechewan First Nations reserve were recently evacuated due to the contamination of their water supply, their living conditions are shedding light on the systemic racism that is at play against First Nations communities in Canada. In 2001, the department of Northern and Indian Affairs found that 75 per cent of First Nations communities in Canada faced significant risks to the quality and safety of their drinking water. Federal funding is provided to the reserves for water sanitation, but this funding is minimal and current policy allows the funds to be used elsewhere. Lack of relevant training is also to blame, as often reserves are short of qualified people to adequately maintain a treatment facility.
Rosa Parks’s death demands inquiry as to why racism persists 50 years later, and reminds us of the importance of action against racism. Those picking up where Parks left off have a big task ahead of them. But it’s not an impossible one. "The challenge is to build more allies. The civil rights movement had supporters come out and explicitly support the cause. We need people to keep the momentum growing. We need people to realize that racism is felt by everyone," says Lai.
It’s a simple remedy. But what else can be expected from a movement that all started with one simple act of civil disobedience? |
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