What is Systemic Racism?

By: Jeff McLaren

ABSTRACT:
Opinion piece on systemic racism

Systemic racism is like the matrix. It is all around us but most can’t see it. This is particularly important for me because I fear for the future of my own mix-“race” children in a world dominated by systemic racism.

The notion of systemic racism has been identified as a problem by politicians, lawyers, judges, and academics as well as institutions such as police departments, parliaments, and councils across Canada. It is a major challenge in achieving a fair distribution of the benefits of society. Systemic racism is also a major inhibitor to the contributions that marginalized people can make to society. For these reasons, reducing and eliminating systemic racism is particularly important in a multicultural society such as Canada.

Systemic racism, defined as a set of practices, sentiments, laws, and norms collectively held that disadvantages whole groups of people based on perceived “race”, makes the world worse for everyone. Systemic racism is a pervasive power relation that is reproduced every day through indifference, inertia, and a lack of knowledge and courage. 

The cycle of systemic racism started with the privileging of the life experience of a particular group with identifiable characteristics. We live in a common law legal system with federal and provincial law and City bylaws that all were predominately written by white, rich, educated, Christian, men. This has led to the world we live in. We live in a world where wealth, influence, and power are held predominantly by white, rich, educated, Christian men. What this group of people finds familiar, normal, desirable, and/or beneficial has been (for hundreds of years) and continues to be advantageously encoded into all our laws and societal norms. This encoding should be thought of in the broadest sense. Not just in the actual text of law Acts and judicial judgments but also in one’s learned behaviour. This encoding is in our daily actions and in all the social cues we part take in, that is, systemic racism is in our socialization. Advantage is promoted through familiarity and disadvantage through otherness relative to the system’s generated norms. In other words, the rules of the game have been written, the playing field has been set up, and the players have all been chosen by a particular group for that group’s advantage.  

The more characteristics you share with the white, rich, educated, Christian, man’s group the more rational, obvious, natural, just and pleasant the rules of society will appear. And consequently, the more you will benefit by having more things just naturally go your way. Conversely, the further you find yourself from this group the more injustice and abuse will naturally come your way. Over time, the exercise of these norms becomes more familiar and more natural. Alternative possibilities become increasingly harder to imagine without witnessing disturbing backlash shocks to the system. Many of these shocks are heard about on the news. Some of the most recent ones are the Black Lives Matter protests and the attacks on Sir John A’s statue.

The first insight from a systemic racism theory perspective is that all people and institutions in a society infused with systemic racism are racist. Systemic racism creates, supports, and perpetuates the formation of racist subjects (institutions and people) as a default. Systemic racism socializes us to be racist by distorting our understanding of our society, our history, and ourselves. 

One example of an unhelpful distortion of ourselves is the older starting point of calling out racism as a moral failing. Starting this way is counterproductive because, in a society burdened by systemic racism, everyone is naturally racist (even the marginalized). The first goal should be to raise awareness and to educate. After one has identified a racist action or sentiment and then insists on persisting in it, then one can be properly called reprehensively racist. 

Given the pervasiveness of systemic racism and its major contribution to the formation of our ideas, attitudes, feelings, sentiments, laws and customs we all have a default racism in our unreflective, unthought-through actions and reactions. This includes council and our way of doing things. If Council wants to be anti-racist, then its task is to take the systemic racism out of all the instances within our powers to do so. This is important because due to the nature of systemic racism, council will continue to express racism over and over again in the future in our unthought-through votes. My hope is that our understand of systemic racism will grow because, even if Council is 100% successful, we will still be working under systemically racist rules we have no control over. 

Anyone who wants to be anti-racist in a systemically racist society must acknowledge one’s default biases. Our personal anti-racist battles are to reduce our default racism at every identified opportunity; that is to take a personal active role in challenging systemic racism. Our collective battle is to identify and undo the systemic racist aspects within our power. I really hope we can make the world better by illuminating and then eliminating systemic racism at every opportunity.

Added on: 2020-07-22 9:53:45