Race and Ethnicity in Canada

Module 10: Race and Ethnicity

• Social facts affect individual lives and indigenous life choices.
• It is important to recognize the privilege that different immigrants possess.

Systemic Racism and Policing

• Systemic racism exists in policing and is often minimized or ignored.
• George Floyd was murdered by police in the USA on May 5th, 2020, sparking resistance and highlighting the disproportionate targeting of Black individuals.

Canadian Views on Race Relations

• Canadians tend to view their country as superior, claiming race relations are peaceful and harmonious.
• Rex Murphy piece written on June 1st 2020, claimed Canada is mature, open-minded, welcoming, and generous concerning race.
• Rex Murphy, a white, 70-year-old was given a platform to talk on racism when he has no experience, Black individuals unrepresented.

Hate Crimes in Canada

• There are three most common motivations for hate crimes in Canada.
• 3k+ hate crimes happened in 2022, there were 4k+ hate crimes in 2023.
• 45% of hate crimes in 2023 were motivated by race/ethnicity, religion motivated 20%, slightly up from previous years, and sexual orientation motivated 18%, sightly up from previous years.

Targeted Groups for Race-Motivated Hate Crimes

• Black people, Arab people, and South Asian people are the most targeted in terms of race.
• The rate for East & Southeast Asian went down slightly, targeted against White people decreased, and Indigenous people remained the same.
• Keep in mind that these are just numbers and may not be reflective of population percentages.

Targeted Groups for Religion-Motivated Hate Crimes

• Jewish and Muslim people are the most targeted groups for religion-motivated hate crimes.
• Catholic, and other Religions are also targeted.

Intersections of Race and Religion

• 88% of Muslims are racialized minorities.
• 97% of Buddhists are racialized minorities.

Descriptive Statistics and Hate Crimes Data

• The data describes what is happening, but it does not explain why or identify the perpetrators

Statuses and Identity

• Statuses distribute people in social space.
• Race and ethnicity are essential to identity.

Personal vs. Social Identity

• Personal identity is shaped by individual attributes.
• Social identity is shaped by attributes of social groups one belongs to.
• Race and ethnicity are imposed on individuals.

Canada's Diversity

• Canada is a multi-ethnic society with language diversity.

Ethnicity

• Ethnicity is a shared identity based on cultural heritage.
• Shared cultural heritage includes common ancestry, language, and religion.
• It involves a distinctive social identity and culture that can be modified.
• Everyone belongs to at least one ethnic group.
• Authenticity and contested perspectives exist within ethnic identity.

23 and Me/Ancestry Tests

• These tests can reduce ethnicity to basic stereotypes.
• They claim that changing identity is simple through DNA analysis.
• DNA tests analyze single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and create privacy risks because law enforcement can use them.
• There are issues because many countries might have different intersectionality
• Margin of error
• The number of reference samples unclear based on the company's database
• 50% confidence results tell us probabilities of where we're likely to have relatives.
• It could create the impression that there are constructed strict racial.

Race as a Social Construct

• Race is a Socially constructed category based on physical and biological traits.
• Race has values, acts, and physical traits.
• Race is seen as a fixed and finite category
• Race relies on arbitrary classifications.
• Essentialists rank people in a hierarchy to access societal resources.
• Jane Elliot's experiment showed how negative expectations shape people demonstrating the nature of prejudice following MLK's assassination.

Short History of "Race"

• Race is the creation of European capitalism.
• Differences in looks, ethnocentrism, and religion led to Christians being viewed as superior, a presumed God-given right.
• Race is the child of racism, not the father.
• Race is used to justify exploitation.
• Scientific racism and eugenics projects are part of this history.

The Meaning of Race Today

• Race cannot be neatly defined and is a contested concept.
• Racialization is a social process, making race scientifically meaningless but socially significant.
• The Thomas Theorem states, "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences," highlighting the impact of belief.
• Variation exists among people within the same race, e.g., "Asian" includes people from Japan, Bangladesh, etc.
• Race is fundamentally a social construct.

Racialization

• Race becomes socially meaningful despite being an arbitrary category.
• People are viewed as different based on intellect, morality, values, and worth.
• Racialization can be positive or negative.
• In "Seeing Red," Indigenous people were framed as inferior, threats, needy/inferior, settlers framed as superior and media reinforced.

Racialized Minority Groups in Canada

• Racialized minority groups are non-dominant ethnocidal communities experiencing race in shaping their identity
• Racialized minorities are perceived as distinctly dissimilar from the dominant culture.
• The racialized norm normalizes Whiteness and renders it invisible.
• Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit, Metis), descendants of formerly enslaved Black people, immigrants (visible and non-visible minorities).

Models of Intergroup Relations

• Genocide: Range of violent activities to annihilate despised groups
• Segregation
• Assimilation
• Pluralism: Multiculturalism

Racism

• Racism is an organized system of race-based group privilege operating at every level of society, with a sophisticated ideology of race supremacy. It involves process of racialization, Stereotype and prejudice, discrimination, and Power
• It is Institutionalized
• The Blackfoot name for Calgary is Moh'kinstsis (elbow), a land acknowledgement.

Settler Colonialism and Indigenous History

• Settler colonialism considers the land’s story, water flows, and ancestral connections.
• Namatachi means "In the territory of your ancestors, something that you are connected to" and we don't want the people to forget their land and ancestors of Turtle Island.

Perspectives on Land and Settler Colonialism

• Understand different people who live closely to the land, and settlers who claim to love the natural beauty of Canada.
• Only 2% of landmass is for Indigenous, 98% of revenues are for settlers.
• In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was established and Indigenous peoples forced into settler society. Settlers forcibly removed Indigenous and modeled society around settler norms under settler colonialism.
• The North-West Mounted Police was established in 1873 to protect indigenous people with established in Fort Macleod and Calgary 1874, the plans to abolish NWMP fail. In 1920, NWMP and RCMP merge.
• Incarceration in the High Arctic occurred when 87 Inuit were uprooted from their homes in 1953-1955, and placed in northernmost communities. Dislocated families were promised they could return in 2 years, but this did not happen. RCMP brutally kept people inside.

The Indian Act (1876)

• The Canadian government authorized to govern daily lives of Indigenous people and established control with Reserve System.
• The Indian Act is known by the terms, Piikani, Kainai, and Siksika
• Reserves were "prisons of grass with reliance by Settlers on legal protection of private property
• The Pass system meant that Indigenous could not move freely
• Definition of "Indian" meant only men could be "status Indians, was a paternalistic, and patriarchial system
• It was established Governance system, that banned cultural practices such as Oral history violations, denied basic rights to vote and Section 141 made not allowed to hire a lawyer.
• This Act made residential schools mandatory beginning in 1880s with forced removal from families by the RCMP. It was funded by the government and operated by churches and Alberta had the most.

The Indian Residential School

• Matches what is considered "Genocide" and it is a “total institution
• 150,000 children resocialized indigenous with the education being lifelong, the ethics of non-interference (story-telling, independent thinking) and observational learning (role modeling)
• The 4 stages of childhood involved: Children were gifts from the creator, with knowledge transfer through Ethics of non-interference,

Ethics of non-interference

• Ethics of non-interference are acquired through Knowledge through ethics non-interference and Sharing circles by (Nehiyewak) and Learning as a personal journey
• Learning is a personal journey with Exchange of information taught through Reciprocity to foster proper behavior with Inductive discipline and scary stories of Windigo.
• This taught Seven Generations of children to behave properly over 7 generations in the past and 7 gen in the future using Fosterage practice which put the kids live with their grandparents
• Government of Canada perspective, it was racist
• Native people it was known as: "kill the Indian in the child"