Unit 15.docx

Unit 15 Definitions Here is one of the most famous works by Canadian sociologist John Porter, Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class in Canada, published in 1965. So, what Porter does is combine analysis of social class with ethnicity. Canadians have always been fascinated with ethnicity and m...

Unit 15 Definitions Here is one of the most famous works by Canadian sociologist John Porter, Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class in Canada, published in 1965. So, what Porter does is combine analysis of social class with ethnicity. Canadians have always been fascinated with ethnicity and multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has been a policy since 1971. And we often hear Canada referred to as a mosaic, meaning a mixture of many separate colors and identities. It′s like separate pieces that all retain their own color compared to the American Melting Pot, where the pieces lose their distinct identity. Are these terms still true? Well, more recently Americans have started celebrating multiculturalism more. So, there is no longer a melting pot, they’re a salad bowl. In a salad, nothing melts together. Here in Manitoba, were famous for Folklorama every August. It’s a celebration of ethnic differences. On the other hand, Winnipeg has also been singled out in very negative terms. Back in 2015, MacLean’s put out a special issue on race in Canada where Canada′s race problem is ugliest in Winnipeg, where there can be clear negativity expressed towards Indigenous ppl. Canada has three main people groups. Indigenous peoples include First Nations, Inuit, Metis. Then you have what are called Charter groups, the French and English, the first Europeans to come to North America. And then you have the immigrant groups that have all come to Canada in the last 150 years. Canada is slowly becoming honest with its history of Indigenous peoples. Let′s introduce some key terms: Race=similarity of physical appearance. Does not just include skin color, but also skin texture, head shape, eye color, nose contour, body shape. These characteristics are caused by marrying in the same genetic pool for many generations. So, these traits are biologically transmitted. This physical aspect is nature, not nurture. But we can bring the notion of race into types. The concept of race was first generated by physical anthropologists who created these categories that they called races. Caucasoid meant white, negroid which means black, and mongoloid which means yellow or brown. It can grow up to 30 groups of races globally. Sometimes a single race has many ethnicities in it. E.g., there are many ethnic groups in Europe and Africa. Sometimes race defines one ethnic group. Societies can agree with whatever they want constitutes an ethnic or racial group which is problematic. For example, are Jews a race or ethnic/religious group? Since sociologists want to go beyond face value phenomenons in society, they want to examine the social consequences of these. So, what are the consequences of having the concepts of race and ethnicity? Race is not a simple thing because there is as much genetic variation in a racial group as outside it. It’s easier to create conceptual categories of race than it is to identify actual groups. It is easier to label it than practice it. And we saw the same thing with sex and gender. All humans are on a spectrum. There is a continuum of all those physical characteristics that I named to begin. We’re not a collection of pure, separated categories. If you wanted to see it in a pronounced way as possible, there is no biological basis for race as separate categories. So, race is a socially constructed concept. There are no objective criteria for differentiating races. Biologically, physically, scientifically, race is meaningless. People can be racialized but there is no such thing as race. So, we best not speak of race but racialized groups. Of course, historically, there have been enormous consequences for the concept of race. Recall that which is perceived and defined as real, is real in its consequences from genocides to slavery. We best talk of racialization=the political process of ascribing racial identity to a group that did not identify itself as such. It also cannot differentiate itself from neighbouring groups in any kind of definitive boundary. Yet people internalize racialization and they do think in race-based terms. Since race is not thing, it is a verb, it is something that happens to people and it is a process. The way white people are racialized is usually invisible and normative, they can be the norm reference point of privilege. They are the norm against which others are compared or racialized. Ethnicity. What is ethnicity? The term ethnos means people group. You could say ethnicity is the positive side of ethnocentrism. Here are some characteristics of ethnicity: Generally, biologically self-perpetuating. You are born into an ethnic group with certain physical features so its self-perpetuating in the sense that membership is defined at birth. Often, people marry in their own categories. This is what we mean by endogamy, marrying in compared to exogamy which is marrying out. They develop a culture, history, language. They share a culture whether they invented it or adopted it. This is debatable and varies. They share a language and usually a religion. Rituals and norms of dress and food. Members communicate, interact, and identify with each other. Thus, ethnicity is a form of social identity. To that extent, it can be distinguished from other similar groupings. But the many characteristics of ethnic groups are that they have boundaries: the in-group and the out-group. Hence, the standards and norms that define membership. So, Sikhs in ceremony wear a turban and a dagger. Jews do not take communion and attend synagogues instead of churches. These are things that they do and do not do. Many things can serve as a boundary: Nordic ancestry, circumcision, vegetarianism and sometimes more than one group has the same boundary. E.g., circumcisions are not unique to Jews. So, boundaries are cultural, not physical. They are not objective facts and based on social constructs. E.g., in Northern Ireland Protestant and Catholic are ethnicities but here in Canada, Protestant, and Catholic are religious affiliations. It gets complicated but here is the best way to summarize: Ethnic groups have cultural boundaries and racialized groups have hereditary physical similarities. Here are some measures of ethnicity: Origins=from where their ancestors emigrated. Where did your ancestors come from or did, they always live in North America? That is one way ethnic groups identify themselves. Identity=to whom do they feel they belong. Regardless of where your ancestors came from, to whom do you feel that you belong? Do you think of yourself as Asian Canadian or just Canadian? Maybe Canadian is an emergent ethnicity, not just a nationality. More people on the Canadian census are simply identifying themselves as Canadian because English and German weren’t an ethnicity 800 years ago so maybe Canadian will become an ethnicity. Another way to identify ethnicity is mother tongue=the first language learned. Do you use language to identify yourself? Minorities. Usually thought of in numerical terms. However, we are not talking about numbers, we are discussing it as a political category. A minority group is any group with inferior status compared to the other groups around it. It is dominated and subordinated by the other groups. This does not just apply to ethnicity but also gender and ability. Women, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities have historically been a minority groups. Thus, minority=a disadvantaged group subjected to unequal treatment by a dominant group who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination. The simplest synonym for minorities would be the disempowered. What is interesting is that the minority can outnumber the majority because it is a political category, not numerical. E.g., during Apartheid in South Africa, there were 19 million black people and 4.5 million white people. Yet the blacks owned 13% of the land and whites owned 87% and had 75% of the national income. Thus, it has to do more with experience than numbers. Visible minorities are minorities with visibility. This means the way they look makes them easier for other people to notice. So here are some visible minorities in Canada: Patterns of Inter-Group Relations Let’s examine when groups interact with one another. Mainly, there are four things that can happen: Annihilation/expulsion=elimination of relations through one group being: annihilated (genocide): being killed off. The most severe action against another group. And yes, this is what happened in WWII when the Nazis were trying to get rid of the Jews. Another example is the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when the Hutu tribe were trying to eliminate the Tutsi tribe. Sometimes this is called ethnic cleansing, when one territory is trying to cleanse itself from the contamination of another ethnic group. The term was coined in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, when it broke up into Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo. So, it consisted of four ethnic groups, and they were trying to cleanse themselves of the other. Another example is the current genocide and expulsion of Muslim Uyghurs in Northwest China. Even Canadian colonization is considered a mild form of genocide. The Mi’kmaq nation in 1600 had a population of 200,000. In 1750, they were down to 1500. This is in a span of 150 years. Expulsion: the other possibility. One group tries to expel another from its territory. It is used to handle dissent of a minority group. E.g., the genocide and expulsion of the Rohingya in 2017. In Myanmar, they were expelled to Bangladesh. Stratification=formation of a hierarchy of dominance. Another option is to dominate. This combines social class and ethnicity which is John Porter′s Vertical Mosaic. It can take several forms. The first thing that should come to mind is colonialism. One group dominates the other. Columbus first discovered America in 1492 and colonization began. In 1992, 500 years later, all the sensitive North Americans began apologizing for Columbus and colonialism. By the end of the 19th century, Europeans colonized every pile of dirt on earth. It had been claimed by European monarchs. The same thing happened in Africa, the Berlin Congress in 1885, all the leaders of Europe got together and divided up Africa based on agreement. By the time Americans became a global power, everything had been colonized. They planted their flag on the moon and claimed it as their colony. All this colonization was justified based on racist theories of humanity. Europeans claiming biological and cultural superiority over North Americans, Africans, and Southeast Asians. By the middle of the 20th century, post-WWII, we have a global process of decolonization when countries were to regain their independence. India in 1947 and African colonies at 2nd half of the 20th century. By now, we have something called internal colonization. This occurs in a territory, not outside it. Does this apply to Indigenous people in Canada? Absolutely. But the more traditional way of describing the current status of Indigenous peoples in Canada is segregation; this is a different kind of stratification. This is the physical and social separation of categories of people. Forcibly, though exclusion or being excluded to a certain category. This can be done by law or custom. The is difference between de jure=enforced by law, and de facto=enforced by custom. E.g., Canadian reserves and Apartheid policies in South Africa from 1960-1990. The Jim Crow laws which dominated America from 1900s-1960s. Until the 1960s, blacks in the southern US were forced to go into separate restaurants, washrooms, and drinking fountains than white people. Pluralism/multiculturalism, this is the Canadian mosaic, a pattern of small, distinct pieces on the mosaic. So, groups live together on a supposedly equal basis while keeping and valuing their differences. That’s what pluralism is. So, each group retains and even celebrates their ethnicity and boundaries. Groups remain distinct from each other, but instead of being stratified, they are equal. Groups live together on an equal basis. This is what Canada tries to do when it claims to be multicultural. The country that best exemplifies pluralism is Switzerland. In the west, the Swiss speak French. In the northern center they speak German as they are close to Germany. In the bottom south they speak Italian, and, in the East, they speak Romansh. So, four languages in one nation state is a remarkable accomplishment of pluralism. So, is Canada as multicultural as it claims? Look at Canada′s percentage of minorities. As you can see, around a quarter of Canadians are now visible minorities. Where are they from? What’s the difference between 1971 and 2016? So, in 1970, 50% of foreign-born Canadians were born in Europe and immigrated to Canada. But by 2016, 48% of foreign-born Canadians came from Asia. This is a significant shift in 40-50 years. Here′s another depiction of the same thing. Here the dates go from 1981 to projected 2031 but the pattern will likely remain consistent. There is a decrease in European immigrants and increase in Asian ones. The bottom shows America which stays the same. There is an increase in African immigrants but not nearly to the same extent. So, this is the composition of Canada currently. One of the things that this creates is what sociologists call institutional completion=a complete set of total institutions that serve their own people in their own language. So, India, Japanese, etc. have their own banks, radio stations, real estate offices, medical clinics, and grocery stores. Here they can go and speak their own language and meet others of their own ethnicity. It’s happening increasingly in Canada. Many cities have their own Chinatowns. Or Little Italy′s. Or Filipinos in Winnipeg and Polish people in Chicago. Its considered good because it maintains their identity. Though it can be bad because it can cause a social trap in terms of social mobility. If you’re going to spend your whole life in Chinatown or Little Italy, will you ever be able to get out if you wanted to? One of the biggest questions of pluralism is it possible for multiple groups to retain their identity and equality at the same time? Because the tendency is to either slide towards stratification, not equality or slide to the other extreme of assimilation. Assimilation, this is the opposite of pluralism. This is the American melting pot. This is equality achieved through cultural and structural integration instead of maintaining separate identities. When assimilation has been achieved or realized, everybody shares the same norms, institutions, food, dress, and so on. So, it is defined as: the reduction/blurring of boundaries that produces a common culture in which a minority group is absorbed into the dominant culture. In other words, this is a loss of ethnicity. Here are some of the ways assimilation can be understood: Cultural, also known as acculturation, means a merging of values and standards. So, the ethnic group merges its values and standards with the dominant culture. They acquire the culture of the dominant group. Structural=equal occupation distribution, education levels, political participation, etc. E.g., if your ethnic group is 10% of the population, does that mean that you have 10% of the doctors, lawyers, and professors, etc.? If you do, you have structural equality, so this group has the same means to education and social integration as the dominant group. This raises the question, can you gain structural assimilation without first culturally assimilating, you know, buying into the culture of doctors and lawyers? Psychological=attitude of oneness/we feeling. So, you’re 2nd generation Asian or Indian immigrant. Do you identify as just Canadian or also Indian? What is your attitude of oneness? This is a subjective measure of assimilation. When some immigrants move to Canada, they anglicize their name. They change their name to make it more pronounceable or understable to the rest of Canadians. This is a qualitative measure of assimilation. You may have heard of Ralph Lauren, the fashion mogul. This is not his real name, it′s Ralph Lifshitz. Unfortunately, you’re not going to make it very far in Canada if your name is Lifshitz so a change in name will guarantee success. Though this is changing, and it’s becoming "cool" to not have an Anglicized name. Biological=the blending of genetic patterns through long inter-breeding. We′re touching on the physical and racialized. This means racial categories can no longer be identified because everyone is so mixed. E.g., the Métis are a combination of French Indigenous people. Hawaiians are now a combination of whites, Asians, and Indigenous people. What causes some people to assimilate more easily than others? Start with residence. Do you live in a neighbourhood where everybody looks like you, talks like you, eats like you, dresses like you? Another is ethnic identification; how much do you identify with your ethnicity? Do you identify as just Canadian, African, or both? A third factor is endogamy, do you marry within your own group or outside it? A fourth factor is ethnic religious affiliation. Sometimes religion is an ethnic marker. E.g., Irish Catholic, Italian Catholic, religion often goes hand in hand with ethnicity. In addition, there is in-group interaction. Who are your friends? Who do hangout with? Clearly, in-group interaction facilitates assimilation. You must act in a certain way to fit in. Finally, we have ethnic language retention. Do you still speak the language of your parents, grandparents, etc.? Or have you left your past behind and now just speak English? One last thing about assimilation. Sociologists have noted the phenomenon of selective assimilation. Considered a double standard based on gender. That is, assimilation varies a bit depending on if you’re male or female. Men are expected to acculturate. You know, get out in Canadian society, and reap the rewards of integrating. But women, encouraged to stay at home, have less pressure to assimilate so they are the ones responsible for maintaining ethnic identity, clothing, language, etc. This is also known as public acculturation and private ethnicity. Group Mobilization Let’s talk about Group Mobilization=political organization of racial/ethnic groups to resist assimilation. They don’t want to lose their identity and be absorbed into the dominant culture. What causes feelings to run higher in some groups than other groups? Why are some so successful in maintaining their identity and others aren’t? Here are some of the factors: Geographical concentration=settling in selected localities. This relates very much to factors of assimilation and how it is affected by where you live. In this case, living with your ethnic group creates a shared identity and institutional completion. This gives your group increased power because of this concentration. Look at the way the French are concentrated in Quebec and how Asians are concentrated on the West Coast of Canada. In fact, Canada has a policy that if your group is highly concentrated in one area you can have your own heritage language taught in schools. Kimberly, Manitoba beside Lake Manitoba has a high number of Icelandic people there and so there you teach the Icelandic language in public school. Modernity & Postmodernity, these are bigger concepts. They are defined as ethnic mobilization as a reaction to modernity. Modernization anywhere in the globe is breaking down traditional networks and building communication with broader networks. This is good but at a certain point people resist this. They would like to retain or restore what is familiar to them. They would like to magnify what they still have in common with some people (e.g., way of eating & dressing, folklore). Modernity in and of itself is a melting pot and some people resist this. So, you could say ethnicity is a foil against this uniformity brought up by mass society. So, it’s a protest against technological domination and bureaucratic numbness. For example, they don’t want to go to McDonalds, they want to go to an ethnic restaurant. They don’t want to go to a regular Inn they want to go to an ethnic Airbnb. It happens in the earlier stages of modernization. Eventually, however modernization takes over and society becomes more uniform. The difference between modernity and postmodernity is that the latter celebrates diversity. So, one way to resist assimilation is to be more postmodernist than modernist. Nationalism=increased ethnic consciousness creates demand for political independence. After WWII, after the Jews suffered terribly, they wanted to unite the Jewish diaspora of about 10,000 years, they wanted to come together and restore a nation state they didn’t have for 2000 years. So, the nation state of Israel was formed in 1948 and Jews could move back to their home country. So, when nationality becomes a possibility, then the energy behind ethnicity multiplies that much more. Look at the French, there’s been a century of should Quebec separate to become a sovereign nation? Look at the Scottish people in the northern UK, should they separate from the UK and become Scottish again? These are all examples of nationalism strengthening ethnic groups and resisting assimilation. Note that these are not immigrants or refugees. Quebecers have lived in Canada for 400 years. These are old people groups. The ability to gain a nation state and national status is huge. I used the example of Yugoslavia in the previous video. In the 1990s, when Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia saw the chance to have their own nations instead of all being part of Yugoslavia, they took it. You could say the same thing about the Soviet Union. The countries it had colonized sought sovereignty after its collapse. Split labor markets=ethnic consciousness as a response to economic predicament. This can include things like class struggle in the lower working class. Yes, this is very Marxist. When immigrants move into a new country, they have the take the lowest paying jobs. This means they are taking jobs of the lower class. So, immigrants are often seen as undercutting the working class because they’re willing to work for less money and do anything to survive. Whereas the working class is trying to unionize, improve their working conditions but their employers see that they have an option. While they may want higher salaries, they can easily obtain cheaper labour from immigrants with no questions asked. This creates a split labor market in the working class, especially visible minorities, become a separate, identifiable class struggle with the working class. This has happened in many ways. It weakens the solidarity of the working class. Segregated labour markets=ethnic groups dominating certain labour markets. Sometimes an ethnic group can take over an entire market. E.g., the construction industry in Toronto has in the last 200 years been dominated by Italians. So, if you’re a young guy and you want a job, it′s best to learn Italian and maintain ties with your Italian uncle Bruno will probably get you a job as a construction worker in Toronto. So, there’s a reason to maintain your ethnic identity. The same can be said when Chinese people came to Canada to work on the railroad. They were transnational and when they were done, they just stayed in small towns in Western Canada and had their own restaurants, laundromats, and so on. This created a segregated labor market. This happens more readily in lower-class markets, not so much middle and upper. This contributes to greater ethnic cohesion and consciousness. People stick together because they can’t afford to leave each other. Again, this raises the question, does this hamper social mobility in the long run? Are you forever destined to be a construction worker in Toronto if you’re Italian? Race/ethnicity/nationality as a resource=using identity and community/network to personal advantage. Sometimes, an ethnic group can be used as a positive resource to gain advantage through ample community networks. In the negative sense, this could be equated to nepotism, using kinship to influence personal advantage. Recall the Italian example and using your connection with Uncle Bruno. This becomes ascribed status instead of a cheat. It’s a form of what you could call "ethnic sponsorship," the ethnic group sponsors their own kind regardless of their competence. And sometimes ethnicity and nationality are called up in certain situations because if you identify as such you will be treated as such. Think of Canadians backpacking in Europe, many put a Canadian flag on their backpack. We want everyone to know we′re not American because they’ll treat us better since Canada has a favourable position on the international stage. So, showing your identity can be highly advantageous. Ideologies and Institutions 1 Prejudice, a prejudgment, positive or negative, about an entire group of people. Can also be thought of as a rigid and irrational generalization about an entire group of people. E.g., can believing that all women are nurturing, black people are athletic and musical, or professors are absent-minded and impractical. We have prejudgments about entire categories of people. Prejudiced people tend to be rigid and not easily swayed by contrary evidence. They are viewed as natural; the way things are. They think that people are born that way. Prejudice comes in many forms: Stereotypes=exaggeration of a trait typical of the group also known as a collective caricature. This applies to groups, not individuals. Social distance, one of the ways sociologists have measured prejudice is through something called SD. This is a common way to express prejudice. There is something called the Bogardus social distance scale that asks several questions such as: would you exclude a ___________ from Canada? Admit a _________ as a visitor to Canada? Admit a ________ to Citizenship in Canada? Admit a ____________ to employment in your business? Admit a_______to your street as a neighbours? Admit a______to your club as a friend? Admit a _______to your family by marriage? Marry one? Usually, the person says yes to most questions but if they are prejudiced, they usually admit it at the end. If you google things about Jews in the United Arab Emirates, the search results tend to be extremely stereotypical. Self-fulfilling prophecy, usually prejudice turns itself into an SFP. Because, when you believe and treat people a certain way, this gets reinforced over time and this is what you will reflect consistently in your interactions. If you truly believe a group is inferior, of course your brain will look for this when you evaluate diverse people. For example, it was genuinely believed that women were not intelligent enough to warrant an education, so we didn’t give them one. This results in them being unknowledgeable which further reinforces this erroneous belief. Unfortunately, this means if you treat them like they are ignorant, they will become that. This happens through socialization and alter-casting. Overall, prejudice is what we think, and discrimination is what we do. The above raises the question: can there be prejudice before discrimination? Absolutely, because the law to an extent prevents discrimination but this does not change ppl from having problematic thoughts. What about the reverse? Perhaps out of peer pressure. Although you may not agree with the beliefs of your friends, you may go along with their discrimination to fit in. This raises the question, do we address both prejudice and discrimination? Discrimination=treating various categories of people unequally. This can be good or bad. You can give certain ppl special privileges or give them additional obstacles. Discrimination comes in several forms: Differential treatment=treating ppl differently. This is the simplest form of discrimination. In fact, it is impossible to treat everyone the same. You like some people and dislike others. We treat our friends differently than we do strangers. In this sense, friendship is the earliest form of discrimination because you are not treating ppl equally. That said, this is based on personal qualities, not entire group characteristics. Prejudicial treatment=treating someone based on the category to which they belong before getting to know them individually. Now this is more serious, you are treating someone based on what they are, not who they are. This treatment tends to be negative and unfair. Denial of what they desire=placing restrictions on the aspirations of members of a social group. All people want food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education. Yet, some people may deny certain groups of people these basic courtesies. Disadvantageous treatment. This is the most serious form of discrimination. You are withholding positives and enacting negatives. It ranges from: Verbal derogation: this is the mildest form. How do you talk about this group? Are they constantly the butt of your jokes? All ethnic jokes are based on prejudices and stereotypes that reinforce existing prejudices. This also includes labels and terms e.g., retarded, handicappped, mentally disabled, special needs. We try to look for terms that are not offensive but are still full of general assumptions. We have come a long way in terminology (partially abled or neurodivergent). Physical attack: most severe form. They get rejected, kicked out of a community. Massacres and genocides are extreme examples. Ideologies and Institutions 2 We need to get straight to the point of talking about racism. Racism, to use another concept we've already employed. Racism is ethnocentrism to the extreme. Or you could say that racism is a set of beliefs that assumes behavioral tendencies are genetically based. Races differ in their position. Possession of these traits and some races are superior and should enjoy extra privilege and power. Note the assumption that differences are physical, not cultural. And yet all the evidence is that there is no physical difference between categories. It's all cultural difference. It's your nurture. Racism has accelerated throughout history with the rise of nationalism. Once ethnic groups are organized into nation states that then have power and authority of nation states. We talk about later. Racism is certainly accentuated because of colonialism. You needed some justification for colonialism. Like how? On what basis would you dominate other people without racism? So, the example of the African slavery in not just North America, but in South America as well. This is a picture from the British Museum of a display of an exhibit that they have that was life size. So, a life size exhibit where Africans were held in the hold of the ship on the way in. There's another drawing. Note the difference between the ship hold and those on deck. I'm not sure which view is more horrific. And as you see, one of them has jumped through the netting to commit suicide. All the signatures of the American Declaration of Independence were slave owners. And yet the opening line of the American Declaration of Independence is that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Thomas Jefferson wrote that he had slaves at home. So, in other words, there is dehumanization. Obviously, these are not human. Then if this is your belief that all humans are equal, then these beings are not human. That's the only way I can understand it. Racism reaches a zenith in World War Two, with Nazi Germany and Jews, and in South African apartheid between 1960 and 1990, as I've already said, those are only the most famous or well-known examples of racism in the 20th century, at least in the Western world. It's best understood as an ideology. There's no scientific evidence for it, yet it′s explained by ideology that explains and justifies legitimate distribution of power in this case, between people, groups. And you could say it even blames the victim as an ideology that claims you are a slave. You're not worth anymore. Most people are a little bit interested in understanding that the African American slave trade was triangular. So, both would leave Europe filled with textiles, rum and manufactured goods, and they'd go to Africa, and they'd give those goods to Africans in exchange for people. And then the people would cross North America and in North America, they'd unload the people, and they'd vote for sugar, tobacco and cotton and take it back to Europe. So, the slave trade, the triangular trade was making money on all three angles. You know, all three of the cargo on all three legs of the journey were profitable. And then there was George Floyd in 2021 at the onset of the pandemic and the activation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which by then was already seven years old. But it certainly happens with renewed vigor after George Floyd and a bunch of other incidents in 2020. Here in Canada, of course, we have the whole residential school problem, 60s Scoop. The media have used the term racial profiling and defined it as the discriminatory practice of law enforcement officials targeting someone based on their race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. So, the concept of racial profiling is helpful, but it's complicated trying to get into that. So here are some personal factors that sociologists have use to try to explain racism. Scapegoating is simply blaming others for our failures. The Nazis blaming the Jews. All the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world is scapegoating. Another way of saying it is just venting frustration or aggression on defenseless people. You can get away with it, so you do it. You blame somebody else. Another concept that was studied extensively after World War Two was authoritarianism or the authoritarian personality. For example, there are some people and in this case that was attributed probably, well, no doubt it's an overgeneralization to the German people as authoritarian defined as deferring to those above you in the hierarchy and insensitive, overly domineering to people below you. So, an authoritarian is somebody who, as soon as they walk into the room, immediately figures out who is above them and who's below them and bows to everybody above and disparages everybody below them. Is that a personality thing? Is that a cultural thing? Those are fair questions, but it is associated with personal insecurity, conformity, and dichotomous thinking. More recently, Robin D'Angelo wrote a book in 2018 about white fragility, which is trying to assess why white people are so fragile in confronting their own white supremacy, racism. And she defined it as the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, and by behaviors such as argumentation. So, people were very reactive, and they would get very angry, very afraid, very guilty, whatever, if some of their own racist attitudes or actions were confronted. And we would argue vehemently against it. Beyond the personal factors, there are socio economic factors of racism that foster racism. So, for example, here in Canada, speaking of World War two, beginning in 1941, two years after the war began, Japanese people, Canadians who lived on the west coast of Canada, were evacuated to from coastal British Columbia to very remote, isolated interior camps because they were viewed as dangerous because we were at war. But it’s not just because were at war with Japan. It was attributable to long-term, long-standing resentment to the economic success of Japanese people on the West Coast. They were very economically successful, and Canadians, like more native Canadians, resented their success and the war gives them an excuse to be a scapegoat, to send them back into the hinterlands, into the camps with some resemblance to the concentration camps in Europe. And the US did the very same thing. The Americans knew that the Yellow Peril we must take care of, we must protect ourselves from these people. It was really all driven more by economic factors than by a military or worker factor, Socio linguistic factors. This is one of the ways in which racism persists, just embedded in the English language. I mean, if you think of all the associations with the word black and all the associations with the word white, all the positive connotations of white and all the negative connotations of being black, it's right there in our language. Just think of the term blacklist. If somebody gets blacklisted, then you get blacklisted. Well, why is it called blacklisted? Because black is negative, evil. So, we associate evil with black. It would be so simple to just replace the word blacklist with the word blocklist. All you must do is change one letter from A to O because blacklist is where we have a list of people who will be blocked from whatever. Why do we have to call them black? Why do we associate that action with blackness? And the English language is full of all kinds of racism in the language itself. And finally, we can talk about levels of racism, and you see it here in the bottom left. There's an internalized, personal, institutional, structural levels of racism. the intra means within the person, internalized feelings and beliefs, prejudice and just prejudice. When interpersonal is between people. When prejudice is shown, it's verbalized or when it's acted. When it's shown between individuals through words or deeds. Institutional racism, here we move from prejudice to discrimination. So institutional racism is discriminatory policies and practices within social institutions, like what are their actual practices in housing that are discriminatory or absolute criminal justice system that are racist? Let me count the ways. Public health, education, banking. The way racism is embedded and still is. I mean, Chinese people were not allowed to vote in Canada. Chinese immigrants were not allowed to vote in Canada until 1947. Status Indians were not allowed to vote in Canada until 1960. That was right there then through our laws. And in terms of housing or criminal justice restrictions on what housing could be sold to whom. So that indigenous people are not your neighbours, that sort of thing. What property could be leased or could not be leased to blacks, Jews. That's just housing. And then it goes on to all the other social institutions as well. Finally, systemic racism, ongoing racial inequalities maintained by society, even though it's not no longer maintained by racist ideas, it's just the practice of society. It's systemic. Like bringing migrant workers to work in Canada? Why do we bring the Latin Americans up and then during the harvest time and then have them move from field to field. Let me conclude with well, because part of the problem of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, you know, our prime minister in 2014 said it's not high on our radar, to be honest. We don't care that much. Harper literally said it's not a sociological phenomenon, really. So let me leave you with two thoughts. As we seek truth and reconciliation, let's do it together. Let's not be condescending or patronizing to think that the white euro-Canadians know the solution in Canada. And then here's one of my favorite quotes from Australian Indigenous activist Leila Watson, who said, if you have come to help me. You're wasting your time. You have come because you're all alone. The liberation is bound up with my work. If you realize that you are as enslaved by the ideology as I am, well then let's work together.