Colour Code
This podcast about race in Canada is a few years old but has a variety of interesting interviews that will spark thinking and conversation about racism and identity.
Racism and Anti-Racism in Canada
“Multiculturalism is regarded as a key feature of Canada’s national identity. Yet despite an increasingly diverse population, racialized Canadians are systematically excluded from full participation in society through personal and structural forms of racism and discrimination.
Race and Anti-Racism in Canada provides readers with a critical examination of how racism permeates Canadian society and articulates the complex ways to bring about equity and inclusion both individual and systemically.”
Color-Blindness is Counterproductive
“How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t see color,” “are colorblind,” or “don’t have a racist bone in their body?” Maybe you’ve even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of colorblindness, as it’s often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.
Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of colorblindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of colorblindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.”
ACLRC: Anti-Racism defined
"Anti-racism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably." - NAC International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity
“Anti-racism examines the power imbalances between racialized people and non-racialized/white people. These imbalances play out in the form of unearned privileges that white people benefit from and racialized people do not (McIntosh, 1988; See our definition of White Privilege/White-Skin Privilege).
Anti-racism is the practice of identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism (Ontario Anti-Racism Secretariat).
Anti-racism is an active way of seeing and being in the world, in order to transform it. Because racism occurs at all levels and spheres of society (and can function to produce and maintain exclusionary "levels" and "spheres"), anti-racism education/activism is necessary in all aspects of society. In other words, it does not happen exclusively in the workplace, in the classroom, or in selected aspects of our lives.
A person who practices anti-racism is someone who works to become aware of:
How racism affects the lived experience of people of colour and Indigenous people;
How racism is systemic, and has been part of many foundational aspects of society throughout history, and can be manifested in both individual attitudes and behaviours as well as formal (and "unspoken") policies and practices within institutions;
How white people participate, often unknowingly, in racism. Peggy McIntosh and, later, Paul Kivel came up with "White Privilege" checklists that support white people in learning how whiteness—often without them recognizing it—shapes their place in society, and its impacts. (See our sections on Learning Actions and Liberal Racism and our definition of Whiteness)”
