Racisms in a Multicultural Canada: Paradoxes, Politics, and Resistance

Chapter 10: Contesting Racisms: Causes, Continuities, Costs, and Consequences

205 CONTESTING RACISMS CAUSES, CONTINUITIES, COSTS, AND CONSEQUENCES Introduction: The Explanatory Challenge udging by public opinion surveys, a substantial number of Canadians are disengaged from the realities of racisms. Mainstream Canadians are either ignorant of or misinformed about racisms in Canada with respect to causes, continuities, costs, and consequences. Many appear unwilling to acknowledge the institutional context of racism-related disparities in health, housing, and employment, preferring instead to dismiss discrepancies as personal faults (see also Feagin, 2006). Racism is downplayed or denied because of an abiding commitment to liberal universalism and robust multiculturalism , not to mention a belief in a post-racial, colour-blind Canada, with a corresponding tendency to blame minorities, rather than society, for failures. The prospect of admitting the reality of racisms is profoundly unsettling for a settler society. Such an admission compromises the comforting fictions and cherished beliefs of Canada as a just and fair society that accepts people for what they do and who they are. Furthermore, to acknowledge minority disparities because of racisms would also delegitimize the exalted status of white privilege and superiority in a Canada that commits to the principles of meritocracy, inclusiveness, and liberal universalism. The crisis in legitimacy would be disruptive to say the least. But the rhetoric of denial cannot mask the realities of racisms. Whether we like it or not, approve or disapprove, racisms in Canada exist, and their existence is characterized by a myriad of sources, forms, expressions, and impacts. Patterns of racism are perpetuated when racialized minorities confront prejudice and discrimination that reinforce prevailing allocations of power, privilege, and resources, economic and educational disadvantage , social and political marginalization, and psychological victimization CHAPTER 10 J 206 Chapter 10 (Henry & Tator, 2010; Satzewich & Liodakis, 2013). Originating for various reasons from the biological and psychological to the social and cultural, racisms are manifested in individual behaviours, institutional norms and practices , cultural values, and constitutional priorities. Racisms are expressed in many ways and at different levels, from the interpersonal and ideological to the institutional and infrastructural. They arise because of hate (bigotry at both individual and collective levels), or assertions of racialized superiority, or Eurocentric tendencies to dismiss others, or a racialized constitutional order that systemically rewards or denies. Such an expansive array of racisms poses a fundamental challenge: How to construct an explanatory framework that accounts for the magnitude and multi-dimensionality of racisms as process and practices (see also Satzewich, 2011, Ch. 2). Complicating the politics of racisms are evolving racialized domains. The old racialized domain bordered on the parochial (see Marable, 2004). Both racisms and anti-racisms were situated primarily within the confines of domestic markets and the political nation-state. But racism has moved beyond the nation-state box. For Marable and others (Giroux, 2004), the politics of a new racialized domain encompasses the dynamics of transnational capitalism (resulting in mass unemployment because of outsourcing), the global policies of state neo-liberalism (with its privileging of market dynamics and individual responsibility at the expense of government intervention and the common good), and the realities of globalization and an integrated market economy. The resultant structural barriers culiminate in the emergence of a two-tiered civil society: The “haves” on top and those “have-nots” who are hobbled by the dead weight of unemployment, a discriminatory criminal justice system, residential segregation, and erosion of many services for racialized minorities and immigrants. The chapter is predicated on the premise that, while a dislike, devaluation, and discrimination of “others” is universal, the more interesting question is why? Is it because of genes, evolutionary trends, information processing, personality flaws, cultural values and difference, or social factors related to structures? Or perhaps all these variables are partly correct, in effect exposing the complexities of explaining human behaviour. The chapter is designed to analyze and explain racisms in terms of their origins and causes, their perseverance across time and space, costs to individuals, and consequences for society. The chapter begins by pointing out that racisms are not without cost or consequences, both to racialized minorities as well as to Canada and mainstream Canadians. Racisms are costly because of their negative consequences, although many Canadians do benefit directly or indirectly by the presence of racial discrimination. No less significant are the different causal explanations (theories) in accounting for racisms. A distinction between root causes and precipitating causes provides a sharper insight into Contesting Racisms 207...