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Letter: Jagmeet Singh apologizing would be 'whitewashing' racist system

As dispiriting as it may sound, have you ever considered admitting that systemic racism may never be eliminated and then ask, now what? Systemic racism is not a new social problem.
jagmeet singh in house of commons
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rises for the first time after taking his place in the House of Commons Monday March 18, 2019 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

As dispiriting as it may sound, have you ever considered admitting that systemic racism may never be eliminated and then ask, now what? 

Systemic racism is not a new social problem. As a social worker involved in multicultural issues, I started to be involved in community dialogues about systemic racism in the early 1980s. One thing sure about this problem is that it is still very much with us. If there has been any change to it, it is that the problem has gotten worse. 

When we distinguish racism as systemic, most of us necessarily imply a couple of things in our unquestionably genuine concern of the problem. First, Canadian society is institutionally organized and works in ways that racialized individuals and groups don’t matter equally for a default. 

Second – here’s a provocative morsel for thought - we are, therefore, all helplessly complicit in institutional racist doings because we cannot but be mired in interlocking societal systems that effectively marginalize racialized individuals and groups. That is, nobody is exempted from being a systemic stakeholder and actor; “we”, therefore, cannot but include the most committed anti-racist advocates and activists, and racialized individuals and communities. These folks can only be frustrated. 

Take, for example, if bowing to the demand by parliamentary rules, MP Jagmeet Singh apologizes for his calling out the Bloc colleague in the House on the latter’s gesture offensively racist to him, he will be seen as doing what is right and be, by definition, a good MP. 

Now, for what we are concerned here, who will challenge this abidance by a systemic decorum dictate, drawing attention to an institutional rule as contributing to making an MP’s gesture experienced as racist a non-issue and to – and this is most insidious - Mr. Singh in the process of acting properly “systemized” into whitewashing something racist? Nobody will, that’s who.  The public will never hear further of the waves Mr. Singh so courageously has begun to make to shed light on racism.

The public will lose an opportunity to get drawn into a controversy that could engage them in critically thinking about the “systemic” in racism. See, also, how our societal governance system works to drag Mr. Singh kicking and screaming into taking part in the disappearing act of something racist? All in the name of parliamentary convention, propriety and rules – i.e. the system.

It`s time to acknowledge out loud the brutal reality that changes can only be spotty at best if we continue our wishful thinking that we can strike at problematic systems - the proverbial elephant in the room. 

The truth is that we have hardly ever touched anything that matters. Just go read something on murdered and missing Indigenous women, and racial profiling.

In the face of this reality, we, as a society, have a choice to make: (a) stay the course; being reactive and praying the latest Band-Aid stick to the wound longer than the public memories of whatever is the horror at hand; or (b) making an ambitious, gutsy, unflinching start from where systemic racism needs be confronted: a societal broad-based effort toward change – now, this is critically important - based on an unequivocal admission that Canada society as a whole is a racist system by default and that whatever it has ever done fails to change for the better.

Eugene Ip, Burnaby