Racism Free Ontario by FTGU
The Racism Fee Ontario Campaign is an initiative organized by the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA). In its second year, the campaign launched last December on International Human Rights Day and ends March 21st on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. I spoke to CASSA’s Executive Director Neethan Shan about the campaign.
Q: What
prompted CASSA to launch the Racism Free Ontario campaign?
NS: The main focus was that we were noticing that it was
becoming increasingly difficult to talk about racism in Ontario. It was covered
within the discourse of multiculturalism. The root cause of racism and the fact
that it was taking place. It was difficult to have those conversations. It was
difficult to get acknowledgement and recognition of those issues.
The other objective was those who were doing work against
racism - anti-racism activists and advocates are often finding challenging to
confront racism. In order to motivate, learn and share and collaborate, people
need to know who is doing what in the field.
Other people need to know that there are people in the field
doing anti-racism activism, that we do similar work and face similar challenges.
One of the goal is to connect and celebrate anti-racism
activism.
Q: How does this
campaign define racism?
NS: We define racism as institutional, structural, that marginalizes
individuals because of their skin colour or racial origins. We don’t follow a
particular definition of racism per se because there’s multiple definitions out
there. But we wanted to look at structural, institutionalized, the marginalization
of individuals and the continuing legacy of those marginalization.
Q: What are the
experiences of racism in the community that you serve.
NS: It varies quite widely. There are experiences in terms
of hiring practices, in terms of promotion, in terms of freedom in workplaces
to celebrate their own heritage. Issues around not being recognized for their
credentials. In terms of access to education. We’ve had people experience
racism in terms of security issues when they are travelling. People experience
racism in terms of publication at the academic level. We experience racism by
the police. If you look at the poverty amongst racialized community, it has
gone 300% in the last two decades, the Colour of Poverty campaign has
highlighted that. There’s definitely big disparities in terms of poverty in
racialized communities.
Q: Does this campaign make links with other communities?
NS: A lot of work goes beyond the South Asian community. We
do have partnerships with other social planning bodies including the Chinese
community, the Hispanic community, and the African –Canadian community. That
partnership strengthens us in terms of doing this type of work.
Q: How do we build a sustainable,
collaborative anti-racism movement?
NS: The first
part of building that movement is getting connected. That’s what we are trying
to do now – getting used to sharing resources, getting used to supporting each
other. We should look at issues on a micro level, but we also need to collaborate
on a macro level. It will need compromise to a certain extent. We need to say
that my issue is important but so is the issue as the other community as well.
We are trying to achieve through this network a way to share and collaborate.
In order for it to be sustainable, the community needs to see the value of
anti-racism activism and be able to support it. I don’t think anti-racism
activism can rely on government support. Government support should not be the prerequisite
to the sustainable of anti-racism work in Ontario. It should be grassroots
community based work.
Q: What are some
of the activities that are part of the campaign?
NS: We’re doing a spotlight of anti-racist
activists, one person each day. We’re doing a lot of social media. We’re in the
process of compiling resources and tools we can use to address racism and we’re
going to be releasing. We are going to finish off with a forum on March 21st
at OISE. It will focus on racial inequities faced by children and youth particularly
in education. We will also be doing a declaration that organizations and
individuals can sign onto. We’re also encouraging organizations like last year
to hold their own events. Each year we hope to have more partners to host
events.
