"Black equality matters"/ "A Syrian family's loss became my blessing"

This is a life essay from a Black man and his experience and point-of- view.  This is about Black Lives Matter and before the huge news in Jun. 2020:

Sept. 20, 2016 "Black equality matters": I found this article by Kwame Twumasi-Boateng in the Globe and Mail today:

Canadians can’t afford to be smug about inclusiveness, Kwame Twumasi-Boateng writes. Not all racism involves burning crosses

I grew up in rural New Brunswick.  My family was the only black family in the area. My sisters and I were the first and only black children in our schools.

In one sense, this was an advantage. It meant that, to some extent, we got to define our own narrative. Depending on your point of view, we got to or we had to demonstrate “what a black person was” because there was no reference point.

Most black people are not afforded that luxury. As I got older, it became apparent to me that no amount of wealth, education or achievement can insulate a black person from that fact.

 Examples of this can be found in the comments section of any news article relating to President Barack Obama. For many, no matter what their socioeconomic circumstances, being born black means being born into a societal gutter.

The “American dream” proclaims that if you are willing to work for it, you can, and will, achieve success and happiness. The myth embedded within the dream is that everyone has an equal shot at proving themselves. 

However, imagine that you know you are starting a race miles behind the rest. 

Imagine that you know you will have to expend a considerable amount of energy convincing people of what you are not, before you even have the chance to convince them of what you are. 

This is the reality for black people. For centuries, they have been robbed of so many things, but perhaps the most tragic is the licence to dream freely.

When my three sisters and I were little, my father told us that because of our skin colour there would be many instances when we would have to be far better than everyone else just to get the same level of respect. 

What a terrible thing for a parent to have to tell their child. What a terrible weight for a child to have to carry. As we grew up, that weight became less and less of an abstract concept.

When one of my sisters was in elementary school, a kid on the playground once told her to “wipe that dirt off her face.”

When I was in high school, I once discovered a comment about “n-----” scrawled on a bathroom stall.

When another of my sisters was in university in Montreal, my father helped her find a place to live. He spoke to a woman on the phone about renting a particular apartment. She enthusiastically told him the place was available, to come right over and they could sign a lease that day. 

My father is Ghanaian, but because of British influence in his schooling and several years living in Britain, he speaks with an accent that is hard to place – not obviously “black.” When my father and sister made the short walk to the apartment, the woman refused to open the door, telling them through a screen that the place had been rented. 

This same sister once applied for a job with two identical CVs – one with her real name, one with a fake “white” name. Guess which person got an interview?

I could recount more similar stories but (I hope) you get the point. We in Canada like to think of ourselves as an inclusive, welcoming society. And we are. 

But our country also has deeply embedded prejudices and a non-trivial number of people with views that can only be classified as racist. 

Yes, we are improving. But we should be wary about adopting an attitude of moral superiority over our neighbours to the south.

Racism is usually far more subtle than burning crosses on people’s lawns. It is revealed when a person’s first reaction to the murder of a white police officer is outrage and sorrow, but to the murder of a black man it’s to wonder if he was acting “suspicious.” 

It’s when people cannot (or will not) distinguish Africa the continent from the dozens of diverse countries that comprise it. It’s when the only thing people associate black culture with is rap music and sports. 

It’s when brown-skinned people who look nothing alike are repeatedly mistaken for one another. The subtext of all these examples is a refusal to see people of colour as the human individuals they are.

If any of the above applies to you, you have been, to some extent, complicit in the marginalization of black people. You’ve helped condemn an entire race to the very ghetto you may associate them with. 

For otherwise well-intentioned people, that’s a tough pill to swallow and requires deep effort and introspection. Casual calls for peace and unity do not. We are not living in an equal society. 

Yes, unity is what we all wish for, but the conversations on unity cannot precede the conversations on equality. The burden of peacemaking should not lie on the backs of the oppressed.

All of this is why, even here in Canada, we should be paying attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course all lives should matter. But Black Lives Matter arose out of the reality that what should be and what is are two different things. 

To counter Black Lives Matter with the assertion that all lives matter is to suggest that all parties in this struggle are suffering equally – and that simply isn’t true.

As a daydreaming child in elementary school, I distinctly remember imagining floating out of my body, looking down and seeing what everyone else was seeing. One black kid. As an adult, I now realize all of the difficult implications of that fact.

PressReader.com - Connecting People Through News

Oct. 4, 2016 "A Syrian family's loss became my blessing": Yesterday I found this article by Marie Wadden in the Globe and Mail.  This is a really heartwarming essay.

I’ve been given entry into the lives of strangers who respond to the tiniest act of kindness with deep gratitude, Marie Wadden writes

Her name is Marie Al Salloum, and she was born on Aug. 22.

Marie is named after me. War forced her family to flee Syria, but their bad fortune has been a blessing in my life.

Just before last Christmas, I joined many other volunteers in offering to help settle 250 government-sponsored Syrian refugees, or 30 families, in St. John’s. We stuffed hats, mittens and toiletries into welcome kits. We brought groceries to the families’ temporary accommodations. 

We went shopping with them for bedding, towels and basic housewares. And when they were ready to move to their own homes we met the movers to ensure the right furniture was delivered.

I met the Al Salloum family one cold day in February. Theirs was the last house on my visiting list, and conveniently located near my home. The furniture was still in boxes when Ibrahim Al Salloum, dressed in a slightly oversized winter coat and cossack-style hat, burst through the front door, his arms filled with the family’s belongings in plastic bags.

In no time, his wife, Fozia, had supper under way while their five children excitedly explored their first Canadian home: a six room, two-storey row house. The doorbell rang, and a telephone installer came in and joined the chaotic but joyful household. Fozia offered us all “café.”

I didn’t hesitate to choose the Al Salloum family as the one I would visit regularly. As a volunteer visitor, I was to act as a guide to the city and its services and coach them in basic English skills. Volunteers were given strict guidelines to foster independence. We were advised, for example, never to lend money or be too generous with gifts. This suited me because, as a retiree, I have more time than money.

My own children are 21 and 18, so my nest is rapidly emptying. My contact with 12-year-old Asmahan, eight-year-old Malak, the five-year-old twins Asmaa and Falak and their little brother Mohammed, 21⁄2, has taken the sting out of my children’s growing independence.

How often in our lives do we get a free ticket into the lives of strangers who respond to the tiniest gesture of kindness with the deepest gratitude? The first word I learned in Arabic was shukran (thank-you), and it has been said to me more times than I care to count.

Marie was given my name before she was born: Fozia would point to her belly and then to me, saying “Mar-ee.”

It was an honour I hardly deserved, and one I thought might change when they made more friends. Now that Marie is here, I wonder at which point the idea took form. Was it when I sang a goofy rendition of “head and shoulders, knees and toes” as an English lesson on body parts? 

Was it after I went door to door in our neighbourhood with the children, rounding up toboggans and slides so they could have their first taste of winter fun? Was it when I introduced them to more people who helped them thrive here?

Because they are thriving. Ibrahim takes every English-language course on offer, and by the end of this year should be fluent enough to resume his plumbing trade. Fozia, like many immigrant women with small children, has had fewer opportunities to learn English, but that will change. The children are soaking up the new language like sponges, and Mohammed shows an early aptitude for music.

The language barrier has prevented me from having deep conversations with Ibrahim and Fozia. I know little about their lives in Syria, though it’s clear that their separation from parents and siblings is painful. Fozia so missed her mother the day Marie was born, I found her crying when I went to see them.

In April, Ibrahim was invited to speak to a Grade 5 class. Each student was given a chance to ask him a question about his experience since coming to St. John’s, and he answered through a translator. The kids learned that in January, he was afraid he’d made a mistake in coming here because of the cold and his children’s refusal to eat locally available food. 

He spoke about the helplessness he’d felt since he couldn’t read our signage or understand grocery labels. He wrote words in Arabic on the blackboard, from right to left, so the children could see the extent of his challenge.

One child asked: “If you can’t speak English, how do you ask for help?”

I was sitting in the back of the classroom with Mohammed and the twins. Fozia was at a medical appointment. Ibrahim caught my eye as he answered. “I don’t have to ask for help,” he said, “because people here ask me how they can help.”

I like to think Marie Al Salloum is named for all the Canadians who have opened their hearts to refugees. I hope my namesake’s generation will one day return to a peaceful Syria, and have the opportunity to know their real grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. I am honoured to be a surrogate in the meantime for all these missing relatives, but it feels wrong to benefit from their loss.

The Al Salloum children are excited to be back in school. Fozia loves her neighbourhood, and Ibrahim knows the bus routes better than I do. Their need for me is winding down. When I hear Marie’s siblings teach her the “head and shoulders, knees and toes” song, I’ll know my job is done.

Marie Wadden lives in St. John’s.

PressReader.com - Connecting People Through News

May 26, 2021 My opinion: In Feb. 2021, I posted all these articles about Black people and Black celebrities in honor of Black History month.  In Jun. 2020, I could have posted all this after George Floyd's death.

However, at the time I posted all these job articles and women in the workplace job articles.  I was focused on this:

1. Get EI/ CERB

2. Look for a work from home job because my 2 restaurant jobs are closed 

I have a lot of race articles saved into my drafts.

This week's theme is about race:

"Remembering Emmett Till"/ "New survey a 'first step' to dismantling anti-Black racism, says researcher"

Tracy's blog: "Remembering Emmett Till"/ "New survey a 'first step' to dismantling anti-Black racism, says researcher" (badcb.blogspot.com)

"It's not my name that's wrong"/ "Against the margins" (East Indian race)

Tracy's blog: "It's not my name that's wrong"/ "Against the margins" (East Indian race) (badcb.blogspot.com)

My week: 

May 21, 2021 "'White privilege at its best': Lori Loughlin slammed for Mexico vacation": Today I found this article by Ellie Spina on Yahoo news:

Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli are under fire after a federal judge granted them permission to travel to Mexico for a family vacation.

According to TMZ, the couple, who have both completed their prison sentences for their parts in the notorious college admissions scandal of 2019, plan to visit San Jose del Cabo for five days in June. 

Now, they're stirring debate for being allowed to travel while still on probation — and raising questions about privilege. 

"White privilege at its best," one person tweeted, while another added, "Sounds about white."

"If they were Black or brown, no judge would have granted vacation time," another commented.

'White privilege at its best': Lori Loughlin slammed for Mexico vacation (yahoo.com)

My opinion: This comes to 2 situations.

Situation #1: Go on family vacation to Mexico

Pro: They get to go and have fun in Mexico.

Con: They make themselves look bad with their white privilege and are criticized on the internet.

Situation #2: They stay at home.

Pro: They don't make themselves look bad or worse.  They have a bad reputation already.

Con: They don't get to have as much fun in Mexico. 

I would tell them to stay at home to save their reputation.  Some of you may say: "People are always going to say bad things about you no matter what you do, so go on vacation."

May 24, 2021  "Customers call out banks for increasing fees during pandemic while profits are up": Today I found this article by Erica Johnson on CBC news:

Williams and other customers with TD, CIBC, Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank have recently contacted Go Public about fees that increased, or are about to, for a range of accounts, products and services. They all question the timing.

The banks tell Go Public that the increases were made after careful consideration and that other options are available to customers. 

But a banking critic says the banks are jacking up fees because no one is stopping them. 

"Prime Minister Trudeau said a year ago that the banks should be doing more to help Canadians — and gouging them is not helping them," said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, a citizen group calling for government accountability and corporate responsibility. "It's about time he and the finance minister stepped in."

Williams says TD's changes to its "preferred chequing" accounts — the type she's held for more than 25 years —  are "exorbitant and totally unfair." The bank is raising the minimum balance required for avoiding fees from $2,000 to $5,000.

"In an environment where people have lost their jobs, they're on furlough, they're trying to get CERB payments, who's going to be able to keep $5,000 in their bank account to not get service fees?" she asked.

On top of that, for customers who don't maintain the new, higher balance, TD is raising transaction fees on those accounts — from $1.25 to $1.95.  

Customers call out banks for increasing fees during pandemic while profits are up | CBC News

"It's not my name that's wrong"/ "Against the margins" (East Indian race)

Here is a life essay and a book review that is about being East Indian.  The book review deals with racism and sexism.

Feb. 22, 2017 "It's not my name that's wrong": Today I found this life essay by Akbar Ahmad in the Globe and Mail:


As an expat currently living in Paris, I thought I’d remind my fellow Canadians how good we have it back home.

My name is Akbar Bashir Ahmad.

My mom told me my name meant “great news.” I later learned that was grammatically incorrect and it didn’t mean what she thought, but the sentiment is a nice one. It wasn’t her fault really, as she didn’t speak Arabic. Even though her mother was from Pakistan, my mom had lived in Canada since the age of 3 and her native tongue is English.

Her adolescence was akin to mine, in that I didn’t really think about colour growing up. My classmates were mostly first-generation kids from Egypt, India, Hong Kong, China, Armenia, the Czech Republic, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy – your basic United Nations of cultures.

It wasn’t until university, where I was searching for new groups of friends, it became apparent who I was. My mother always wanted me to hang out with “good Muslims.” The funny thing is I never quite fit in because I wasn’t ethnic enough, either not being religious enough or not speaking Arabic, Punjabi, what have you. 

On the other hand, I never fit in with the “white crowd” either as I was just a little too different, a little too ethnic. Eventually, I did find my people that are, to this day, friends for life. But that was my first seed of doubt.

When I finished my studies, I took a year to backpack across Australia, just after the London Tube bombings in 2005. Australia was the first place I truly experienced full-fledged racism.

I was living in the state of Queensland. People started looking at me differently, judging me with their eyes. Old ladies would get up and move if I sat next to them on the bus. A man came up to me on the street, told me to stop, lifted my shirt and said, “Just making sure you’re not wearing a bomb.” I was 24. I laughed because I didn’t know how else to react. I’d never experienced that before.

On another occasion, I joined a group to go hang-gliding. The instructor singled me out: “I don’t want to be that guy, but you’re not going to blow us up or anything?” he said.

I became paranoid. I eventually came back to Canada, but I couldn’t shake the angst. It took me three years before I felt comfortable in my own skin again.

Fast forward a decade and I met my soulmate, and decided to move in with her. She lives in France, a country riddled with terrorist attacks and sociopolitical problems. 

I arrived in September, 2016, and you can feel both tension and racism in the air, more than I did in Australia. People here have no problem staring, looking you up and down.

I’ve been trying to find design work in Paris for the past few months with no luck. Finally, one of my cold calls hit and a recruiter messaged me to meet for coffee. It started off well and then he moved on to what I needed to work on. The first was about my portfolio, but the second point floored me.

“Your name: Akbar,” he said. “It’s too ethnic, too Muslim. With everything going on here, people want something more … you know, French; more white. If it’s between you and a François or Gilles, it’ll always be the latter. What I’m trying to say is you’ll never get work in France with this name.”

My heart sank. I felt sadness, hurt and then anger. I was used to being judged by the colour of my skin, but never by my name. “It’s the last thing people shout before they kill, it’s the first thing they’ll see on a paper,” the recruiter continued. 

“Naturally, they won’t be drawn to you.”

I was unnerved. I wanted to dig in and tell him off but I kept cool. I was seeing another side of things I hadn’t even considered and it made my head spin. 

“But I’m proud of who I am, my name and what it means,” I said. Then I wanted him to feel a little uncomfortable about highlighting this point, so I added: “Back where I come from, we don’t have this problem.”

The meeting eventually ended; I called my girlfriend and couldn’t help but sob. I wanted to go back home to Canada, to safety. I messaged my sister to tell her what happened and she encouraged me to look to leaders that encountered similar obstacles: Barack Hussein Obama, Muhammad Ali. It helped. 

It reaffirmed that I am proud of my roots, who I am and my name – something I had so much trouble being comfortable with growing up.

Being judged for your skin colour or name is just plain ignorant. 

As Barack’s mother told him, “To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.”

My name is Akbar. It means “the greatest” and quite honestly, I am great. 

To abide others to appease their ignorance and fear will never happen because I know my skin colour and name isn’t what’s wrong, it’s those who judge.

Akbar Ahmad lives in Paris, but grew up in Toronto.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/its-not-my-name-thats-wrong-its-those-who-judge/article34090173/

Mar. 4, 2017 "Against the margins": Today I found this book review by Zarqa Nawaz in the Globe and Mail:

Exploring everything from rape culture to racism, Scaachi Koul’s book of essays is wide-ranging, humorous and deeply personal

I first came across Scaachi Koul, the BuzzFeed editor, from her infamous tweet for soliciting pitches from diverse writers: “IF YOU’RE A WHITE MAN UPSET THAT WE ARE LOOKING MOSTLY FOR NON-WHITE NON-MEN I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU GO WRITE FOR MACLEAN’S.” 

I laughed, but, unfortunately for Koul, white men did not. When women don’t agree with men, we don’t exhaustively tweet about maiming and murdering them, while describing an imaginative but precarious future for their genitals in 140 characters.

It comes as no surprise when Koul recounts the harrowing days that followed in her new book One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter. I block people if they complain about my grammar, but Koul is made of sterner stuff. 

Despite trying to reason with her trolls, things spiralled out of control when Twitter’s “fabulous supervillain” Milo Yiannopoulos’s 168,000 followers unleashed the now clichéd torrent of hate and harassment that the site has become problematic for. 

(He has since been kicked off Twitter for encouraging this type of vitriol.) 

Koul took a mental-health break and deactivated her account. Why such outrage? “We are deeply afraid of making marginalized voices stronger, because we think it makes privileged ones that much weaker,” she writes. 

The solution she says, is more then just “fixing” Twitter but “correcting human behaviour.”

Human behaviour is Koul’s specialty. Her wide-ranging book of essays touches upon many subjects – sexism, racism, feminism and culture – in a deeply personal and humorous narrative. 

She writes about everything from attending her cousin Sweetu’s nuptials (“There are prison sentences that run shorter than Indian weddings”), to the difficulty of bringing a white boyfriend home after living in sin for so long, to answering the eternal question that has vexed many a U.S. Homeland Security border guard: Why do brown mothers not have fingerprints? They’ve been burned off from a lifetime of making rotis on a hot griddle.

Koul was born and raised in Alberta to Kashmiri parents who immigrated from India. The rupture and pain that immigration causes runs deep through the book. She captures how the anxiety of that rupture instills fear into parents who in turn instill that fear and anxiety into their children.

 In a hilarious reversal, she worries about her parents when they finally take a vacation after a decade. They don’t call or text to let their daughter know they’ve arrived safely. She suffers during their entire time away because “how are you supposed to relax when the people who taught you to be afraid of the world, to be alert, to be suspicious, have vanished without a trace.”

As a Canadian of Punjabi heritage, the chapter on being hairy was familiar ground for me. Koul says that Indian ethnicity naturally imparts hair and eyebrows that Western society has designated as “good,” but the rest of our hair doesn’t resemble the “peach fuzz” of blond women, thus it takes our body weight in wax being forced to eliminate all of it. 

I, too, have guilt about it all the time spent shaving, waxing and tweezing could have more fruitfully spent getting a PhD or become a leader of a small Nordic country before it succumbs to fascism.

Koul does a deft job of tackling both racism and the patriarchy, but her most powerful writing discusses rape and surveillance culture that’s become so prevalent in our society.

“Surveillance feeds into rape culture more than drinking ever could,” she argues while describing the men in bars who buy women drink after drink waiting until she loses “the language of being able to consent.”

 I read the chapter about Koul’s experiences after having her drinks spiked with roofies with clenched hands while willing her to be okay. She argues that women are so used to being watched by men in their everyday lives, that “being surveilled with the intention of assault or rape is practically mundane.”

Her musings on how “our inability to talk about race and its complexities actually means our racism is arguably more insidious” becomes almost prophetic in the era of Donald Trump.

 Shadism has coloured Koul’s entire life. She’s “white” in India but “brown” in North America.

 As a result, she’s experienced the privilege of her lighter shade in one country: “The world here is built to benefit those with white skin and punish those with dark skin, much like the world at home.” 

So how to fix these problems? We need to fix human behaviour, Koul would say, since “these are beliefs and behaviours we inherit from … the people who raised us.”

As I write this review, my Twitter feed is full of news of Jewish cemeteries’ being vandalized, mosques being burned down, brown men being shot in bars. 

But I also see people rallying around the world against xenophobia in a way that makes the brown cockles of my heart strum with wonder. In order to overcome racism, it must have a strong light shone on it to illuminate all its ugliness.

Koul does this by bringing her vulnerability, honesty and, of course, wry sense of humour to the discussion. She weaves stories, which through their cultural uniqueness and specificity, become universal and applicable to all. 

Writer and filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz is the author of Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, which was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie.

"Remembering Emmett Till"/ "New survey a 'first step' to dismantling anti-Black racism, says researcher"

Here are two articles about anti-Black racism.  You may be angry, depressed, and in a bad mood after reading this.

Mar. 24, 2018 "Remembering Emmett Till": Today I found this article by David Bauder in the Edmonton Journal:

Gruesome images of a NEW YORK lynched Emmett Till were seared into the minds of many black Americans in 1955 and helped lead to the modern civil rights movement. But few whites knew of their existence at the time.

That reality is at the top of NBC’s two-hour documentary about how images propelled the civil rights effort. The film debuts Saturday as the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King ’s assassination approaches.

Till was the 14-year-old black Chicago boy visiting relatives in Mississippi, killed after a white grocery store clerk claimed he had treated her rudely. Decades later, she recanted her story. 

That was far too late to save Till from being bludgeoned, shot in the head and thrown into a river. Two men were acquitted of the crime, even though they later admitted to it.

Given a casket nailed shut, Till’s mother ordered it open and Jet magazine took pictures of his horribly maimed head, beaten beyond recognition.

“For a mainstream, news audience, my guess is a large number of people knew his name, but didn’t really know what happened, which is the best and highest calling for a documentary like this,” said NBC News chairman Andrew Lack. “Seeing these pictures underscores what happened, what really happened, why the murder of Emmett Till was such a shocking and important event in the civil rights movement.”

There’s no evidence that NBC ever showed the picture of Till’s body until a Today show story on the anniversary of his death in 1985, the network said. NBC wasn’t alone among the mainstream media.

“It was a different America,” Lack said.

As if to make amends, the documentary shows the image of a murdered Till seven times.

 NBC compared Mamie Till’s insistence that the brutal truth of what happened to her son be made visible to actions in 2016 by the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who streamed the aftermath of his shooting by a police officer outside of St. Paul, Minn., where he had been pulled over for a busted light.

Mamie Till went to Jet because, at the time, it was the top news source for black America, said MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who participated in the documentary. “If you were a mother in Mamie Till’s position, you wouldn’t go to NBC or CBS or even The New York Times,” Reid said.

The pictures “took the issue of lynching away from the grainy photographs of a body hanging in the woods,” she said. The anniversary of Till’s death was later chosen as the date of King ’s March on Washington, she said.

“The civil rights movement never forgot Emmett Till,” Reid said. “He was to that movement what Trayvon Martin was to Black Lives Matter, a symbol that remained incredibly potent.”

NBC’s documentary shows how King innately understood the power of images beamed by the still-infant medium of television. A peaceful march or sit-in could draw yawns from a general public, yet a march of well-dressed children set upon by police with dogs and fire hoses produced pictures that made many Americans recoil when they saw them on the evening news. King could count on racists to reveal themselves and provide the pictures he needed to give the movement momentum.

Many demonstrations were planned before noon to give enough time for film to be delivered to New York to be shown on the network evening news.

The documentary was initially made for MSNBC but Lack said he felt compelled to request a primetime window on the network.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/ottawa-citizen/20180324/282467119436120

May 21, 2021  "New survey a 'first step' to dismantling anti-Black racism, says researcher": Today I found this article by Adina Bresge on CTV news:

 TORONTO -- Seven in 10 Black Canadians have experienced racism on a regular or occasional basis, suggests a preliminary study that experts are calling a "first step" toward dismantling systemic discrimination.

Researchers at York University released early findings Friday from a national survey examining how Black Canadians experience race and racism across social spheres.

The interim report, produced in partnership with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, draws from the responses of roughly 5,500 participants, including about 1,800 Black people, between March 21 and May 5.

Seventy per cent of Black respondents reported facing racism regularly or from time to time, while roughly half of Indigenous people and other racialized people said the same, according to the ongoing study.

Lead author Lorne Foster said the research breaks new ground in compiling granular data on Black Canadians, in contrast to existing literature that combines all racialized groups into the catch-all category of "visible minorities."

"We see this data as really the first step in dismantling systemic racism, particularly anti-Black systemic racism," said Foster, the director of York University's Institute for Social Research

"With this type of information, it's difficult now to even deny or ignore the calls from the Black community to address racism in the major sectors and institutions of our society."

Researchers blended traditional online survey techniques and new digital tools to gather a wide breadth of insights, including participant-submitted policy proposals, said Foster.

The polling industry's professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

Foster said he and his team will continue to refine and expand their investigation as data collection continues through June 1.

But the initial results paint a clear and detailed picture of the extent to which anti-Black racism pervades Canada's systems of education, employment, health care, child welfare and criminal justice, he said.

Of particular concern is racism in the professional world, which Foster pointed to as a primary driver for socioeconomic disparities along racial lines.

A staggering 96 per cent of Black respondents said that racism is a problem in the workplace, including 78 per cent who saw it as a serious or very serious issue.

Moreover, 47 per cent of Black Canadians told researchers they have been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay or promotion in the last year.

Some respondents told researchers that the stress and trauma of workplace racism was so severe that it resulted in mental health issues, poor morale or alienation from the workforce, said Foster.

"I recently quit my job of over 20 years, partly due to burnout brought on by discrimination," one respondent told researchers, adding that his employer didn't even acknowledge his departure with a goodbye card.

Meanwhile, 56 per cent of white participants saw racism on the job as a small problem, or not at all.

Another sector that 91 per cent of Black respondents said has a racism problem is the health-care system, and 88 per cent of Indigenous participants agreed.

The survey found that 22 per cent of Black participants said they had been unfairly stopped by the police in the previous 12 months -- twice the rate of any other group.

In Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, more than two in five Black men told researchers they'd been unfairly stopped by law enforcement in the past year.

More than nine in 10 Black respondents viewed racism as a problem in their communities, and two-thirds said they had been treated with suspicion in the last year.

The COVID-19 crisis has fed into this unease, with 34 per cent Black participants expressing concern about being treated with suspicion when wearing face coverings in public.

Kimberly Bennet, the director of communications at the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, said these numbers crystallize what Black Canadians have long been saying: that racism ripples through every facet of society, and it's going to take a collective effort to address it.

"All entities need to look at how they can use this data to address policies within their companies, within their agencies or within their departments to dismantle any form of racism or discrimination that is making life more difficult for Black Canadians or people of colour in general."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 21, 2021.

New survey a 'first step' to dismantling anti-Black racism, says researcher | CTV News