12  “Meanwhile, in Canada” Systemic Racism, “Happy Points,” and Some Challenges and Possibilities for Anti-racism in Lethbridge

Diversity Work

Sara Ahmed (2012) has undertaken extensive research on what she terms diversity work. Though this research is situated most squarely in the context of institutions of higher education in the UK and Australia, Ahmed’s ideas have been taken up in myriad other institutional and geopolitical contexts. In this chapter, I suggest that we can extend Ahmed’s work to think of what is happening right now with respect to policing as a very particular kind of diversity work brought about by the extraordinary traction of this moment in terms of anti-Black racism and systemic racism more broadly. As protesters, activists, academics, civil servants, and others advocate for racial justice (or, rather, an end to injustice), many institutions and social actors are being held to account in new ways. High-level social actors (e.g., politicians, business executives, media figures, civil servants) are being asked regularly about systemic racism in key societal institutions. Leaders of policing organizations big and small are being challenged to address systemic racism in their ranks, their practices, and their policies. Media organizations are being called to account for their lack of representation of Black and Indigenous peoples and other people of colour. In this moment, then, whether or not they are ready for it, innumerable institutions are engaging in diversity work.

Importantly, Ahmed (2012) illuminates that diversity work is a very different undertaking from justice work. In contrast to a focus on questions of justice, Ahmed (2012) argues that diversity has come to be about “generating the right kinds of appearance” and not challenging—or even necessarily considering—the power structures at the core of the institution (85). Diversity work, then, regularly involves adding diversity, which often comes in the form of adding a person or people who are said to embody diversity. What too rarely happens, Ahmed explains, is deep thinking about how dominant structures and practices are, themselves, the problem.

Ahmed (2012) suggests that it is productive to think of diversity as a perspective: “If diversity is a way of viewing or even picturing an institution, then it might allow only some things to come into view.” Ahmed discusses this point alongside a consideration of intersectionality, which she describes as thinking “about and through the point at which power relations meet” (14). Intersectionality entails grappling with multiple systems of power and marginalization—recognizing that they intersect and shape the lives of people who, necessarily, are positioned in different ways along multiple axes of power, privilege, and oppression (Crenshaw 1991). Building from this idea, Ahmed (2012) suggests that diversity “is often used as shorthand for inclusion, as the ‘happy point’ of intersectionality, a point where lines meet” (14). By adding diversity (or, as we shall see, celebrating the adding of diversity), we create a perspective of this happy point, one that obscures the hard work that needs doing.

On Community

On June 4, the Lethbridge Herald published a piece they titled “Invest in, Rather Than Policing, Communities.” I quote from this piece, which I coauthored with a colleague specializing in policing and racialization, at some length here:

Many readers will have grown up understanding the police as a force for good, as the people you could trust if you were worried, scared, or in danger. But we must understand that historically, that has not been true for everyone. Historically [. . .] the police have been a force that [. . .] divides, one that sees some as suspicious based on assumptions about whether someone that looks a certain way belongs in a certain neighbourhood—indeed, we heard this from the former Police Chief in Lethbridge. They have been a force that has torn children from parents to put them in residential schools. A force that disproportionately stops, questions, arrests, and charges Black and Indigenous people, and other people of colour. A force that somehow finds ways to deescalate situations with even armed white suspects, and yet too often fails to find ways to peacefully engage with unarmed Black folks.

It is as part of this history that we must understand the kind of blatant police brutality the world witnessed on May 25th, 2020: the violent murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. This form of blatant cruelty is not new—Floyd’s death has sparked nation-wide protests not because it is unusual, but because it was caught on video and is but the latest example of an unarmed Black person being killed by those charged with law enforcement. This kind of violence—foreign to many readers but all too familiar to Black people and communities—stands to remind Black people that their lives do not matter, just as they did not matter during slavery and the Jim Crow era. What lynching, a practice of public execution, was to Black people during the Jim Crow era, police killing of Black people is today, in this era of mass incarceration. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. David McAtee. And too many more lives and loved ones lost.

And as the hashtag highlighted this past weekend, “meanwhile, in Canada [. . .]” Meanwhile, in Canada: Regis Korchinski-Paquet. D’Andre Campbell. Machuar Madut. All dead after encounters with Canadian police forces. And again, they are among too many racialized folks whose lives have ended in this way. Canada, like the U.S., has a long history of police violence disproportionately directed against Black people and communities, as well as Indigenous peoples and other people of colour. For example, recent data indicate that while members of the Black community represent only 3.4% of the Canadian population, they constitute 9% of the victims in fatal police interactions.

As the mainstream media tells all of us, we are in an extraordinary moment including “looting” and “violent unrest.” But who, exactly, is being violent? And what, exactly, does “looting” mean in a country literally founded by stealing land? What does it mean to refer to protestors fighting for their lives as looters, while celebrating those who profit from the exploitation of those same lives by paying them less than a living wage to cut our meat, to ship our online purchases to our homes, and to be more at risk for exposure to COVID-19 than those of us who wait in our comfortable homes for our purchases?

In a different register, we might ask what it means to think of the safety of our communities in terms of law and order. We might define safety, or perhaps better yet, the well-being of our communities, in other terms. Instead of investing most of our property taxes in police “services,” perhaps we should follow the advice of activists, journalists, and authors like Sandy Hudson or Desmond Cole3 and invest, instead, in community supports and services. Instead of investing in a force designed to arrest offenders (a symptom of a broken system), perhaps instead we should treat the causes: record levels of social inequality, lack of access to housing, quality food, and mental health supports, for example. Perhaps, in such a world, society would respond to a mental health crisis with support rather than force, and a woman would not fall 24 floors to her death. Perhaps, in such a world, we might work towards reducing social inequalities rather than responding with force to those fighting for justice in their communities. If we think in terms of investing in our communities rather than policing them, not only will we better serve marginalized peoples and communities, but we might work towards redefining community itself. (Turay and Laurendeau 2020)

Though my coauthor and I did not linger with it at length, the “meanwhile, in Canada” hashtag is worth reflecting on here. As noted previously, one of the ways Canada and Canadians refuse difficult conversations about white supremacy on these lands is through a sanctimonious finger pointing, a suggesting that these are problems “down there” but not, we insist, “up here.” The fact that #meanwhileinCanada was, for a time, the top trending topic on Canadian Twitter should give us pause; it should have us asking serious questions about how and why racial violence is so routinely glossed over, whitewashed, or relegated to a bygone past. As Dwaine Taylor (2020) explicates, “Canadian Exceptionalism has crippled our ability to critically reflect on the issues in our own country.”

The same day that the previously quoted op-ed was published, a large rally was held at Lethbridge City Hall in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Organized by Lethbridge’s Group United Against Racial Discrimination, the rally was attended by an estimated one thousand people and was supported both online and in person (e.g., cars honking as they drove by) by many who chose not to attend the rally in person during the pandemic.

I begin with the op-ed and rally not because either, by itself, could provide a comprehensive treatment of a complex and multifaceted issue. Rather, in the case of the op-ed, my coauthor and I intended it as a provocation, one aiming to nudge the conversation unfolding in our local community. In the case of the rally, meanwhile, the point was to draw attention to a “system that was built on white supremacy that has sought to marginalize the lives and voices of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC)” (Dhaliwal 2020). More to the point in terms of this chapter, I begin with these moments to set the stage for a consideration of whether and how these arguments were taken up and what all this tells us about how race and racism work in Lethbridge.

“Race Relations”

On June 4, 2020, at 9:34 a.m., I received an email from someone in public affairs at my institution that included the following: “I’ve got a Global Lethbridge reporter who would like to speak with someone about race relations in Canada.” Right away, I was on alert. Someone asking about “race relations,” as opposed to “racial injustice,” for example, suggested to me a focus on “relations,” a desire, perhaps, to write a feel-good story. In my view, that was not what was called for. Instead, we needed to be having hard conversations, conversations that make folks—and privileged folks like me, especially—uncomfortable. Warily, I connected with my coauthor, and we agreed to do the interview.

The interviewer was professional and pleasant and asked a number of insightful questions. She asked about police body cameras, about better unconscious-bias training for police officers, about investing in community. For our part, we pushed back as much as possible, pointing out that many racial justice advocates do not want body cameras, as this means more funding of police as well as more surveillance—not simply of police officers, but of racialized citizens too. We highlighted that unconscious-bias training is largely cosmetic when we have grown up in and work and live in institutions in which white supremacy is deeply embedded. Perhaps most importantly, we pointed out that many racialized folks have been doing this work in Canada for a long time and that it is high time we listen to them (e.g., Maynard 2017; Cole 2020; Diverlus, Hudson, and Ware 2020).

At the end of the interview, the reporter indicated that the on-air segment would be quite short, but that she would have more space to write a broader piece for the online story. When the segment aired that evening, I was disappointed, but not surprised. The on-air segment, one minute and fifty-one seconds long, opens with Jordan Ledyit—one of the organizers—noting, “I do believe that the response was quite overwhelming, and it was amazing to see so much support for our message.” Legacy McAdam, another organizer, is then quoted: “It was very overwhelming, as a good thing, knowing so many people support this common cause.” Later in the segment, the reporter notes that my coauthor Ibrahim Turay “says a diverse and large turnout at the protest shows immense solidarity.” Further along, we hear the reporter’s voice-over: “Jason Laurendeau is a professor at the University of Lethbridge who studies sociology and race relations, and he says this may be the biggest protest Lethbridge has ever witnessed.” The segment concludes with the notion that “this movement is echoing cries for proactive change across the country” (Dhaliwal 2020).

What strikes me now about the segment (and the slightly longer online story—Dhaliwal 2020—that accompanied it) is that it is, largely, a feel-good story. We learn that the rally was “overwhelming,” was “amazing,” and showed “immense solidarity.” The only sustained call for action evident in the story is found in the middle of the segment and lasts approximately eight seconds on camera: “Ledyit says she doesn’t want this to be a phase, and voices what she would like to see done immediately: ‘[. . .] our government officials [need to] hear us, and do something.’” What’s more, the segment then moves away from this single—and somewhat broad—call for systemic change to cite the “experts”4 but draws only on the briefest and most banal comments from our interview. Yes, I observed that it was a tremendous turnout for a rally in Lethbridge. But I—and we—also observed many things about the persistence of white supremacy, the limits of police training initiatives, and more. And yet the particular quotes they chose from each of the key figures in the short segment speak to what a positive sign it was that there was a large turnout, with only the briefest and most general acknowledgement of the very real issues of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in our community and the world more broadly. This, to borrow from Ahmed (2012), highlights that the “promise of diversity is the promise of happiness: as if in becoming happy or in wanting ‘just happiness’ we can put racism behind us” (165). In other words, to borrow from Tuck and Yang (2012), this story and video clip invoke “a fantasy of mutuality based on sympathy and suffering” (20).5

In this instance, Ledyit, McAdam, Turay, and I are all pictured as “happy” about the rally, buoyed by the “solidarity” it illustrated, as if solidarity—rather than justice—is the desired outcome. We are marshalled, that is, to illustrate the “happy point,” the point where lines meet. But what makes this a “happy” story “is partly what it conceals or keeps from view. It might offer a relief from the negative feelings surrounding racism. [. . .] It allows white guilt to be displaced by good feelings” about a successful rally (Ahmed 2012, 165). But neither guilt nor good feelings are what are needed in this moment. Audrey Lorde (1997) reminds us, “Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we will all perish, for they serve none of our futures” (278). Guilt, moreover, is not generative; indeed, it is “only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices” (282). So what is needed is not a feel-good story to displace guilt but a difficult story to transform guilt toward something more productive. Perhaps, what we need instead is anger. Not solidarity, certainly not amazement or optimism, but anger. Lorde (1997) puts it succinctly: “Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change” (282).

In the media account of the BLM rally in Lethbridge, I see what Ahmed (2012) describes when she theorizes a “fantasy fold”: “Diversity is often imagined as a form of repair, a way of mending or fixing histories of being broken. Indeed, diversity enters institutional discourse as a way of imagining that those who are divided can work together; as a way of assuming that ‘to get along’ is to right a wrong” (164). In other words, the arguments activists and commentators marshal toward addressing racial injustice are folded in and become part of a story about “solidarity,” “cries for proactive change,” and “support for our message.” This folding in ensures that the conversation is not about racism, white supremacy, and injustice but about a rallying moment about which we (should) all feel good. As Ahmed (2012) notes, folding in has implications for how we relate to the past: “Racism is framed as a memory of what is no longer, a memory that if it was kept alive would just leave us exhausted” (164).

On the one hand, my analysis here is about the story itself—the ways in which this BLM rally and “expert” analysis of the issues were (re)framed (see Hodes, this volume). On the other, however, in the age of digital media, we get a glimpse into the public’s engagement with these stories. In this instance, as of the time of writing, the only online response to the story points to the depth of racism in Lethbridge:

As I commented before, what a pack of racists at this rally. You do know that promoting one race or culture over another’s is the definition of true racism. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Myself? I promote the concept of “All Lives Matter” which is true equality for everyone. All these naïve protesters are doing is spinning the “hamster wheel” of true racism. If you keep living your lives looking backwards, you are doomed to repeat the past. (Dee Ironside commenting on Dhaliwal 2020)6

This comment draws on the “discourse of universalism” that DiAngelo (2011) describes in her discussion of “white fragility.” Universalism, she explains, “functions to deny the significance of race and the advantages of being white” (59). In laying a claim to the contours of “true racism,” this commentator refuses even the most basic critique included in the story and the movement more broadly. At the same time, their hearkening to “All Lives Matter” operates as a “racial spectacle [. . .] because it disguises the prioritizing of white lives.” It is, in other words, a form of “racial gaslighting” that

co-opts Black social justice intellectual work[,] pushes Black communities further to the margins of society by insisting that all lives [matter,] erases the centuries of brutalization and dehumanization of Black bodies[, and] obfuscates the role of the white supremacist state power structure by eliding over the specific targeting of Black lives by state institutions and actors, such as prisons and police. (Davis and Ernst 2019, 764)

The Watch

On June 11, 2020, another op-ed appeared in the Herald, this one focused more specifically on the Watch, a pilot and mostly volunteer program that had been active in Lethbridge since 2019 (Walker and Runions 2020). The Watch, paradoxically, was modelled on the Bear Clan initiative in Winnipeg. The Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) borrowed the Bear Clan model, adapting (and, arguably, perverting) it by bringing it more squarely in line with policing practices and affiliations. Not only is the Watch overseen by the LPS, but it serves as a key “community engagement” opportunity for students in a local Criminal Justice program, many of whom undertake their practicum hours as Watch patrollers.

Spurred both by their opposition to the Watch program and by the reckoning moment described at the outset of this chapter, two Lethbridge citizens launched a petition to defund the Watch (the petition had been signed by almost 5,700 people as of the time of writing) and published their own op-ed on the topic, reproduced here in its entirety:

The Watch was established in Lethbridge in 2019 in order to “increase the perception of public safety” (Lethbridge Police Service’s 2018 Annual report). The volunteer-run program received $1.2 million of taxpayers’ money over its first two years. However, there are growing concerns amongst community members who are questioning the efficacy of this program, and proposing Watch funding be re-allocated to support harm reduction and re-housing initiatives.

We spoke to former Watch volunteers, academics, social workers and harm-reduction specialists on the frontline of homelessness, policing, and outreach initiatives, as well as everyday citizens concerned about the frequency of violence and racial profiling enacted by Watch volunteers against the unhoused population in Lethbridge’s downtown core.

One community member spoke to The Watch’s “colonial legacy of the militia-based policing of marginalized bodies and lives in North America” stating: “Rather than providing meaningful and actionable care and resources, The Watch roams the downtown area, intimidating and abusing marginalized people while being celebrated by white settlers. Nothing proved that more clearly to me than when I saw four separate Watch members, on two different occasions, approach an Indigenous person who appeared to be experiencing an overdose and choose to kick that person to see if they were alive, rather than speaking to them” (Jamie Lewis, recent graduate).

A Community Support Worker says The Watch have “repeatedly approached clients [they] have worked with in aggressive ways that scare and startle individuals” and “[do] not understand individual’s state or mental health and that many of those they approach live with invisible disabilities such as [fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and autism spectrum disorder].”

One previous Watch member even spoke to the “inherent prejudice” of the program, describing how they wear “a uniform white people can run to.” These community concerns are supported by feminist legal scholar Dr. Caroline Hodes, who commented: “a group like ‘The Watch’ follows an outdated and inappropriate crime control model that has no place in Lethbridge. ‘The Watch’ have developed a reputation for putting people’s personal security at greater risk and for discrimination, harassment, and violence.”

Community members have various ideas as to how the money could be reallocated, with the intention of helping the most vulnerable populations in Lethbridge. These include a new treatment centre, a drop-in center, and housing initiatives; as the budget for The Watch was originally cut from the Housing First program. A former member of The Watch stated that “[a]t best it is a referral program, and is simply a Band Aid effort to improve the lives of the homeless population and increase public *perception* of safety. Funds are much better spent on housing, support and harm-reduction strategies than on a group of people with radios and no real authority.”

Unhoused communities in Lethbridge deserve programs that are informed by best practices for support, and we call on city council to hear the thousands of people who have signed our petition and mobilized their voices for this cause. In fact, our proposal supports the key strategies of the City of Lethbridge’s Reconciliation Implementation Plan (2017–2027), where the City expresses its commitment to “[s]upport alternative forms of community justice initiatives to divert individuals from criminal justice processes for minor offences to more culturally relevant restorative justice processes framed around healing and rehabilitation.”

As Dr. Hodes suggests, “given the recent and overwhelming support for the BLM movement and the transnational public outcry against police violence, you need to find more productive, community enhancing ways to spend this money.” Ultimately, in the words of one community member, “When Black/Indigenous/people of colour say The Watch has not done much for them, you should listen” (Poahksikakii B. Child). (Walker and Runions 2020)

In their contribution, Walker and Runions draw attention to and trouble the “common-sense” discourse of policing that so often places policing and police organizations beyond question. I do not mean to suggest that critiques of particular police (in)actions are not culturally intelligible—surely recent events have made clear that such critiques are getting traction. Rather, my point is that deeper interrogations of the foundations of policing—such as the spatial containment of racialized peoples—are rarely centred in these conversations (for more on this, see Özcan, this volume). By offering such an intervention, Walker and Runions urge readers to understand this particular kind of public safety work as one directly tied to white privilege, one that helps white folks, in particular, feel comfortable in “their” city (giving them “a uniform [they] can run to”).

Here, again, the responses to the op-ed are quite revealing. While a small number of commenters accepted and applauded Walker and Runions’s analysis, others engaged in racist and misogynist trolling, best exemplified by the following comment:

The loudest voices on this front seem to be a minority who have good intentions but ignore the fact that we have a massive problem here in Lethbridge most of which originates from the Blood Reserve. Population there is around 10,000; yet they generate 95% of Lethbridge problems primarily due to bad parenting. These women should be advocating for social programs for the reserve starting with parenting skills. Rather they focus on bashing white society calling us racist, colonials etc. Fact is white society has been very generous and now we are paying a heavy price seeing our city degraded before our eyes: gangs of losers drugging and drinking in public, trolling our alleys looking for things to steal to get their next fix; laying around in our parks drugging, drinking and fornicating in the open (I’ve got pictures); helping themselves to new new [sic] clothes and needles paid for by us tax payers. This sector has no pride of getting by on their own steam; rather they play victim believing white society “owes them.” After World War 2 hundreds of shell shocked veterans burdened with PTSD settled here and in spite of years of horror they went on to work and make this city great; they didn’t get hand outs; didn’t spend their lives crying and playing victim, they worked in spite of their psychological traumas. Back then natives weren’t even allowed in Lethbridge. A few decades later, here they are with them we have problems and more problems. Yes there are natives that positively add to our city but what we see too much of on the streets, filling our courts, hospitals etc are losers who are every bit racist as they call us. The Watch needs far more power and more funding as do the police. They are the only buffer we have between the law abiding taxpayer and the parasites that have infested our city. De-funding The Watch program or the police is a pie in the sky dream concocted by a naive minority. (Chinook commenting on Walker and Runions 2020)

This comment clearly indicates an utter failure to understand the violences of settler-colonial heteropatriarchal structures and practices, the specific and concerted efforts of the settler state to attack Indigenous kinship formations, and the extraordinary resilience and strength of Indigenous peoples and communities in the face of these orchestrated attacks (e.g., Elliott 2019; Morgan 2018). Moreover, it illustrates the kind of “racial arrogance” DiAngelo (2011) describes, one that “includes strongly positive images of the white self as well as strongly negative images of racial ‘others’” (61). Further, it points to the process whereby white observers “have no compunction about debating the knowledge of people who have thought complexly about race [and] feel free to dismiss these informed perspectives rather than have the humility to acknowledge that they are unfamiliar, reflect on them further, or seek more information” (DiAngelo 2011, 61). Finally, it points to the intersections between settler colonialism and oppressive gender structures, as the commenter draws on both symbols of militarized masculinity and misogynist tropes of Indigenous women supposedly lacking parenting skills to make profoundly racist claims about “parasites” from whom “the law abiding taxpayer” needs protection. Not only are this person’s claims fundamentally without factual basis, but their entire framework also neatly sidesteps any acknowledgement of the heteropatriarchal violence inflicted against Indigenous peoples and communities by the Canadian nation-state (for examples rooted in Blackfoot communities near Lethbridge, see Choate and Lindstrom 2017; Lindstrom and Choate 2016).

Anything Less . . . Would Be a Futile Exercise

As noted previously, many people and communities have been engaged in anti-racist work since long before the murder of George Floyd sparked this particular iteration of the conversation. It is to these people and communities, I suggest, that we must look for guidance, for a deeper sense of the histories at play here, and for the kinds of imagination called for as we strive for more just futures. In terms of the particular contours of the conversation in and around Lethbridge, we might look, for example, to the Kanai Nation (Blood Tribe), who issued the following statement about systemic racism on June 18, 2020, a statement that was then picked up by local media in Lethbridge:

Blood Tribe members have had their share of encounters with systemic racism in all areas including the criminal justice system such as in policing, and accessing other services off the reserve in health, education, employment, housing and retail. Like other people of color, Blood Tribe members have also been subjected to racial profiling by police and border crossing officials. Issues in policing came to a head in the late 1980s, resulting in the Rolf Inquiry on “Policing in relation to the Blood Tribe,” which investigated suspicious deaths of a number of Blood Tribe members.

Chief Roy Fox and Council had successfully convinced the provincial and federal governments that a Public Inquiry be conducted on inadequate police investigations regarding homicides of Indigenous people in Southern Alberta. Unfortunately, the reaction of certain police forces to the Inquiry resulted in physical and planned attacks to Chief Fox and his family as well as other Blood Tribe members, even before the Inquiry started. The Chief was ambushed and assaulted by members of the RCMP7 near his home; and a fellow tribal member was shot and killed in broad daylight by a member of the Lethbridge City Police. The Chief was charged with assaulting 2 police officers however he was found not guilty due to credible witnesses. No charges were laid against the Lethbridge City police officer who shot and killed the Blood Tribe member on the eve of the Inquiry hearings. These incidents happened over 30 years ago and even though some of the recommendations of the Blood Inquiry resulted in limited positive changes, systemic racism is alive and well today in the south and obviously in other parts of Canada. [. . .]

Racism is systemic in that it is based on the core ideology of the dominant group and this ideology is manifested in its culture and institutions and expressed in the attitudes and behaviors of its members toward other groups who are seen as racially different. Contrary to RCMP Commissioner, Brenda Lucki’s statement last week, systemic racism is very much a part of Canadian institutions such as the RCMP.

We can however, work collectively to address racism. The move in Canada to reconcile with Indigenous Peoples should really be a move to address and eliminate systemic racism in all institutions and all areas of life, anything less than that would be a futile exercise. (Goulet 2020; emphasis mine)

This statement constitutes an important intervention in the conversation taking shape in Lethbridge for at least two reasons. First, it highlights that while the movement unfolding at the moment is and should be grounded in the work of Black activists, scholars, and communities, it is also inseparable from the workings of settler colonialism. Second, it historicizes the issue locally, outlining histories of systemic racism at work in and around Lethbridge and with specific reference to the LPS. Both constitute important reminders of the work that has been done and, importantly, the work yet to be done.

Refusing a Conclusion

On June 17 2020, federal New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh called out Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament Alain Therrien, calling him a racist for refusing to support an NDP motion to recognize and acknowledge systemic racism in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and “review the budget of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the use of force by Mounties, noting ‘several Indigenous people have died at the hands of the RCMP in recent months’” (Lum and Maloney 2020). In a striking turn of events, Singh was censured, asked by the Speaker of the House to apologize for calling Therrien a racist, which was said to constitute “unparliamentary behaviour.” Singh refused to apologize and was subsequently ejected from the House of Commons. As many on social media pointed out, this constituted what is arguably a quintessentially Canadian moment: a racialized national leader calls out an opposing politician for vetoing a motion toward racial justice, is removed from parliament for so doing, and then gets to watch as the mainstream media frame the story around his ejection rather than his political opponent’s racism. This recent story helps frame the particular interrogation in which I engage in this chapter, as it provides yet another example of the ways Canadian settler society regularly and actively refuses deep conversations about systemic racism, even at the very moment when that conversation seems to be occupying centre stage.

The events in parliament point to some of the difficulties of having deep, sustained conversations about racial injustice. Meanwhile, as this conversation unfolds on national and international stages, it is also being pursued in local and specific settings, like Lethbridge. Recently, people connected to both of the op-eds outlined previously made presentations to the Lethbridge Police Commission, one arguing for an end to the Watch program, the other calling for a 10 percent reduction in the LPS budget and arms-length reviews of systemic racism in general and carding / street checks in particular. These are but two examples of local initiatives aiming to dismantle/destabilize practices and institutions that uphold white supremacy and perpetuate racism, including and especially anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. And yet at the same time as movements and initiatives such as these are gaining traction and media coverage, they are both meeting resistance (e.g., see Pagliaro 2020)8 and being (re)framed in the ways outlined in this chapter, as indications that we have arrived somewhere. But as the editors point out in their introduction to this volume, the work of anti-racism is and must be more complicated, more sustained, and much more uncomfortable than simply acknowledging that racism exists and then trusting that institutions and institutional actors will end racist practice.

What is needed more than anything is attention to the work of activists, scholars, and artists who are and have been doing this work for many years and are increasingly doing so in solidarity and collaboration across what are too often seen as dividing lines. We must follow them, especially, in thinking “about anti-Blackness and settler colonialism and their often (but not always) overlapping logics and outcomes” (Maynard and Simpson 2020, 79; also see Özcan, this volume). In other words, we must attend to the systems and structures that work in concert with one another to (re)produce white supremacy and global capitalism: “We need a layered and international understanding of the genocides [Black and Indigenous] communities have faced and are facing” (Maynard and Simpson 2020, 81). Moreover, it is not simply that we need to participate in constructing abolitionist and decolonial futures; more to the point, we must heed the insights and challenges to construct liberatory futures in broader senses: “Black and Indigenous futures of freedom are also feminist futures, and queer futures, and they are futures that [. . .] categorically reject the scaffolding of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and all of their forms and manifestations” (Maynard and Simpson 2020, 83). This will, of course, be hard work that will require persistence, imagination, and hope. But it must start by refusing the too-easy framings of this moment instead actively seeking out the more difficult conversations and actions in and with which we must engage.

References