Published: Jun 10, 2020 by Petra

In today’s post, instead of discussing and digging into Covid-19 in BC, as I’ve done previously, or looking at pollution levels in the Lower Mainland, as I was planning to do, I’m going to participate in today’s STEM and Academic Strike by talking about racism in Canada and outlining my plans to become a better ally and help eradicate structural and systemic oppression in STEM and academia.

In the days since George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police, there have been protests and social media campaigns calling to address the systemic racism that exists within police forces. I’ve been hearing, in some of my discussions with other Canadians, a sense that the racism on such blatant display south of the border just doesn’t happen in Canada. But it does. We can read about it in the Whortley report, in which it was found that Black Haligonians* are almost 5 times more likely to be subject to police checks than White Haligonians, and were the subject of over 18% of street checks in 2016 despite making up less than 4% of the population. We can see it in the news, when unarmed Black men are shot by police after being tased. And it’s not limited to the police, it’s in academia too. It’s there in the conferences we hold, where Black grad students are subjected to racial profiling and where African researchers are denied visas and excluded from participating. It’s there in academic journals, where Canadian professors write opinion pieces claiming policies meant to increase participation by women and BIPOC scientists in conferences and academia are excluding “the most meritorious candidates” ie. white men. It’s there in our lecture halls and staff rooms, where Black instructors are still under-represented at the university and college level. This list is far from exhaustive, and doesn’t include racism against other marginalized groups, but we don’t need an exhaustive list to see the pattern: racism exists in Canada, and it’s not limited to the police.

I have a massive amount of privilege due to my skin colour, my gender, and the circumstances of my birth and upbringing. That privilege has been instrumental in getting me to where I am now, contributes to my current circumstances, and will play a role in my future as long as racist structures and systems in this country are left intact. In my silence, I have been complicit in these systems, and have failed to put my privilege to good use, e.g. speaking out against racism and injustice, and contributing to efforts to dismantle barriers that generate racial inequity. I’d like to change that, by owning my complicity and working to be a better ally. The ShutDownStem site has a list of resources which I’m planning to avail myself of, and I will share what I’ve learned here on my blog. I will use data sets that I can verify were collected in a way that respects BIPOCs**, and I will do my best to recognize racism and reject it when I perform analyses. I will work to amplify marginalized voices in my posts, and I will set up commenting on this blog, so that I may receive feedback on my efforts. I challenge my colleagues in STEM fields and academia to take the time to learn and reflect on racism in our societies and places of work and learning, and speak up against it.

En solidarité

*Inhabitants of Halifax
**Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour