Smarter people more concerned about racism but no more likely to support policies against it: study

2016/01/29 Leave a comment

Interesting research suggesting a gap between attitudes and actions:

Recent research shows that Americans think about racial questions differently than other political issues.

In general, people with better scores on tests of intelligence are more likely to describe themselves as liberal, researchers have found. For example, they’re more likely to support intrusive governmental policies intended to protect the environment, according to the new study, which was published earlier this month. They’re also more likely to say that African-Americans are discriminated against and far less likely to call them stupid or lazy.

When you get down to the brass tacks of dealing with racial prejudice, though, more intelligent people seem to tunnel back into the woodwork. The new study revealed that smarter respondents are no more likely to support specific policies designed to improve racial equality – even though they are more liberal on other issues and are more likely to see discrimination as a problem.

That was the riddle Geoffrey Wodtke, the author of the study and a sociologist at the University of Toronto, was hoping to solve. To be sure, many white participants probably were conservatives who opposed the policies for reasons having nothing to do with race – skepticism about the government’s ability to engineer social change or commitment to the ideal of the free market. Those reasons, though, should have been less compelling for the more intelligent respondents.

“If this is truly an issue of higher-ability whites being more opposed to fairly intrusive government interventions,” Wodtke said, “they should be opposed to those across the board, at least if the principle is consistently applied.”

His conclusion is that while many intelligent Americans might think of themselves as progressive, they might not be entirely prepared to stand by their stated views on race.

Wodtke examined data from the General Social Survey, which has been asking Americans about their attitudes on a range of subjects since 1972. The survey includes a short, simple test of verbal intelligence.

Among those white participants who performed poorly on the intelligence test, 46 percent described blacks as lazy and 23 described them as unintelligent. Thirty-five percent did not want black neighbors, and 47 percent would not want a black sibling, son- or daughter-in-law.

Among those who did well on the verbal test, 29 percent said blacks were lazy and 13 percent said they were unintelligent. Twenty-four percent and 28 percent opposed residential integration and interracial marriage, respectively.

Among those who scored badly, fewer than two-thirds said employers discriminate against blacks, compared to nearly four-fifths of those who did well on the test.

In other words, white respondents with better verbal intelligence scores have more favorable opinions about blacks and are less likely to blame them for their disadvantages in the economy and in society. That was even true among white respondents with the same level of education.

Yet there was no relationship between respondents’ intelligence and their support for affirmative action in employment or for busing between school districts, which had the support of 12 percent and 23 percent of all white participants, respectively.

Source: Smarter people more concerned about racism but no more likely to support policies against it: study

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Winnipeg a leader in fixing Canada’s racism problem

2016/01/29 Leave a comment

Appears to be a concerted, community-wide effort. Encouraging:

Declaring 2016 the “Year of Reconciliation” for Winnipeg, he announced a host of new initiatives aimed at combatting racism, including mandatory training for all city staff on the impact of residential schools, a promise to visit every Winnipeg high school to address diversity, and a program to foster public engagement in reconciliation. It is a kind of commitment to the issue of racism never before seen by a civic leader in Winnipeg, and one that civic leaders say has propelled Winnipeg to the forefront of the issue in Canada, as other cities begin the tough work of reconciliation.

“On that day [a year ago], this community chose to come together to recognize the existence of racism, and that we needed to work together to better address it,” Bowman said. “On that day, we chose unity over division. We responded to the Maclean’s article with honesty and humility. We knew we could not, and cannot, mend the profound wrongs and injustices of generations and centuries in one year, with a single summit or press conference. But I remain committed to the journey.”

Photograph by John Woods

Photograph by John Woods

Numerous Indigenous speakers and community leaders at the press conference announced forthcoming projects, like St. John’s High School student Sylas Parenteau, who talked about an upcoming march for diversity by 3,000 Winnipeg School Division students, continuing the anti-racism work the division undertook in the last year. Far from a top-down effort, “we’ve been able to drive this conversation down to the individual level, where it really needs to occur,” Bowman said.

Bowman addressed a packed, second-floor foyer at City Hall. Seated with him were many of the same people who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him last year. Michael Champagne, of Aboriginal Youth Opportunities, and founder of Meet Me at the Belltower, led a smudge; a local imam led a prayer. Proceedings were briefly interrupted by a Somali mother who told media she hasn’t seen her children in the six years since they were allegedly taken by Winnipeg Child and Family Services (CFS). Rather than being promptly frogmarched out by security, she was embraced by Ojibwe elder Randi Gage, and promised an audience with Bowman; Clunis, the police chief, wrapped an arm around her husband’s shoulder. Justice Murray Sinclair, head of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission, addressed the controversy, acknowledging the “validity” of her concerns, which mirror those many Indigenous people feel toward CFS. “They are an example of what this day is all about—the sense of injustice so many feel about the way that they are treated by society, and their inability to be able to express themselves in a full way, to be able to achieve their ambitions in being part of this nation.”

There were critics of last year’s article in the room at City Hall, too; it remains deeply controversial in the city. But some, like radio host Charles Adler, who found the thrust of it “incredibly insulting,” admitted it ultimately “forced all of us to look into our souls,” and see the problem for what it was: “a human dignity issue,” threatening the future of the city. Instead of racism, Adler, who hosted Bowman’s press conference last week, believes Winnipeg will one day become known as “the capital of reconciliation.”

“At the very foundation of attacking racism there are two things we need to think about,” said Sinclair, a member of Bowman’s new Indigenous advisory circle: “What is it that our leaders are saying? And what is it that our leaders are doing? And to that, I say: Look around. Look at what our mayor has done. Look at the fact that our mayor has stood up, has embraced the ambition of trying to address it in a way that all people of this city are comfortable with who they are, are comfortable with a sense of their future, of who they can be in this society.”

Source: Winnipeg a leader in fixing Canada’s racism problem

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How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

More on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and detailing the extent of Hollywood’s problems:

It’s not just the Academy that’s lacking diversity, either. Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and came to some staggering conclusions. They determined that, of the top 100 highest-grossing films of 2014, only 17 of the top movies featured non-white leads or co-leads, and the overall breakdown of actors was: 73.1 percent White, 12.5 percent Black, 5.3 percent Asian, 4.9 percent Hispanic, and 4.2 percent Other.

“I know many members who wouldn’t even see [Straight Outta Compton] because it represented a culture that they detest or, more accurately, they assume they detest,” an Academy member said.

These frustrating numbers inspired “Every Single Word,” an eye-opening Tumblr by Dylan Marron that highlights every single word spoken by a person of color in a mainstream film. Marron’s shocking findings show, among many examples, that in the entire Harry Potter film series, only five minutes and 40 seconds are spoken by characters of color (they total over 20 hours). In The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, it’s 46 seconds (if you count the Orcs). E.T.: nine seconds. Into the Woods: seven seconds. Moonrise Kingdom: 10 seconds. Last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman: 53 seconds.

Hollywood is also a business, so some of the explanation for the lack of diversity is financial. A decade ago, the U.S. box office comprised 51.3 percent of worldwide gross. Today, it’s less than 40 percent, so over 60 percent of a movie’s overall take is international. But a big problem that the industry doesn’t know how to address is the tastes of international audiences, which are, quite frankly, far more narrow-minded than that of Americans. With the exception of the Fast and the Furiousfranchise, many films with mainly black casts don’t travel too well abroad. Look at Straight Outta Compton, which made just $39 million internationally out of $200 million total, or Creed, which took home $30 million of its $137 million total outside the U.S (the previous entry with a white lead, Rocky Balboa, made $70 million domestic and $85 million abroad). In the Sony hack, a controversial email surfaced from a producer to Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton decrying the tastes of international movie audiences.

“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist—in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas,” the producer wrote in an email pegged to the Denzel Washington-starrer The Equalizer. “But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent size budgets.”

Source: How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

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Schools are not powerless to address racial disparities

2016/01/20 Leave a comment

 Sachin Maharaja, a teacher in the TDSB, on racial disparities.
Data can be helpful in identifying and addressing disparities, both for the school system as well as for the people within the communities themselves, who also have to avoid fatalism:

One thing we do know for sure is that students in our school systems are not all given the same opportunities. Data from the TDSB, one of the only boards to collect detailed demographic information, has shown that students from lower income neighbourhoods are much less likely to be identified as gifted, more likely to be identified as having a learning disability, and more than twice as likely to be placed in applied-level classes. Race also plays a major role in how schools treat children. That is why black students represent 13 per cent of the TDSB population, but only 3 per cent of its students identified as gifted. Meanwhile white students, who make up 32 per cent of the TDSB population, comprise more than half of its students identified as gifted.

While some have disputed the role that racism plays in such inequitable treatment, we have empirical evidence that should put such notions to rest. A 2015 study by researchers at Stanford University gave teachers copies of student records with names that had been changed to be either stereotypically black or white sounding. When teachers saw records with black sounding names, they were much more likely to recommend that those students be suspended from school than when they saw identical records with white sounding names.

Given this reality, having demographic information on our students at least gives us the opportunity to address these glaring inequities. But not everyone thinks this is even a real problem. A Toronto teacher who teaches in a low income neighbourhood once told me that the reason black students and those from low income households are disproportionately placed in lower academic streams is due to “the conditions of their upbringing.” It is this culture of resignation which can be the downside of school systems having an excessive focus on poverty and race.

We see this attitude in some parts of the United States, which has collected detailed race and income statistics for years. Diane Ravitch, an education historian and one of the most prominent voices in American education, demonstrated this when she told a 2011 rally of teachers in Washington, D.C. that “our problem is poverty, not schools.” It was no coincidence then that when Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley later interviewed D.C. teachers, many stressed all of the disadvantages that their students faced. One teacher relayed the common complaint to Ripley that “parents on this side don’t have the know-how to raise their children.” The result of this type of attitude was that at the end of the school year, students in this teacher’s class fell further behind grade level in reading than when they started, and performed significantly worse than other low-income students in D.C. who had started the year at the exact same reading level.

On balance, it is a good thing to have more detailed information on the students we serve. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that problems don’t exist is clearly not the solution. But as we better understand the racial backgrounds of our students and the issues of poverty they face, we should be careful to not let that lead to a culture of fatalism and low expectations in our schools.

Source: Schools are not powerless to address racial disparities | Toronto Star

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First Nations student deaths in Thunder Bay inquest raise questions about racism: Minister Hajdu

2016/01/12 Leave a comment

Change in language and acknowledge of issues:

A “swirling storm” of racism and discrimination is killing indigenous people in Thunder Bay, Ont., says Patty Hajdu, an MP for the northwestern Ontario city and minister for the status of women.

Hajdu said her experience running a homeless shelter in Thunder Bay, before becoming a Liberal cabinet minister last year, showed her the deadly consequences of racism.

Patty Hajdu

Thunder Bay Superior-North MP Patty Hajdu says ‘institutional racism’ sends the message to citizens that it’s OK to be racist. (Martine Laberge/Radio-Canada)

Speaking outside the inquest into the deaths of seven First Nations students in the city, Hajdu said racism is a sad reality of life, and death, for indigenous people in the city.

“There’s a swirling storm of racism and discrimination against people who use substances and people who are in poverty, and it all comes together in a perfect storm where people are actually dying, because they can’t access the services they need,” she said.

Several friends and classmates of the students who died have testified at the inquest about experiences of racism in Thunder Bay after they moved from their remote First Nations to attend high school in the city.

Source: First Nations student deaths in Thunder Bay inquest raise questions about racism – Thunder Bay – CBC News

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South Africa’s ruling party calls for tougher anti-racism law

2016/01/07 Leave a comment

Sad to see these types of remarks in this day and age, irrespective of whether one thinks new anti-hate speech legislation needed or not:

After a national uproar over racist comments on social media, South Africa’s ruling party is calling for a new law to prohibit the “glorification of apartheid,” based on German laws that criminalize the denial of the Holocaust.

The latest outrage over racism is a sign of the rising tensions in South Africa, once lauded as a “rainbow nation” and a moral beacon for the world after apartheid ended in 1994.

In today’s South Africa, with its stagnating economy and growing frustration among unemployed youth, there is mounting anger over racial remarks by the affluent white minority. Many white people, for their part, are openly resentful of their diminished status.

The latest furor erupted on social media when a realtor, Penny Sparrow, complained that black people with “no education” were leaving garbage on public beaches. “From now I shall address the blacks of South Africa as monkeys,” she said in a Facebook post.

Ms. Sparrow was denounced by thousands of outraged South Africans after her post emerged on Sunday. On the same day, a prominent South African banker, Chris Hart, went on Twitter to accuse the black majority of having “a sense of entitlement” and “hatred toward minorities.” He, too, was widely criticized, and within a day he was suspended from his job at Standard Bank, which said his tweet was “incorrect” and had “racist undertones that do not reflect our values.”

There are already laws against hate speech in South Africa, and there is even a court, the Equality Court, to deal with cases of racial discrimination. But the ruling party, the African National Congress, says this is not enough.

“We can no longer as a nation tolerate such dehumanizing violations, where the black majority are treated as subhumans and are referred to as monkeys, baboons and other derogatory racist epithets in the land of their birth,” said a statement on Tuesday by the ANC’s parliamentary office.

“As the nation is justifiably seething with anger and disappointment at yet another blatant act of racial bigotry, we know too well that there is little that can be done in terms of our legislative provisions to sufficiently punish the perpetrators.”

The political party to which Ms. Sparrow belonged, the opposition Democratic Alliance, went to the police on Monday to file criminal charges of “crimen injuria” against her. This is a provision in South African common law that prohibits a serious attack on the dignity of another person.

But the ANC wants a tougher law, modelled on the European laws that prohibit the denial of the Holocaust. Any action against Ms. Sparrow and Mr. Hart is likely to be “whitewashed” under the existing system, it said. “The current legislative provisions are not sufficient to punish and dissuade racists,” it said.

“As the majority party in Parliament, we will soon investigate creating a specific law or amending the existing legislation to ensure that acts of racism and promotion of apartheid are criminalized and punishable by imprisonment.”

Anyone who “glorifies” the apartheid system “essentially promotes and celebrates acts of criminality committed against black people,” the ANC added. “Such a person represents a serious danger to our society and our national reconciliation efforts, and must be dealt with through our criminal justice system.”

Source: South Africa’s ruling party calls for tougher anti-racism law – The Globe and Mail

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Black rights groups call for changes to Ontario’s ‘carding’ rules

2015/12/19 Leave a comment

The ongoing debate about police carding in Ontario:

The chorus of voices calling for revisions to the province’s carding regulations grew louder Monday as a coalition of black community groups spoke out about the “the deeply problematic gaps” in proposed legislation aimed at halting discriminatory policing in Ontario.

“Ultimately, when it comes to eliminating racial profiling or preventing racial profiling and anti-black racism, the regulation does not go far enough,” said Anthony Morgan, a lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

Among the groups speaking out is the Association of Black Law Enforcers (ABLE), which expressed doubt about the effectiveness of carding in a letter to the province this fall.

Carding, also known as street checks, “has yet to be reasonably demonstrated an effective or scientific tool to achieve the intended purpose of public safety,” ABLE president Kenton Chance wrote in a submission to the Ministry of Community Safety earlier this year. The Star recently obtained the submission.

On behalf of membership that includes black police officers across Ontario, Chance told the province that police now have other ways to solve crimes, such as video surveillance, that could be “exponentially more valuable and dependable” than the “hit or miss” information obtained through carding.

ABLE spokesperson Terrence Murray stressed the group does not speak for all black and racialized officers.

But in a statement to the Star, he reiterated that the group could not find any reliable information to prove the effectiveness of carding.

“As black police and peace officers, we live and work in two worlds that have allowed us to develop unique perspectives,” Murray wrote.

In October, Minister of Community Safety Yasir Naqvi unveiled draft regulations aimed at eliminating random and arbitrary police stops. Written after months of public consultation, the proposed regulations would place new limits on how and when police stop, question and document members of the public who are not suspected of a crime.

While many are applauding the sentiment behind the regulation, several dozen rights groups and community leaders have sounded the alarm in recent weeks about problems with the regulations.

Among the major concerns is that the proposed legislation includes too many exceptions that allow police to circumvent the safeguards.

Source: Black rights groups call for changes to Ontario’s ‘carding’ rules | Toronto Star

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US Sikhs feeling vulnerable amid anti-Islam rhetoric, but joining Muslims to fight backlash | Fox News

2015/12/16 Leave a comment

Have not heard of recent similar attacks here on Sikhs but likely that there are some:

Pradeep Kaleka spent several days after 9/11 at his father’s South Milwaukee gas station, fearing that his family would be targeted by people who assumed they were Muslim. No, Kaleka explained on behalf of his father, who wore a turban and beard and spoke only in broken English, the family was Sikh, a southeast Asian religion based on equality and unrelated to Islam.

But amid a new wave of anti-Islamic sentiment since the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Kaleka is vowing to take an entirely different approach.

“For us it does not matter who they’re targeting,” said Kaleka, a former Milwaukee police officer and teacher whose father was one of six people killed in 2012 when a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. “This time we cannot differentiate ourselves; when hate rhetoric is being spewed we cannot be on the sidelines.”

Across the U.S., Sikhs and Muslims are banding together to defend their respective religions. Someone bent on harming Muslims wouldn’t understand — or care — about the distinction between the two faiths, they say, and both also deserve to live in peace.

So they plan educational sessions and rallies. They successfully pushed the FBI to track hate crimes against Sikhs. They speak to lawmakers and support each other’s legal action, including a lawsuit filed over a New York City police surveillance program targeting New Jersey Muslims.

“We are in this fight together,” said Gurjot Kaur, a senior staff attorney at The Sikh Coalition, founded the night of Sept. 11.

Sikhism, a monotheistic faith, was founded more than 500 years ago in Southeast Asia and has roughly 27 million followers worldwide, most of them in India.

There are more than 500,000 Sikhs in the U.S. Male followers often cover their heads with turbans — which are considered sacred — and refrain from shaving their beards.

Reports of bullying, harassment and vandalism against Sikhs have risen in recent weeks.

Last week, a Sikh temple in Orange County, California, was vandalized, as was a truck in the parking lot by someone who misspelled the word “Islam” and made an obscene reference to ISIS.

Source: Sikhs feeling vulnerable amid anti-Islam rhetoric, but joining Muslims to fight backlash | Fox News

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Charlie Hebdo Editor: Europe’s Problem Is Racism, Not Islamophobia | TIME

2015/12/11 Leave a comment

Deceased Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier on the need to focus on racism, and the risks of focusing on Islamophobia. Valid arguments, that will likely provoke some debate.

In Canadian context, the previous government’s almost exclusive focus on antisemitism meant broader anti-racism initiatives and programming were neglected. Expect some of this to change with the Liberal government as part of its diversity and inclusion agenda, although likely with a mix of broader messaging and programming and specific community focus (i.e., antisemitism, anti-Muslim):

Minority pressure group activists who seek to impose the concept of “Islamophobia” on judicial and political authorities have only one goal: to persuade the victims of racism to proclaim themselves Muslim. Forgive me, but the fact that racists may also be Islamophobic is essentially incidental. They are racists first, and merely use Islam to target their intended victim: the foreigner or person of foreign extraction. By taking only the racist’s Islamophobia into account, we minimize the danger of his racism. Yesterday’s anti-racism activist is turning into the salesman of a highly specialized commodity: a niche form of discrimination.

The fight against racism is a fight against all forms of racism; but what is the fight against Islamophobia against? Is it against criticizing a religion or against abhorring its practitioners because they are of foreign descent? Racists have a field day when we debate whether it is racist to say the Koran is a useless rag. If tomorrow the Muslims of France were to convert to Catholicism or renounce all religion, it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference to the racists—they would continue to hold these foreigners or French citizens of foreign descent responsible for every affliction.

Okay, so Mouloud and Gérard are Muslims. Mouloud is of North African extraction and comes from a Muslim family; Gérard is of European origin and comes from a Catholic family. Gérard has converted to Islam. Both are trying to rent the same apartment. Assuming they have similar incomes, which of the two Muslims is more likely to get the apartment? The Arab-looking fellow or the white guy? It’s not the Muslim who will be turned away; it’s the Arab. The fact that the Arab bears no outward sign of belonging to the Muslim faith changes nothing. Yet what does the anti-Islamophobia activist do? He charges religious discrimination instead of decrying racism….

Social discrimination, while the subject of much less debate than religious discrimination because it is manifested more insidiously and discreetly, is nevertheless far more predominant in France. Managers choose their future employees less on the basis of their religious membership, true or supposed, than, for instance, on their place of residence. Between the Mouloud who lives in upscale Neuilly-sur-Seine and the Mouloud who lives in the down-at-heel banlieue of Argenteuil, which of the two, assuming they are of equal competence, is more likely to get the job? Yet who ever talks about this kind of discrimination? People are massively discriminated against based on their social class, but since a large proportion of the poor—whom no one wants hanging around their place of work, their neighborhood, or their building—is made up of people of foreign descent and, among these, a great many of Muslim origin, the Islamic activist will claim that the problem is Islamophobia.

Source: Charlie Hebdo Editor: Europe’s Problem Is Racism, Not Islamophobia | TIME

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Douglas Todd: Racism, a word to use with care

2015/12/07 Leave a comment

Perspective from former British Columbia Premier and federal cabinet minister Dosanjh:

Suffering is difficult to compare — and the fact such global acts of racism are more enormous than what has happened in B.C. or Canada does not lessen the pain for those who have been discriminated against here.

Nevertheless, when former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh first came to Canada almost 50 years ago, he was among the many newcomers who found the West Coast a “fair and inclusive” place compared to where he had been.

After growing up in the Punjab region of South Asia and later moving to Britain, Dosanjh was relieved to come to B.C. and get away from the exceptional “colour consciousness” and harsh caste system he had experienced in India.

The budding young lawyer was also pleased to leave behind the marauding “skin heads and teddy boys” of England, where maverick politician Enoch Powell had just made his infamous 1968 “rivers of blood” speech about unchecked immigration.

B.C.’s record in regards to racism is “not great historically,” says Dosanjh, who served in the federal Liberal cabinet following years as a provincial NDP cabinet minister and premier.

Still, Dosanjh believes it’s wise to put past incidents of B.C. racism into perspective.

“We have learned in B.C. And we’ve been moving forward, including on the First Nations file. To not acknowledge the distance we have come is to do an injustice to Canada,” he says.

Dosanjh remains painfully aware of the ruthless bigotry promulgated elsewhere today, and not only by ISIS. He knows hundreds of millions of India’s lower castes are still discriminated against as “unclean” and that China continues to brutally target Muslim ethnic minorities.

The term racism is often abused in Canada, Dosanjh believes. Last week he gained national attention, and applause, for challenging how Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne tossed out the epithet.

When Wynne suggested people criticizing the federal government’s promise to rapidly bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada were masking “racism and xenophobia,” Dosanjh said Wynne had “in one fell swoop” insulted not only him but the 67 per cent of Canadians who disagreed with the government.

Dosanjh believes Wynne was trying to silence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s critics by lobbing the often-misused word (which the Oxford Dictionary helpfully defines as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”).

Similarly, people of many ethnicities have charged Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the city’s housing developers with manipulating the racist label to shut down protests about the way international investors are fuelling Metro Vancouver’s astronomical housing prices.

In ethics, the principal of proportionality is key. In just-war theory, the response to an act of aggression should be proportional to the initial violence. In the courts, the punishment should fit the crime.

Is it possible that many charges about B.C.’s history of racism are disproportionate?

For his part, Dosanjh said he “doesn’t recognize” the portraits of a horrifyingly racist B.C. often painted by academics and activists.

“Some experts become vested in continuing to say what they’re saying even when things have changed. They focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else. It’s like a new religion; after it starts, it ossifies.”

Does it create unnecessary division to allege that racial intolerance has been worse that it actually has been?

It’s crucial to remain on guard and denounce racism whenever it arises. But, in the name of proportionality and building community, it’s also important not to exaggerate it.

Source: Douglas Todd: Racism, a word to use with care

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