Nicolas: Briser le silence… systémique

2023/03/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Pour bien comprendre l’enquête du Devoir sur les plaintes pour racisme à la Ville de Montréal, rappelons d’abord le contexte. En 2016, une coalition de groupes de la société civile (dont je faisais partie) interpelle le premier ministre du Québec, Philippe Couillard, pour demander une commission sur le racisme systémique. Le terme « racisme systémique » est alors nouveau pour une grande majorité de Québécois. Nous sommes plusieurs à expliquer, tant bien que mal, ce que c’est, et ce que ce n’est pas, sur les tribunes qu’on veut bien nous offrir.

On parle des politiques et des cultures institutionnelles qui créent et reproduisent des inégalités sociales. En réponse, on nous accuse de faire le « procès des Québécois » et on mélange les mots « systémiques » et « systématiques »… une distinction que tout un chacun fait déjà très bien lorsqu’il est question d’enjeux politiques, avec lesquels on est déjà plus à l’aise.

On pointe les milieux où il reste tant à faire pour briser l’omerta sur le racisme systémique au Québec, notamment dans les domaines de la santé, de l’éducation, de la justice, de l’emploi. On nous rétorque qu’on peut résoudre la situation assez facilement sans s’embarrasser de tout ça. Utilisons des CV anonymes à l’embauche, organisons des foires d’emplois pour l’immigration en région, et le tour sera joué.

La commission provinciale sur le racisme systémique n’aura finalement jamais eu lieu. Mais l’idée aura fait son chemin dans la société civile, et fait évoluer les mentalités. Et quand George Floyd et Joyce Echaquan ont perdu leur vie devant les caméras, soudainement on était plus nombreux à avoir un mot pour nommer les choses.

La fin de non-recevoir à Québec ne découragera pas pour autant la mobilisation antiraciste. À Montréal, c’est l’ex-candidat de Projet Montréal, Balarama Holness, qui reprend la balle au bond, en 2018. À la Ville, on n’est pas plus pressé de nommer le racisme systémique et d’agir contre lui. Mais il existe une faille dans le système : les citoyens ont le pouvoir d’imposer un sujet de consultation à l’Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) s’ils collectent au moins 15 000 signatures… à la main. Un groupe de jeunes rassemblés autour de Holness se relève les manches et réussit l’exploit.

Qu’on ne le perde pas de vue, donc : si la Ville de Montréal a reconnu l’existence du racisme systémique et s’est engagée à mettre en oeuvre les recommandations du rapport produit par l’OCPM, c’est parce qu’un mouvement citoyen lui a forcé la main. Il n’y a rien, mais absolument rien, dans la lutte contre le racisme à Montréal qui s’apparente à de l’enfonçage de portes ouvertes.

Dans la foulée de ce rapport produit au terme d’une consultation dont la Ville ne voulait pas, donc, on crée le Bureau de la commissaire de la lutte au racisme et aux discriminations systémiques. Plusieurs acteurs clés de la Ville de Montréal, bien sûr, n’en voulaient pas plus. Mais nous sommes au début de 2021, quelques mois à peine après George Floyd et Joyce Echaquan. Puisqu’il n’est pas exactement dans l’air du temps de nommer son malaise devant l’existence même du bureau, on concentre l’ensemble des critiques envers la personne qui le dirigera. Bochra Manaï encaisse, ne fléchit pas, et se met à l’ouvrage.

Son équipe a principalement un pouvoir de recommandations et d’accompagnement des différentes équipes de la Ville aux prises avec des problèmes de racisme. Nécessairement, dans le contexte, il est difficile de juguler les attentes des employés qui subissent du harcèlement raciste de la part de collègues, dans certains cas depuis des décennies. L’enquête du Devoir décrit une institution où les arrondissements, la ville-centre et les syndicats se passent la patate chaude des employés qui contribuent à un climat de travail toxique, sans qu’il y ait de véritables conséquences pour les fautifs. Les seules personnes qui devraient être ici surprises sont celles qui n’ont pas encore compris, après toutes ces années, le sens exact de l’expression « racisme systémique ».

Revenons donc à la question qui avait été lancée en 2016, soit l’importance de faire la lumière, de briser l’omerta et d’enfin agir contre le racisme systémique dans une foule d’institutions au Québec. L’administration municipale de Montréal s’est fait imposer ce travail, à la suite d’une mobilisation citoyenne, et on voit, notamment dans l’enquête du Devoir, ce qui se cachait. Des niveaux inouïs de harcèlement à caractère haineux, des employés qui se voient refuser des promotions sur le motif de la couleur de leur peau, des carrières brisées, des victimes dont la santé mentale finit par flancher, et bien sûr le tabou, véhiculé notamment par l’interdiction de parler aux journalistes.

Mais ce n’est pas parce que les projecteurs sont braqués sur la Ville de Montréal que les injustices y sont pires que dans les autres municipalités, ou que dans le secteur privé, les systèmes de santé et de services sociaux, d’éducation, de justice, etc. Simplement, Montréal a commencé à faire un travail qu’on refuse encore d’entamer ailleurs.

Lorsqu’on a un pied sur le terrain, auprès des communautés les plus affectées par le racisme, on a déjà entendu des centaines de témoignages semblables à ceux dévoilés par Le Devoir cette semaine, dans à peu près tous les secteurs d’emplois. Alors que le combat pour la liberté d’expression est très en vogue ces temps-ci, prenons un moment pour mesurer l’ampleur des mobilisations et de la résilience requises pour ne briser qu’une infime partie du silence sur le racisme systémique.

Source: Nicolas: Briser le silence… systémique

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Canadian medical journal acknowledges its role in perpetuating anti-Black racism in health care

2022/10/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canada’s premier medical journal says it’s eager to address the role it plays in perpetuating anti-Black racism in health care and spark the broader change needed to dismantle structural barriers to equitable care.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal says a special edition released Monday is the first of two spotlighting papers by Black authors, examining system-wide failures and urging change.

Editor-in-chief Kirsten Patrick says the peer-reviewed publication is also working on ways to ensure future issues better represent the work of Black experts and the needs of Black patients, many of whom routinely face overt and subconscious biases that compromise their care.

She credits a working group of Black academics and medical professionals with helping her and the staff confront harmful practices, noting: “I really see things that I didn’t see before.”

“I’m a white woman, I think of myself as progressive and feminist,” she said from Ottawa.

“And I learned new things about my own internalized anti-Black racism from doing this special issue and definitely have reflected on the way that CMAJ’s processes undermine minority engagements, I would say, and put barriers sometimes to people who are not white.”

The two special editions follow years of advocacy by a group known as the Black Health Education Collaborative, co-led by OmiSoore Dryden, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University who specializes in medical anti-Black racism, and Dr. Onye Nnorom, a family doctor and public health specialist with the University of Toronto.

Barriers to understanding

Dryden says work on the special issues began more than a year ago when discussions began on how anti-Black racism manifests in structural and systemic ways that ultimately prevent research from being shared. They hope the editions can help the journal’s audience — largely educators and practitioners — understand the vast scope of the problem.

“In some ways, Canada very much is a welcoming place. However, that can act as a barrier in understanding how racism manifests — it’s not just the racial slur. It’s not just the racist targeting. But it is in the very systems of continuing to practice race-based medicine,” she said, noting racial stereotypes could lead practitioners to make false assumptions about what’s making a Black patient sick.

“Even if we had more funding and even if we had more Black physicians and practitioners, if we do not address the very real reality of anti-Black racism — in structures and in practice — we will continue to see poor health outcomes from Black communities.”

One of the articles in Monday’s edition examines the difficulties many Black patients face in getting cancer screening, molecular testing, breakthrough therapies and enrolment in clinical trials. One of the examples given is a study of immigrant women in Ontario, which found that lack of cervical cancer screening was linked to systemic barriers such as not having a female physician or coming from low-income households

Monday’s CMAJ paper also notes mortality from breast, colorectal, prostate and pancreatic cancers is higher in Black patients than in white patients, citing data from the Canadian Cancer Registry that was linked to census data on race and ethnicity. But it notes the impact of race on cancer incidence and mortality is not often studied because Canadian registries don’t regularly collect race and ethnicity data, unlike those in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Other pieces in Monday’s edition examine youth mental health and prostate cancer in Black Canadian men.

Same thinking reinforced, editor says

The second edition, set for release on Oct. 31, explores topics including gaslighting in academic medicine and Afrocentric approaches to promoting Black health.

The two issues were developed with guidance from the advocacy collaborative as well as a guest editorial committee comprised of Black experts in health equity: Notisha Massaquoi, assistant professor, department of health and society at the University of Toronto; Dr. Mojola Omole, surgical oncologist and journalist in Ontario; Camille Orridge, a senior fellow at the Toronto health policy charity the Wellesley Institute and Bukola Salami, associate editor at CMAJ and associate professor of nursing at the University of Alberta.

Massaquoi says their work went far beyond preparing the two issues; it included reviewing all processes the journal uses throughout the year that hinder diversity on its pages.

She says articles submitted for academic publishing are most often reviewed by editorial committees that don’t include Black researchers. As a result, reviewers don’t fully grasp the context of the article or question the credibility of the research and dismiss the pitch.

Patrick estimates the journal has published six to seven articles and a few blog posts by Black authors in the last 18 months amid a concerted effort to boost representation. Actual data is unavailable because the CMAJ does not ask submitting authors about their race or ethnicity, however this is being considered, she says.

Patrick acknowledges that minority authors are “super-rare” when looking at the 111-year history of the journal, which publishes 50 online issues per year and a selection of articles in a monthly print version.

“We just keep on getting the same kind of thinking reinforced over and over and over again from a small subsection of our medical population,” she said.

Massaquoi says that’s why it’s important for the CMAJ to work on methods used to recruit writers familiar with Black issues and improve the diversity of its pool of reviewers. She says she’s “absolutely confident” these steps can make a difference.

“This is the premier journal that our medical professionals are using so that they understand the newest and the most innovative, up-to-date information on health care in Canada,” Massaquoi said.

“And if it’s absolutely devoid of any material that’s going to help them understand working with Black communities, then we’re doing our profession a disservice.”

Patrick says the CMAJ is consulting outside experts to look at equity issues and interview staff and people who submit to the journal, as well as members of the anti-Black racism special issue working group.

“We’re not just putting out a statement that’s meaningless. We’ve committed to real work in this area.”

Source: Canadian medical journal acknowledges its role in perpetuating anti-Black racism in health care

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McWhorter: A Language Test That Stigmatizes Black Children

2022/10/11 Leave a comment

Good example of a systemic barrier:

It can be hard not to notice that a suspiciously large number of children, of seemingly normal human linguistic capacity, are officially designated as language impaired. In 2019, two researchers set out to determine just how common this phenomenon is. Examining nationwide data, they found that each year, 14 percent of states overrepresent the number of Black children with speech and language impairments.

Just what does “language impaired” mean, though? Much of the reason this diagnosis is so disproportionate among this group and has been for decades is that too many people who are supposedly trained in assessing children’s language skills aren’t actually taught much about how human language works. And it affects the lives of Black kids dramatically.

The reason for that overrepresentation is that most Black children grow up code switching between Black English and standard English. There is nothing exotic about this; legions of people worldwide live between two dialects of a language, one casual and one formal, and barely think about it. Many Germans, Italians, Chinese people, South Asians and Southeast Asians and most Arabs are accustomed to speaking different varieties of language according to different forms of social interaction. So, too, are Black Americans. Black children, along the typical lines of bidialectal contexts like these, are much more comfortable with the casual variety of Black speech, only faintly aware that in formal settings there is a standard way of speaking that is considered more appropriate. Black English grammar is often assumed to be slang and mistakes. But it’s actually just an alternate, rather than degraded, form of English compared to the standard variety.

Here are the kinds of phrases that so many Black kids know and use effortlessly, phrases that are richer than standard English in many ways: “He be singin’”; “He done sung”; “He had sung and then he had gone quiet.” All three sentences are examples of how Black English expresses shades of actions in ways that standard English leaves more to context. “He be singin’” refers to someone singing regularly; you wouldn’t say that if someone were singing right in front of you. “He done sung” doesn’t simply refer to the past but to the fact that his having done so was something of a surprise, or something people urgently needed to know. Used on verbs one after the other in sequence instead of in the past-before-the-past pluperfect way that we use it in standard English, “had” in Black English indicates that one is telling a story; it is a narrative marker. None of this is broken. It is just different.

Now, suppose a kid raised in this dialect were asked on a test: “This bird is blue. What about this one?” “It red” would be marked wrong. Never mind that putting it that way is the way one would do it in the most standard version of Russian. If the kids tested see a girl with scissors and say “The girl cuttin’” instead of “The girl is cutting,” they are not just doing what Tolstoy would have thought of as normal but evidencing signs of linguistic impairment, as it is called.

The test asks the kid: “This is Jack. Whose dog is this? It is ______.” The kid may say “Jack dog” — in Black English, it is permissible to leave the possessive “-’s” out. Hence the late Black comedian Robin Harris’s classic routine about his girlfriend’s children saying, “Dem Bebe kids!” Apparently Harris had a linguistic impairment?

Imagine 7- or 8-year-old Black kids asked to repeat the sentence “My mother is the nurse who works in the community clinic.” If they happily say, spontaneously expressing it in the English they are most comfortable with, “My mother the nurse work in the community clinic,” they could be marked as linguistically deficient.

You don’t have to imagine this. Many of these questions are right from the CELF (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals)-5 test, which is commonly used to assess children for disability status. And while the test includes modified scoring guidelines for students who may not have grown up speaking standard English, many test administrators do not abide by them. And even when they do, it can sometimes lead to underidentification of true language impairment when those test administrators cannot distinguish between language differences and language deficits. (This would help explain why the researchers also found that an estimated 62 percent of states underdiagnose Black children with these impairments.)

Tests like this one tend to be central to assessments of children as language deficient. The CELF-5 is used quite often. The dialect issue has been shown to be of key importance in overdiagnosis, which isn’t surprising given that, as Professor Catherine Crowley, from the program in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Columbia University’s Teachers College, tells me, in one subtest of the exam, 20 out of 33 of the constructions in the CELF-5 are used differently in Black English.

Imagine something else: If Black English were standard and a test asked white kids: Which is correct? “He ain’t be wearing that kind of shirt” or “He don’t be wearing that kind of shirt”? What would they answer? By the established parameters of Black English — and again, it is important to note that there are established parameters; this isn’t just slang — the correct answer is the second option. In that alternate universe, missing the distinction could get kids sent to a specialized classroom where they wouldn’t be taught according to their abilities.

I remember my mother, a child psychologist, talking as far back as the 1970s about Black kids being treated as linguistically deficient for being bidialectal; she resisted diagnostic tests as a result. Yet here we still are. Tests like this stay in place.

There are many areas in which I remain skeptical of the systemic racism analysis — for example, I am unconvinced that it’s systemic racism to require social workers to perform well on standardized tests. However, these speech evaluation tests imposed on children are something else. They can shunt kids away from mainstream opportunity when they have done nothing but grow up immersed in Black English as their linguistic comfort zone. Being born Black makes you more likely to suffer this abuse, whether it means your language impairment requiring special attention goes undiagnosed or your perfectly fine Black English is labeled a problem. Growing up with nonstandard English in general, as one study demonstrates about Filipino kids growing up in the United States from early childhood, can also lead to similar results.

It won’t do. But linguists can only have so much effect here. I have spent three decades listening to educators, psychologists, other linguists and speech pathologists giving talks about this lack of fit between speech evaluation tests and linguistic reality, and little seems to change except people in education circles being aware of and dismayed by the problem. Speech pathologists seeking to meaningfully participate in antiracism must start not just questioning but resisting en masse these outdated tests that apply a Dick-and-Jane sense of English on real kids who control a variety of coherent and nuanced Englishes.

Yes, all kids need to learn standard English in order to be able to access mainstream sources of achievement, not to mention to be taken seriously in specific contexts. This may not be fair. But the idea of standard English as a menacing, racist “gatekeeper” (which I have covered here) makes for good rhetoric yet will help no one in the real world. Certain dialects will be treated as standard as inevitably as certain kinds of clothing are considered more fashionable than others.

But for kids to be designated as linguistically deficient right out of the gate, based on notions such as that if they don’t always use the verb “to be” they don’t understand how things are related, makes no sense. It constitutes a dismissal of eager and innocent articulateness. And as such, it is an arrant and thoughtless injustice that must be stopped.

Source: A Language Test That Stigmatizes Black Children

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Urback: François Legault’s nationalist brand can’t handle the words ‘systemic racism’

2021/10/15 Leave a comment

Another commentaries:

The coroner’s report into the preventable death of Atikamekw woman Joyce Echaquan in a Joliette, Que., hospital last year is one long, illustrated definition of “systemic racism.” It describes a system that functions off implicit assumptions (this Indigenous woman is agitated, maybe she’s on drugs) and differential treatment (let’s just strap her to the bed; no need to give her options), all of which, according to coroner Gehane Kamel, led to Ms. Echaquan’s death.

The same forces of structural discrimination and bias killed 45-year-old Brian Sinclair of the Sagkeeng First Nation, who languished in a Winnipeg emergency room for 34 hours with a treatable infection in 2008. And they explain why staff at a Northwest Territories care home assumed Aklavik elder Hugh Papik was drunk when he was actually having a massive stroke in 2016.

Individual acts of anti-Indigenous racism certainly contributed to each outcome. But nurses don’t mock patients crying out in pain without someone intervening, as happened in Ms. Echaquan’s case, unless bias and racism have seeped into the walls.

And yet, Quebec Premier François Legault has refused to yield to the coroner’s finding that systemic racism contributed to Ms. Echaquan’s death. His intransigence is odd, not only because the evidence presented in Ms. Kamel’s report is so unequivocal, but because the remedies Mr. Legault’s government has instituted are distinctly systemic in nature. Indeed, there would be no reason to introduce mandatory sensitivity training for all employees at the Joliette hospital, or to name a representative of the Manawan community to the board of the health authority overseeing the hospital, if the problem was just a couple of rogue nurses.

Clearly, Mr. Legault understands there is a systemic problem in Quebec’s health care system, but the phrase “systemic racism” is to the Premier what Macbeth is to theatre actors: It cannot be said aloud.

For Mr. Legault, this goes beyond bog-standard political stubbornness. The Premier has been largely successful in building a new brand of Quebec nationalism, which is less about traditional sovereignty and more about autonomy within Canada, protection of the French language and a collectivist, shared identity for Quebeckers. His government introduced Bill 96, which seeks to amend the 1867 Constitution Act to recognize that “Quebecers form a nation.” Mr. Legault also got the party leaders in recent federal election campaigns to yield to his demand to let the province control its immigration agenda and succeeded in making Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole promise to respect Quebec’s “distinct system” of child care.

Mr. Legault’s popularity among Quebeckers – which did drop last month but has nevertheless remained remarkably high throughout the pandemic – is rooted in this unapologetic nationalist pride and perceived control over the players in Ottawa. And he’s made headway in the perennial struggle to have Quebec recognized as a distinct society within Canada.

But to admit that the province’s health care system is systemically racist, even in response to a coroner’s report that pretty much spells it out, is to yield to the idea that Quebec’s distinct society is a broken one. It’s off-brand for Mr. Legault. He couldn’t say it after the Viens Commission report was tabled in 2019 – and he still can’t say it now.

The other impediment to Mr. Legault stating the obvious is that it would be somewhat contradictory for the Premier to acknowledge systemic racism in Quebec health care while defending legislation, Bill 21, that enshrined systemic racism in law in regards to hiring and employment practices in the public sector. Mr. Legault knows that prohibiting people in certain jobs from wearing religious symbols is unconstitutional, which is why his government pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause when it introduced the bill. And it’s unmistakable that the law disproportionately affects certain groups of people – such as Muslim teachers who wear hijabs – which renders this policy of state-imposed secularism not universally oppressive but systemically discriminatory.

Anyone with eyes and a modicum of reading comprehension skills would come away from Ms. Kamel’s report with an understanding of how systemic racism contributed to Ms. Echaquan’s death. Mr. Legault has both, but he also has a brand to protect. And as long as that brand is thriving off the Premier’s unapologetic nationalism and lack of introspection, the words “systemic racism” cannot leave his lips.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-francois-legaults-nationalist-brand-cant-handle-the-words-systemic/

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Bouchard: Le racisme, pourquoi systémique?

2021/10/12 Leave a comment

Good explainer for those in Quebec who continue to deny:

Nous connaissons bien le racismecomme source dediscrimination.Pourquoi ajouter à cela le qualificatif« systémique » ? En quoi est-ce utile ?

Voilà une question à laquelle plusieurs spécialistes ont essayé de répondre. Dans mon esprit (et peut-être dans celui d’autres personnes ?), un besoin de clarification subsiste. Dans son émission du 1er octobre dernier, le journaliste de Radio-Canada Sébastien Bovet l’a posée à quelques reprises, mais sans obtenir de réponse claire (toujours à mon avis). Je m’y essaie donc à mon tour.

Le racisme est bien connu. C’est une vision négative de l’Autre qui prend prétexte de traits biologiques ou culturels pour violer ses droits. La façon de le traiter nous est familière : la victime porte plainte, le coupable est identifié et condamné.

Dans les cas de ce genre, les instances autorisées recourent aux moyens conventionnels en réprimant les manifestations individuelles, apparemment aléatoires, du racisme. Elles prennent aussi des dispositions ad hoc pour les prévenir (augmentation de la surveillance policière, tribunaux plus expéditifs, peines plus sévères…). Mais en réalité, elles agissent à la surface des choses. Car ces comportements discriminatoires récurrents découlent d’une structure sous-jacente, d’un système dont les racines sont anciennes et bien intégrées dans des institutions.

C’est clair quand on pense aux Autochtones : la mise en place, surtout depuis la Conquête anglaise, d’un régime colonial qui a établi des règles et des pratiques progressivement institutionnalisées dans différents domaines de la vie collective et perpétuées jusqu’à aujourd’hui — comme l’évoquait ici Brian Myles dans son éditorial des 2-3 octobre. C’est net aussi dans le cas des Noirs américains : un héritage du régime esclavagiste depuis longtemps disparu, mais qui a laissé bien des survivances.

Il y a donc deux niveaux à considérer, celui des comportements individuels et celui des structures. Cette distinction importe pour ce qui concerne la lutte contre le racisme. Dans le premier cas, on s’en tient à la surface des choses et la répression est sans cesse à recommencer ; elle est certes nécessaire, mais peu efficace à long terme. Dans le deuxième cas, on s’en prend à la racine du mal.

Pour combattre le racisme à ce niveau, il faut recourir à des moyens différents. Le racisme systémique s’appuie sur de vieux arrangements institutionnels (politiques, juridiques et autres). En plus, il se prolonge dans la culture, plus précisément dans des stéréotypes qui infériorisent. Il s’infiltre ainsi dans l’imaginaire collectif, ce bassin de conceptions, de visions premières, tenaces, profondément ancrées dans l’inconscient et donc difficiles à déloger.

Les stéréotypes jouent un rôle déterminant en justifiant la discrimination : les victimes sont décrites sous des traits peu enviables, elles sont vouées à la délinquance et à la dépendance. En somme, on leur attribue les traits que le régime lui-même a produits. On les rend responsables de leurs maux.

À cause des arrangements institutionnels et des images stéréotypées, leracisme systémique ne se laisse paséradiquer aisément. La façon de le combattre, c’est de s’attaquer à ses fondements structurels, en donnant à voir leur genèse, les étapes de leur institutionnalisation. Et de cette façon : a) mettre à nu l’arbitraire, l’inanité de leurs fondements, les injustices qui les ont inspirés, b) bousculer les stéréotypes, c) faire le procès des vieux arrangements institutionnels avec tous leurs tentacules.

Pour remplir son rôle essentiel, la reconstitution historique peut emprunter deux voies complémentaires : d’abord le travail indispensable des historiens, et surtout, les témoignages des victimes (les histoires de vie), tout cela devant être amplement répercuté principalement par le biais de l’éducation et des médias.

Il y a une quinzaine d’années, j’ai conduit de nombreuses entrevues au sein des communautés innues et j’y ai appris une leçon capitale. Entendre une victime des pensionnats raconter dans ses mots son expérience, pouvoir observer ses émotions, sa souffrance toujours bien vivante, se pénétrer de ce vécu tragique, tout cela est d’une éloquence, d’une « efficacité » inégalable. Et donne le goût d’en savoir plus — c’est ici que les historiens prennent le relais.

J’ai donné en exemple les pensionnats, je pourrais en évoquer bien d’autres. Je songe, entre autres, aux récits d’anciens chasseurs décrivant la façon dont ils ont été brutalement évincés de leurs territoires de chasse (et du genre de vie millénaire qui leur était associé) pour être placés dans des réserves sous la gestion autoritaire d’un fonctionnaire fédéral ordinairement ignorant et insouciant des réalités autochtones.

Le premier ministre a raison d’affirmer que l’existence du racisme systémique ne signifie pas que les Québécois soient racistes. Mais il faut ajouter un élément : cette forme de racisme étant par définition inconsciente, insidieuse, il peut nous arriver néanmoins de contribuer à en perpétuer la structure dans notre vie quotidienne par des mots qu’on emploie, une opinion qu’on exprime, un geste que nous posons — ou que nous ne posons pas.

En ce sens, une prise de conscience s’impose à laquelle tout le monde est convié. Mais donnons d’abord la parole aux Autochtones ; ils ont beaucoup à nous dire.

Historien, sociologue, écrivain, Gérard Bouchard enseigne à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi dans les programmes d’histoire, de sociologie/anthropologie, de science politique et de coopération internationale. Il est titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les imaginaires collectifs.

Source: Le racisme, pourquoi systémique?

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Nicolas: Une confusion cultivée [regarding systemic racism]

2021/10/08 Leave a comment

Good column by Nicholas:

Soixante-six pour cent des Québécois reconnaissent que le racisme systémique existe. À l’échelle du pays, 67 % des Canadiens admettentsans problème que le concept a un sens. Du moins, ce sont là les résultats d’un sondage publié la semaine dernière par Léger Marketing pour le compte de l’Association des études canadiennes. Sur cette question, le caractère « distinct » du Québec ne tiendrait donc qu’à un seul petit point de pourcentage.

La donnée est remarquable, car si le racisme systémique existe partout, le discours sur le racisme systémique n’est pas le même d’un océan à l’autre. Depuis qu’une coalition d’acteurs de la société civile (dont je faisais partie) a interpellé le gouvernement du Québec pour demander une consultation publique sur la question en 2016, la notion est devenue, particulièrement au Québec, la cible d’une campagne politique et médiatique continue de désinformation et de confusion. Il y a aussi, bien sûr, de la désinformation qui circule ailleurs. Simplement, sur ce point particulier, c’est ici que les démonstrations de mauvaise foi se sont montrées les plus énergiques, disons, dans l’histoire récente.

Des définitions du racisme systémique plus farfelues les unes que les autres ont en effet défilé en ondes au fil des années, souvent à heure de grande écoute. « Procès des Québécois ». « Être systématiquement raciste ». « Se lever le matin avec l’intention de discriminer les minorités ». Le premier ministre François Legault a ajouté une nouvelle couche de désinformation, mardi, en réaction au rapport de la coroner Géhane Kamel sur la mort de Joyce Echaquan, affirmant que reconnaître le racisme systémique, « ça voudrait dire que tous les dirigeants de tous les ministères ont une approche discriminatoire qui est propagée dans tous les réseaux ». On aurait pu en rire, si la mauvaise blague était venue d’un quidam.

Dans un de nos grands médias (vous savez lequel), vous pourrez retrouver plusieurs dizaines de billets sur le « racisme antiblanc », une notion qui n’a aucune crédibilité scientifique, et qui a été popularisée par le Front national de Jean-Marie Le Pen. On « thèse » aussi un peu partout sur le « wokisme », que personne n’a défini, sinon Fox News. Mais François Legault répète que le racisme systémique est un concept trop « mal défini » pour être utile.

Pourtant, la Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse du Québec a une définition du racisme systémique, comme ses équivalents à travers le pays ont aussi les leurs. Le Barreau du Québec en a déjà proposé une. La Ville de Montréal en a aussi une, depuis la consultation municipale sur la question. On ne compte plus les rapports et les articles scientifiques, ici et ailleurs, qui font appel à la notion.

Chaque organisme formule les choses à sa façon, pour essentiellement dire la même chose. Tout comme chaque organisme scientifique ne met pas exactement la virgule à la même place dans sa définition des changements climatiques, et que vous n’arriverez pas, en mettant tous les économistes dans une même pièce, à une définition immuable de l’économie. Mais que personne (de sérieux) n’utilise cette réalité pour avancer que les changements climatiques ou l’économie n’existent pas.

Le racisme systémique fait référence aux façons de faire (processus, décisions, pratiques) qui favorisent ou défavorisent certaines personnes en fonction de leur identité raciale. Il s’agit de dire que nos grands systèmes — de santé, d’éducation, de justice, de services sociaux — ont été pensés par et pour la majorité. Encore aujourd’hui, ce sont les approches qui conviennent le mieux à cette majorité qui dominent, et elles ne sont pas présentées comme culturellement spécifiques, mais comme « le sens commun », voire des « règles objectives ».

Si le système de santé est conçu par et pour la majorité plutôt que pour les personnes autochtones, par exemple, cela veut dire que des professionnels de la santé peuvent être diplômés après 3, 5, 10 ans de formation universitaire sans avoir aucune compétence culturelle pour interagir avec une clientèle autochtone. Si ces professionnels, faute de formation, agissent avec les mêmes préjugés que le citoyen moyen exposé aux stéréotypes véhiculés par la culture populaire, il n’y a pas non plus de processus interne efficace pour reconnaître le problème et le corriger. Dans un système par et pour la majorité, rien de tout cela n’apparaît comme un besoin criant.

Autre exemple : une formation médicale conçue par et pour la majorité blanche utilise presque exclusivement des images de personnes blanches pour apprendre aux futurs médecins à reconnaître les symptômes d’une maladie. Plusieurs études ont déjà démontré que les patients à la peau foncée reçoivent souvent un mauvais diagnostic, plus tardif, pour des problèmes de santé visibles à l’œil nu. Est-ce que l’infirmière ou la dermatologue qui ne reconnaissent pas un problème sur une peau foncée haïssent personnellement les Noirs, ou, pour reprendre les propos du premier ministre, « ont une approche discriminatoire propagée dans tout le réseau » ? Non. Le problème vient des écoles de médecine, de leurs curriculums qui mènent à désavantager certains patients en fonction de leur identité raciale. Soit la définition du racisme systémique. Déclarer qu’on n’est « pas raciste » ne réglera rien si l’on n’est pas prêt à investir temps et énergie pour corriger les failles de la formation de base (lire : pour la majorité). Quitte à passer pour un « woke ».

Dans les pires cas, ces deux exemples peuvent mener à des morts inutiles. Soixante-six pour cent des Québécois arrivent à comprendre cette réalité du racisme systémique, malgré la désinformation ambiante. On peut imaginer que si ce n’était des efforts particulièrement soutenus pour embrouiller les gens, les Québécois accepteraient la notion dans une proportion bien plus importante que la moyenne canadienne.

Il y a là, il me semble, un signal assez encourageant sur la teneur de ces fameuses « valeurs québécoises ».

Source: https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/638610/chronique-une-confusion-cultivee?utm_source=infolettre-2021-10-07&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=infolettre-quotidienne

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David: Le taureau [Premier Legault denial of systemic racism]

2021/10/04 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Michel David:

Le premier ministre François Legault avait déjà gâché une bonne occasion d’élever le débat en se lançant dans une charge partisane totalement déplacée à l’Assemblée nationale le jour de l’anniversaire de la mort de Joyce Echaquan.

Il a été encore plus désolant de l’entendre justifier son refus de décréter un jour férié pour marquer la réconciliation avec les Premières Nations par le tort que cela causerait à la productivité de l’économie québécoise.

Le geste aurait pourtant été élégant, bien que la plupart des provinces n’aient pas suivi non plus l’exemple d’Ottawa. Mais faire valoir un argument aussi mercantile traduisait un manque d’empathie désolant. M. Legault aurait pu simplement dire qu’il préfère les gestes concrets aux commémorations symboliques ; on aurait difficilement pu lui donner tort.

Dans des provinces où la productivité est plus élevée qu’au Québec, comme l’Ontario, la Colombie-Britannique ou l’Alberta, il y a plus de jours fériés. Inversement, des provinces dont la productivité est moindre, comme Terre-Neuve ou la Nouvelle-Écosse, en offrent moins.

Ce n’est pas la première fois que son obsession économique lui fait oublier que le rôle d’un gouvernement est aussi de contribuer à bâtir une société plus humaine et plus juste. Lors de la réforme du Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ), il ne semblait ni comprendre ni être touché par le drame vécu par ceux qui s’en étaient prévalus dans l’espoir de s’installer au Québec, et qui voyaient soudainement leur rêve brisé après avoir tout quitté. À ses yeux, la satisfaction des besoins du marché du travail constituait le seul critère.

Personne ne conteste la qualité du travail effectué par le ministre responsable des Affaires autochtones, Ian Lafrenière, dont le doigté a permis de renouer un dialogue qui était pratiquement rompu, mais la participation du premier ministre aux cérémonies de commémoration de la Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation aurait mieux témoigné de la détermination de l’État et de la nation québécoise à établir des relations avec les Premières Nations sur de nouvelles bases.

Tant que M. Legault s’entêtera à nier que les Autochtones sont victimes de « racisme systémique », il sera très difficile de les convaincre de la sincérité de ses intentions. Mais il semble voir rouge et fonce comme un taureau dès que ces mots sont prononcés. Cette semaine, il donnait l’impression d’avoir un urgent besoin de vacances.

Après avoir crié sur tous les toits qu’on cherchait à culpabiliser les Québécois, il s’est lui-même condamné au déni. Après la commission Viens, voilà pourtant que la coroner qui a enquêté sur la mort de Joyce Echaquan arrive elle aussi à la conclusion que le racisme systémique est bel et bien réel. Fait-elle aussi partie de ces wokes radicaux qui se complaisent dans le dénigrement du Québec ?

Évidemment, à partir du moment où M. Legault reconnaîtrait que les Autochtones sont victimes de racisme systémique, il deviendrait encore plus difficile de prétendre que les minorités visibles ne le sont pas. Les droits que des millénaires d’occupation du territoire confèrent aux uns rendraient-ils plus acceptable la discrimination envers les autres ?

Depuis trois ans, M. Legault s’est employé à redonner aux Québécois une fierté et une confiance en eux-mêmes que les lendemains difficiles du référendum de 1995 et la dégénérescence des mœurs politiques sous la gouverne libérale avaient mis à mal, mais il ne rend pas service au Québec en l’enfonçant dans un débat stérile dont il ne peut pas sortir grandi. L’année électorale s’annonce inquiétante.

Il est vrai que le concept de « racisme systémique » n’est pas facile à saisir, mais il est désolant de voir le premier ministre le déformer pour mieux le rejeter. À l’entendre, il s’agirait simplement d’une nouvelle arme utilisée par ceux qui se complaisent dans le Quebec bashing. En matière de relations avec les Autochtones, le Canada anglais n’a certainement pas de leçons à donner, mais la turpitude des uns ne saurait justifier celle des autres.

Les Québécois ont le sentiment qu’eux-mêmes ont toujours été victimes de discrimination depuis la Conquête. Ils sont donc bien placés pour comprendre à quel point la coexistence de deux cultures et de deux modes de vie peut être difficile, surtout quand on est en situation minoritaire.

Ils peuvent légitimement être fiers de ce qu’ils ont réussi à bâtir dans l’adversité, mais ils pourraient aussi tirer une grande fierté à avoir su aménager une société où chacun se sentirait chez lui, accepté et respecté tel qu’il est.

Le défi est de taille, mais M. Legault a démontré qu’il ne manque pas de cœur à l’ouvrage. On peut se féliciter d’avoir un taureau comme premier ministre, à la condition qu’il fonce dans la bonne direction.

Source: https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/637374/chronique-le-taureau?utm_source=infolettre-2021-10-02&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=infolettre-quotidienne

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McWhorter:What Should We Do About Systemic Racism?

2021/09/13 Leave a comment

Interesting and nuanced discussion and the need for a more sophisticated discussion of different outcomes:

Here’s why some people aren’t onboard with the way Americans are taught to think about systemic racism: Even fully understanding that systemic racism exists and why it is important — persistent disparities between Black people and others in access to resources — one may have some questions. Real ones.

For me, the biggest question is not whether systemic racism exists but what to do about it.

A thorny patch, for starters, is figuring out whether racism is even the cause of a particular kind of disparity. One approach, well-aired these days, is that all racial disparities must be due to racism — a view encapsulated in a proclamation like “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.”

But that approach, despite its appeal in being so elementary — plus a bit menacing (a bit of drama, a little guilt?) — is often mistaken in its analysis, not to mention harmful to Black people if acted upon.

Here’s an example. Black kids tend not to do as well in school as white kids, statistically. But just what is the “racism” that causes this particular disparity?

It isn’t something as plain and simple as the idea that all Black kids go to underfunded schools — it’s a little 1980s to think that’s all we’re faced with. School funding is hugely oversold as a reason for schools’ underperformance, and the achievement disparity persists even among middle-class Black kids.

And middle-class Black kids are not just a mere sliver: Only about a third of Black students are poor. Yet the number of Black students admitted to top-level universities, for example, is small — so small that policies changing admissions standards are necessary for such schools to have a representative number of them on campus. This is fact, shown at countless institutions over the past 30 years such as the University of Michigan and recently Harvard. The key question is what justifies the policies.

One answer might be: “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.”

But in evaluating that idea, we must consider this: Black teenagers too often associate school with being “white.” Doesn’t such a mind-set have a way of keeping a good number of Black kids from hitting the very highest note in school? If many Black kids have to choose between being a nerd and having more Black friends — and one study suggests that they do — then the question is not whether this would depress overall Black scholastic achievement, but why it wouldn’t. The vast weight of journalistic attestations about growing up Black and how Black kids deal with school show the conflicting pressures they can face about achieving good grades and making friendships.

Now, my point here is not to simply accuse students of having a “pathology.” To be sure, the reason Black kids often think of school as “white” is racism. Just not racism today. Thus to eliminate systemic racism, our target cannot be some form of racism in operation now, because the racism operated several decades ago.

It took a while for Brown v. Board of Education to actually be enforced. When it was, starting in the mid-1960s, white teachers and students nationwide were not happy. Old-school open racism was still in flower, and Black kids in newly desegregated schools experienced it full blast — and not just in the South.

It was then that Black kids started thinking of school as the white kids’ game, something to disidentify from. While it hurts to be called a nerd when you’re white, the sting is worse when you are called disloyal to your race.

The source to consult on all of this is the book “Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation,” as key to understanding Black history as Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.”

One might ask why the disaffection with school persists even though the racism that caused it has retreated so much — for certainly this kind of open racism diminished enormously in the 1970s and 1980s. But cultural traits can persist in human beings beyond what sparked those traits. The idea that school is not what “we” do settled into a broader function: ordinary teenage tribalism. White kids might choose to be, say, Goths or various things. So might Black kids — but another identity available to many of them is a sense of school as racially inauthentic. The “acting white” idea has persisted even in well-funded middle-class schools, where if anyone is discriminating against the Black students, it’s being done in ways too scattered and usually subtle to explain, indefensible though they are, to realistically explain the performance gap.

This sense of school as “other” can be covert as well as overt. A 1997 study by Clifton Casteel, a Black educator, showed that white eighth and ninth graders tend to think of themselves as doing homework to please their parents, while Black ones think of themselves as doing it for their teachers. That’s subtle but indicative — the idea that school stuff for Black students is outside of home and hearth. And in the 1980s, a mathematics educator, Phillip Uri Treisman, showed that Black college students do better in calculus if they are taught to work together in studying it (with high expectations and close professor mentoring also recommended). That Black students need to be instructed to share schoolwork rather than go it alone illuminates a private sense of school as not what “we” do — i.e., when we are together being ourselves.

I will not pretend that there has not been, for 20 years, people vociferously denying that Black kids often have an ambivalent attitude toward excelling in school. However, that Black kids don’t say in interviews that they disidentify from school reveals no more than that whites say they aren’t racist in interviews — why hit rewind and pretend psychology has no layers solely when Black students are involved? Then there is the idea that certain studies have disproved that this sense of disconnection exists when they actually found possible evidence of it, such as one documenting Black students saying that they like school and yet reporting spending less time on homework compared with white and Asian kids.

In sum, the sheer volume of attestations and documentation of Black students accused of “acting white” makes it clear to any unbiased observer that the issue is real, including the shakiness of the attempts to debunk the claim. The denialists are worried that someone like me is criticizing the Black students, upon which I repeat: The sense of school as white was caused by racism. It’s just that it was long, long ago now.

So, we return to “when I see racial disparities, I see racism.” This is a mantra from Ibram X. Kendi, and one of his solutions to the Black-white achievement gap in school is to eliminate standardized tests. They are “racist,” you see, because Black kids tend not to do as well on them as others.

And in line with this version of racial reckoning, we are seeing one institution after another eliminating or altering testing requirements, from the University of California to Boston’s public school system.

The idea that this is the antiracist thing to do is rooted in an idea that there is something about Black culture that renders standardized tests inappropriate. After all, Kendi certainly doesn’t think the issue is Black genes. Nor, we assume, does any responsible person think it’s genes, and it can’t be that all Black kids grow up poor because to say that is racist, denying the achievements of so many Black people and contradicting simple statistics.

So it’s apparently something about being a Black person. Kendi does not specify what this cultural configuration is, but there is reason to suppose, from what he as well as many like-minded people are given to writing and saying, that the idea is that Black people for some reason don’t think “that way,” that Black thought favors pragmatic engagement with the exigencies of real life over the disembodied abstraction of test questions.

But there is a short step from here to two gruesome places.

One is the idea getting around in math pedagogy circles that being precise, embracing abstract reasoning and focusing on finding the actual answer are “white,” which takes us right back to the idea that school is “white.”

The other is the idea that Black people just aren’t as quick on the uptake as other people.

Yeah, I know — multiple intelligences, “energy” and so on. Taking a test of abstract reasoning is just one way of indicating intelligence, right — but folks, really? I submit that few beyond a certain circle will ever truly believe that we need to trash these tests, which were expressly designed to cut through bias.

One of Kendi’s suggestions, for example, is that we assess Black kids instead on how articulate they are about their neighborhood circumstances and on their “desire to know.” But this is a drive-by notion of pedagogical practice, with shades again of the idea that being a grind is “white.” I insist that it is more progressively Black to ask why we can’t seek for Black kids to get better on the tests, and almost phrenological to propound that it’s racist to submit a Black person to a test of abstract cognitive skill.

To get more Black students into top schools, we should focus on getting the word out in Black communities about free test preparation programs, such as have long existed in New York City. We should resist the elimination of gifted tracks as “racist,” given that they shunted quite a few Black kids into top high schools in, for example, New York back in the day. Teaching Black kids to work together should be even more of a meme than it has become since Treisman’s study. And the idea that school is “for white people” should be traced, faced and erased, reified and rendered as uncool as drunken driving and smoking have been.

Boy, that was some right-wing conservative boilerplate, no? Of course not. Many would see these prescriptions as unsatisfying because they aren’t about wagging a finger in white America’s face. But doing that is quite often antithetical to improving Black lives.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/opinion/systemic-racism-education.html

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Ottawa plans to teach non-racialized Canadians about systemic racism in new campaign

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Not sure it will reach the people it needs to reach but we shall see:

The federal government plans to launch a national ad campaign aimed at making more white Canadians knowledgeable about systemic racism.

Launching a public education and awareness campaign is part of the Liberal government’s anti-racism strategy.

That strategy says $3.3 million will be spent on a marketing effort.

Details of what Canadian Heritage is looking for in such a campaign, set to launch later this year, are included in documents posted on the government’s procurement website.

The department says its target audience is “non-racialized Canadian middle-aged adults”  — defined as between 30 and 44 years old — living in any rural or urban area.

It specifically points out that includes adults living in places such as Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Quebec, considered to be “racism hot spots” because of the high volume of police-reported hate crimes.

According to the documents, the government wants its audience to be taught about “implicit bias,” and for the campaign to “weave together an emotionally compelling narrative of contemporary Canadian identity and values as antithetical to racism.”

The department says the overall goal is to get more Canadians fighting against systemic racism by making them aware of its impacts through marketing, social media, posters and public engagement.

It notes the campaign should also look at ways to “engage relevant influencers.”

“In this COVID-19 context, Canadians are face-to-face with a unique opportunity to reimagine the social contract … in ways that place anti-racism, equity, reconciliation and human rights at the heart of the recovery process,” the documents say.

The department cites how data shows that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Indigenous, Black, Asian, Muslim and Jewish communities faced more discrimination and hate crimes.

The issue of systemic racism was brought to the forefront in May 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

His death sparked protests and rallies across Canada calling out racism in this country too.

More recently, the country has been seized by the pain and legacy of the residential school system after First Nations, using ground-penetrating radar, started discovering hundreds of unmarked graves at former school sites where they say Indigenous children were buried.

Source: Ottawa plans to teach non-racialized Canadians about systemic racism in new campaign

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Class-action lawsuit claims French police discriminate often

2021/01/28 Leave a comment

Indeed:

In a first for France, six nongovernmental organizations launched a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the French government for alleged systemic discrimination by police officers carrying out identity checks.

The organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, contend that French police use racial profiling in ID checks, targeting Black people and people of Arab descent.

They were serving Prime Minister Jean Castex and France’s interior and justice ministers with formal legal notice of demands for concrete steps and deep law enforcement reforms to ensure that racial profiling does not determine who gets stopped by police.

The organizations, which also include the Open Society Justice Initiative and three French grassroots groups, plan to spell out the legal initiative at a news conference in Paris.

The issue of racial profiling by French police has been debated for years, including but not only the practice of officers performing identity checks on young people who are often Black or of Arab descent and live in impoverished housing projects.

Serving notice is the obligatory first step in a two-stage lawsuit process. The law gives French authorities four months to talk with the NGOs about meeting their demands. If the parties behind the lawsuit are left unsatisfied after that time, the case will go to court, according to one of the lawyers, Slim Ben Achour.

It’s the first class-action discrimination lawsuit based on or supposed ethnic origins in France. The NGO’s are employing a little-used 2016 French law that allows associations to take such a legal move.

“It’s revolutionary, because we’re going to speak for hundreds of thousands, even a million people.” Ben Achour told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The NGOs are pursuing the class action on behalf of racial minorities who are mostly second- or third-generation French citizens.

“The group is brown and Black,” Ben Achour said.

The four-month period for reaching a settlement could be prolonged if the talks are making progress, but if not, the NGOs will go to court, he said.

The abuse of identity checks has served for many in France as emblematic of broader alleged racism within police ranks, with critics claiming that misconduct has been left unchecked or whitewashed by authorities.

Video of a recent incident posted online drew a response from President Emmanuel Macron, who called racial profiling “unbearable.” Police representatives say officers themselves feel under attack when they show up in suburban housing projects. During a spate of confrontational incidents, officers became trapped and had fireworks and other objects thrown at them.

The NGOs are seeking reforms rather than monetary damages, especially changes in the law governing identity checks. The organizations argue the law is too broad and allows for no police accountability because the actions of officers involved cannot be traced, while the stopped individuals are left humiliated and sometimes angry.

Among other demands, the organizations want an end to the longstanding practice of gauging police performance by numbers of tickets issued or arrests made, arguing that the benchmarks can encourage baseless identity checks.

The lawsuit features some 50 witnesses, both police officers and people subjected to abusive checks, whose accounts are excerpted in the letters of notice. The NGO’s cite one unnamed person who spoke of undergoing multiple police checks every day for years.

A police officer posted in a tough Paris suburb who is not connected with the case told the AP that he is often subjected to ID checks when he is wearing civilian clothes.

“When I’m not in uniform, I’m a person of ,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous in keeping with police rules and due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Police need a legal basis for their actions, “but 80% of the time they do checks (based on) heads” — meaning how a person looks.

Omer Mas Capitolin, the head of Community House for Supportive Development, a grassroots NGO taking part in the legal action, called it a “mechanical reflex” for French police to stop non-whites, a practice he said is damaging to the person being checked and ultimately to relations between officers and the members of the public they are expected to protect.

“When you’re always checked, it lowers your self-esteem,” and you become a “second-class citizen,” Mas Capitolin said. The “victims are afraid to file complaints in this country even if they know what happened isn’t normal,” he said, because they fear fallout from police.

He credited the case of George Floyd, the Black American whose died last year in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, with raising consciences and becoming a catalyst for change in France.

However, the NGOs make clear that they are not accusing individual police of being racist because “they act within a system that allowed these practices to spread and become installed,” the groups said in a joint document.

“It’s so much in the culture. They don’t ever think there’s a problem,” said Ben Achour, the lawyer.

Source: Class-action lawsuit claims French police discriminate often

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