White Supremacy in Canada

If we close our eyes and block out all the noise, are all the terrible things around us still happening? If we choose to be selective, to see only the good and ignore the bad, are we being optimistic or just naive? For centuries, Canada and its citizens have looked at the countries around them with disappointment and with shame, confused as to what happened for their country to be filled with sexism, xenophobia, and racism. However, we constantly refuse to look at our own country, follow our fault-lines and trace them back to a history where white supremacy thrived. We can always argue that Canada is great, but we cannot deny that we are far from perfect. And identifying where white supremacy takes it forms right here in Canada is a good place to start getting better.

 “Colonialism is not a ‘behaviour’ that can be superficially changed by a prime minister professing ‘sunny ways.’(1) It is the foundational system in Canada.” Before we understand all the ways we can take action, we must understand how our country came to be, and how the impacts of a system built around these ideologies have affected its citizens along the way. And some how, it always comes back to colonialism; when the British settlers took away the only land the Indigenous knew to call home and called it their own. It seemed as if because the British had the weaponry and the power, they truly believed that they belonged to a more evolved race. At that same time, scientific discoveries all across Europe were being made, which ensured that the Europeans no longer saw it as a belief, but as a fact; They were superior. Flash forward only a couple hundred years in the future, people of colour are systemically excluded in Canada, the Indigenous are being brutally mistreated and Canadians are still dismissing it all because “at least we are not America”.  

Right now, there are about 100 active white power organizations in Canada (2). Aisha Ahmad, a Muslim-Canadian who only wanted to attend a Toronto Symphony was assaulted by a white man in June. They are anti-Semitic material constantly being painted on Canada’s places of worship (3). So, it is hypocritical to look at the country below us in shock. We cannot be blind to the terrors that take place everyday on our own soil and there is no longer any excuse for it.  We must open our eyes, seek our country’s wrongdoings and speak up because silence can never change anything. 

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xyvg5n/why-white-nationalists-are-the-extremists-we-should-fear123

https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2017/03/01/swastikas-found-in-york-university-classroom.html

In Canada, white supremacy is the law of the land