Present-Day Racism
Modern Versions of an Ancient Problem: an Analysis of Present Day Racism
“Because if you know the history of the whole concept of whiteness, if you know the history of the concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason, you know it was a trick, and it’s worked brilliantly” (Wise 10).
Racism is a centuries-old problem; it is not new, even if the words we use to describe it and how it manifests change from generation to generation. Initiating with colonization, then slavery, lynching, and segregation, in the present day, racism reveals itself in new and brutal ways. Even if the ideologies are mostly still the same, that white people are somehow better, superior, and more entitled, much of racism has turned from the previously blatant and overt practises to much more subtle, covert, and hidden agendas.
Racial and police profiling, mass incarceration, housing and education discrimination, environmental racism, stereotyping, and white privilege are just some of the newer manifestations of an old racism. They are not as clear cut as slavery, and they are not as well defined as segregation, but the lack of prior lucidity does not make them any less dangerous or damaging. Following the path of authors like Zeus Leonardo, who use intersectionality alongside counter and alternative forms of discourse to break the normalization of white supremacy, this essay will analyze racial profiling, environmental racism, and white privilege as three insidious functions of present-day racism.
Racial profiling is a modern-day manifestation of an age-old problem: four hundred years ago, the profiling of Indigenous peoples was initiated, even if the term had not yet been coined. Racial profiling is defined as “the use of racial/ethnic stereotypes, rather than individual behavior, as a basis for making law enforcement and/or investigative decisions about who has been or may be involved in criminal activity” (qtd in Lusane 376). Of course, minority communities have always faced racism, but abuse and discrimination by the very people that have been assigned to protect them are only increasing.
There is not much better of an example of racial profiling than what took place after the attacks of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001: the profiling of both Arabs and Muslims, as a means of national security, quickly became common practice. In fact, in Canada, post 9/11, whether racial profiling was happening or not was no longer contested; instead, the question became whether or not Canadian society would morally or legally condone the practice (Bahdi 295). There is no evidence that racial profiling increases national security and only serves to further harm already racialized groups by increasing their vulnerability and further excluding them from society (294).
Further evidence of racial profiling occurred in 2003 when Mark Daley, a reporter for the BBC, went undercover in the Manchester police academy, intending to investigate the growing racism in policing services (Lusane 375). His findings were extraordinary: racist comments and opinions against the Black community in policing were rampant (375). In 2015, the Black community of Baltimore took to the streets to protest the killing of several Black men at the hands of police: while the police were outfitted in riot gear, pepper spray, tear gas, and batons to control the crowd, across town, in the white communities, National Guardsmen “protected” the neighbourhoods (Gamal 981).
Critical Race Theory, when applied to the tensions between ethnic minority communities and the police, argues that racism is not just personal (in that individuals themselves have racist prejudices), but that it is, more critically, institutional and systemic. Lusane writes that when racism is finally acknowledged as systemic, it moves from the subjective to the objective, and opens the possibility for change (376). Racial profiling is not new: it started centuries ago, but post 9/11, the acceptance of profiling as a means of national and personal security has moved from the sidelines to the everyday.
Like racial profiling, white supremacy is not a new idea: had the Europeans not had the innate notion of their superiority, many countries, including the Americas, may never have been colonized. Being “white” is not the same as it used to be: what was once considered a category of social identification, like skin colour, has transitioned into nationalism portraying racial minorities as foreigners, terrorists, and cultural outsiders (Twine & Gallagher 6). Thus, being “white” has garnered further supremacy over time, for its talons reach deeper into society than ever before.
Twine and Gallagher write that “whiteness” is experienced differently for each person and in each situation; it is less a focus on “race” in society today and more a focus on how white privilege is taken for granted (7). Being white today is about the automatic assumptions of superiority: greater access to funding, education, housing, employment, and policing. Zeus Leonardo links white privilege and white supremacy together and calls it “white racial domination” (137), whereby supremacy is less about the “state” of being dominant and more about the processes that secure that domination (137).
The intersection of white privilege and white supremacy goes beyond the formation of racism: there is also the reality of everyday “good” people being blind to their privilege and subsequent unintentional racism. Sonia Magdalena Tascón writes that people’s blindness, knowingly or otherwise, results in practices of what she calls “everyday racism” (255): in other words, a person does not have to be blatantly racist to partake in racist practices.
Furthermore, the silence that accompanies this “everyday racism” of blindness only serves to exponentially increase its damaging effects. Magdalena writes that silence reinforces and organizes our social and cultural worlds, further sustaining and maintaining white privilege (256). White privilege and white supremacy are especially damaging to already racialized ethnic groups: when white people stay silent to these everyday acts of racism, a new, deeper, and more normalized racism is created. This normalized racism frequently turns out to be the most insidious racism of all: it is especially difficult to fight the forms of white domination, hegemony, and supremacy when they are not even acknowledged.
Environmental racism, like white supremacy and racial profiling, is not a new concept: Canada’s largest environmental law charity, Ecojustice, writes that “In North America, Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities have fought for hundreds of years to protect the air, land, water, species, and cultural connections to the land from discriminatory policies and actions” (MacDonald). Environmental racism argues that soil and water contamination, waste sites, and industrial land use are disproportionately home to racialized communities, recent immigrants, and people with low incomes (MacDonald).
In Canada, environmental racism is glaringly revealed in the ongoing First Nations’ water crisis, where 73% of First Nations’ water is at high or medium risk of contamination: Shoal Lake has not had potable drinking water for over 25 years (“Safe Water”). Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to resolve the water crisis by March 2021, but the funding required to meet this deadline was never provided (“Safe Water”). It is easy to argue that it would be impossible to imagine any white town or neighbourhood not being granted access to clean drinking water.
Another infamous example of environmental racism can be found in the water poisoning in Flint, Michigan. Flint has a population of 57 percent Black people and 42 percent of people in poverty; in 2014, the city was forced to switch its water source from the Detroit water department to the untreated Flint River (Ranganathan 18). Ranganathan argues that the environmental racism occurring in Flint is not just the intersectionality of intentional racist acts alongside the prevalence of pollution in racialized communities but also deeply involves the workings of racial liberalism (18-19).
Racial liberalism is based on the idea that every person deserves individual freedom and equality while disavowing capital exploitation, racism, and all forms of discrimination. But Ranganathan argues that these “egalitarian” ideas make invisible the inherent structures of domination found in liberalism. In other words, it is not just the blatant act of poisoning racialized communities but also the very underpinnings of liberalism, such as creating the American economy on the backs of Black labor, that work to fuel environmental racism (21). Environmental racism is not just about bad actors; it is a culmination and combination of capitalism, liberalism, colonialism, discrimination, and a free-market society that is only free and available to those that can afford it.
Slavery and oppression are ancient concepts, but the idea of “racism” is more recent, manifesting as justification for European expansion and colonization. Racism continued in earnest when enslaved Black people were imported into America, eventually creating a superior “white” race that segregated itself from the inferior “black” race, lynching and annihilating Black people that dared to put themselves as equal to the white man. These acts of violence were commonplace and revolting, and as mostly unhidden, they were easier to see and understand for what they were: white supremacist, white nationalist, and racist.
Post 9/11, the concept of racial discrimination pervaded into Muslim and Arab identities, and more recently, has manifested as Islamophobia and anti-Asian sentiments in many countries. As damaging and destructive as these blatant forms of racism are, however, even more dangerous are the shrouded, often unspoken, and surreptitious acts of racism that are becoming normalized in our every-day experience. Racial profiling, especially involving police services, environmental racism, and white privilege, are three insidious functions of present-day racism that society must continually bring into the light to further the work of destroying their darkness.
Works Cited
Bahdi, Reem. “No Exit: Racial Profiling and Canada’s War against Terrorism.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, vol. 41, no. 2–3, June 2003, pp. 293–317. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edscpi&AN=edscpi.A145201473&site=eds-live.
Gamal, Fanna. “The Racial Politics of Protection: A Critical Race Examination of Police Militarization.” California Law Review, vol. 104, no. 4, Aug. 2016, pp. 979–1008. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edshol&AN=edshol.hein.journals.calr104.33&site=eds-live.
Leonardo, Z. “The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the Discourse of `white Privilege’.” Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 36, no. 2, Jan. 2004, pp. 137–52. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=RN146482671&site=eds-live.
Lusane, Clarence. “Fightback: The Movement Against Racial Profiling in Europe.” Souls, vol. 10, no. 4, Jan. 2008, pp. 374–89. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=RN242181734&site=eds-live.
MacDonald, Elaine. “Environmental racism in Canada: What is it, what are the impacts, and what can we do about it?” Ecojustice, 01 Sept. 2020, ecojustice.ca/environmental-racism-in-canada/. Accessed 05 Feb. 2022.
Magdalena Tascón, Sonia. “Narratives of race and nation: Everyday whiteness in Australia.” Social Identities, vol. 14, no. 2, Mar. 2008, pp. 253–74. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1080/13504630801933688.
Ranganathan, Malini. “Thinking with Flint: Racial Liberalism and the Roots of an American Water Tragedy.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 27, no. 3, Jan. 2016, pp. 17–33. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=vdc.100034764477.0x000001&site=eds-live.
“Safe Water for First Nations.” The Council of Canadians. www.canadians.org/fn-water. Accessed 06 Feb. 2022.
Twine, France W., and Charles Gallagher. “The Future of Whiteness: A Map of the ‘Third Wave.’” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, Jan. 2008, pp. 4–24. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=RN217872040&site=eds-live.
Wise, Tim. “The Pathology of White Privilege: Racism, White Denial and the Costs of Inequality” (video transcript). Media Education Foundation, mediaed.org/transcripts/Tim-Wise-On-White-Privilege-Transcript.pdf.