allthecanadianpolitics:

Some Canadians seem to be glossing over Canada’s own problems with racism lately.

With chaotic events outside our borders – from Donald Trump’s blatantly racist and bigoted statements to the xenophobia that surfaced during the Brexit campaign – some Canadians have gotten the false impression that everything’s perfect up here at home.

Anyone on social media lately might have noticed the “Meanwhile in Canada” meme: usually in response to something terrible happening elsewhere in the world, Canada is shown as a peaceful paradise where Canadians only deal with minor, trivial problems as an exaggerated contrast. Oh, and Justin Trudeau usually makes an appearance too.

Here are a few examples:

[in article linked above]

Taking these images at face value, you’d think Canada is a multicultural paradise that doesn’t have issues with racism ingrained in attitudes and insitutions as they’re found in other countries: from racialized policing, to poverty, to the regular stream of ugly racist incidents that seem commonplace in the United States. Foreign journalists sometimes play this game, as well.

But here’s the problem: even though we may embrace and celebrate its diversity more than other countries, all of these problems still exist here in Canada.

Let’s stop and think about a few facts you won’t find in the latest “Meanwhile in Canada” meme:

Meanwhile in Canada, racism is still a big problem in Canada’s policing and justice systems

Sorry Uncle Dave, Canada’s racist, too.

According to a 2014 report issued Canada’s Correctional Investigator, between 2005 and 2015 Canada’s prison population grew by 10%.

During the same period, the number of black inmates grew by 69% and the number of Aboriginal inmates grew by 50%.

In fact, almost a quarter of Canada’s total prison population is Aboriginal, despite Aboriginal Canadians representing only 4.3% of the population, and the incarceration rate for black Canadians is “three times their representation rate in general society.”

There are also the well-known instances of black Canadians commonly being subjected to random police “carding” checks. Not to mention cases of police shooting black men like Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby dead for no particular reason with the officers involved rarely facing subsequent disciplinary action.

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