Diversity

By Margaret Angus

Racism lives here. In Nova Scotia. In our schools. In our health care system. In our communities. It’s an ugly truth that part of me would rather not acknowledge. And as a white woman - not the direct target of racism - I have the luxury of looking away if I choose. The systems in which I live and work are set up to benefit me and others who share my colour.

On March 21, I gather with 50 other people for “Talk about Race: Conversations Leading to Action.” We are welcomed to the space as men and women, as people under 40 and over 40, as people born in Nova Scotia and people from away. A woman at my table observes that the number of people in the room born outside of Nova Scotia is far greater than those born in Nova Scotia. She wonders if this fact is significant, and if it reflects part of the problem. As someone born and brought up in Nova Scotia, I immediately resent the implication. And yet the question stays with me: Are we as Nova Scotians not fully prepared to see and recognize the racism around us?

In high school and university, I worked at a retail outlet, since gone out of business. It was not uncommon to be told to “watch” Black customers to make sure they weren’t stealing. While this instruction made me uncomfortable and I never heeded the direction, I also didn’t speak up against it. I’d forgotten all about this scenario until today, when several people talk about the many times they are followed with suspicion, and the humiliation that comes with that experience. I had the luxury of forgetting.

In his best-selling book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the implicit associations we sometimes make about people of different races, even if our values are to view all races as equal. He refers to an Implicit Association Test created by Harvard University (www.implicit.harvard.edu), in which participants are asked to match positive and negative words with images of both Caucasian and African American people. More than 80 per cent of those who have taken the test ended up having pro-white associations. Gladwell contends that each of us operates on two levels – the conscious level, in which we hold certain beliefs to be true and act accordingly, and the unconscious level, “the immediate automatic associations that tumble out before we’ve even had time to think.”

Whether conscious or unconscious – or a combination of both - racism is a reality in Nova Scotia. It may not always be blatant. And perhaps the subtlety of it makes it harder to fight against. But it’s here.

One participant shares that her two black daughters ask, “Why can’t we be white?” Another talks about how, as a teenager, he tried to bleach his skin. Yet another tells how her son, an engineer, was mistaken for someone looking for a job as a janitor at an employment interview. These are a handful of stories, a glimpse into a problem that has plagued our history and is here still.

I’m not sure what to do with this knowledge. I’m not sure what action to take beyond writing about it. But I know looking away isn’t an option.

Talk about Race: Conversations Leading to Action is a grass-roots effort that grew out of conversations started at the Authentic Leadership In Action Institute in the Summer of 2008.

By Jeanne Rokosh

This is my first blog entry and I want to ask you to consider the following question…where did we learn to be mean to people who are different than us? I have been thinking about this question more as I have gotten older. People are different. It would seem to me that is one of the few things that is the same, day after day. But somewhere along the way our strong feelings about what is “too different” have translated into behaviors that can be mean, for example the judgment look or glance, the condescending tone of voice, the persistent conversations where we try to get others to agree with us and of course the more physical acts of hurting someone. Our Promise asks us to think about creating the conditions for behavior change. It would seem to be that in order to do this we have to understand our own internal condition. Where did we learn that it was ok to be mean to others who are different than us, and how did we somehow come to justify that it is ok, acceptable, our right, our purpose in order to ensure the other person understands they are in conflict….with our values.