TORONTO -- George Floyd鈥檚 killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the ensuing wave of global protests have prompted many Canadians to take a deeper look at systemic racism, and national data reveals the stark racial divide in this country.
The most recent census data from 2016 shows that Black Canadians face far steeper economic challenges than white Canadians and other racial groups. For example, Black Canadians make significantly less money than non-racialized Canadians regardless of how long their families have lived in Canada.
First-generation Black Canadians make an average income of nearly $37,000, compared to an average income of $50,000 for new immigrants who are not members of a visible minority.
That wage gap doesn鈥檛 go away over time. Third-generation Black Canadians make an average income of $32,000, compared with $48,000 for Canadians who aren鈥檛 a visible minority 鈥� a demographic that, due to the way census data is collected, includes Indigenous Canadians,
Those numbers are troubling but not surprising, says Andrea A. Davis, chair of York University鈥檚 department of humanities and co-ordinator of the university鈥檚 Black Canadian Studies Certificate.
鈥淥ften when people see statistics like this, the assume that well, there鈥檚 clearly a rational and a good reason for this disparity,鈥� Davis told CTVNews.ca in an interview Thursday.
The reality, Davis said, is that Black immigrants are up against a system that makes assumptions about them based on the colour of their skin. She said many Black immigrants face a tougher time getting hired because employers say they want someone with 鈥淐anadian experience.鈥�
鈥淢any of us have heard the stories of new immigrants who are doctors who can鈥檛 get jobs, engineers who are driving taxi cabs in Toronto. That sort of reincorporation into the labour force is harder for Black people because they can be weeded out because of the colour of their skin.鈥�
Unemployment rates among Black Canadians are higher than other populations, and are more than double the rate of other visible minorities.
鈥淪ome racialized groups are seen as more productive, harder working, smarter 鈥� a 鈥榞ood minority鈥� 鈥� so they get absorbed far more quickly into the mainstream than Black new immigrants,鈥� Davis said.
But the income gap between Black Canadians and non-visible minorities doesn鈥檛 go away for the children or grandchildren of Black immigrants. Davis said that鈥檚 because many teachers treat Black children differently than their peers.
鈥淭hese children go into an educational system that marks them as a deficit, that sees them as problematic, and then they struggle to integrate. And so they under-achieve in many cases and are unable to live up to the desires, the hopes of their parents. And once they enter the labour force, they repeat the struggle of their parents,鈥� she said.
鈥淪o it鈥檚 a kind of cycle that doesn鈥檛 break. And it can be invisible, so many Canadians don鈥檛 see it because they don鈥檛 know how to narrate it, or it's not narrated for them.鈥�
The data shows that Black youth are keen to achieve a higher education. Nearly 94 per cent of Black young people aged 15 to 25 surveyed in 2015 said they would like to complete a university degree, but only 59.9 per cent thought it was possible.
That gap between hope and expectation doesn鈥檛 exist for the rest of the population. Eighty-two per cent of other groups surveyed said they wanted to achieve a university education, and 78.8 per cent believed they could.
Davis said this data falls in line with what she sees in her classroom. She teaches a first-year course on race at York University in Toronto, and the majority of her students are Black.
鈥淭hey work tremendously hard and their aspirations are great. But very few people have told them they can be successful,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 don't think it鈥檚 about funding. Really, I don鈥檛. I think it鈥檚 about the belief in self 鈥� 'Do I belong here? Can I do this?'鈥�
As part of her research, Davis studied the impact on violence in youth communities in Toronto and Jamaica. The most profound finding, she said, was how strongly Black youth in Toronto pushed back against the idea that the greatest violence they had faced in their communities was physical violence.
鈥淭hey insisted that the most sustained, daily violence was the violence of the education system. It was teachers who did not believe in them, who stereotyped them, who over-disciplined and over-punished them, who constructed possibilities for them that were different from the possibilities for other children.鈥�
When it comes to hate crimes in Canada, Black people are far more likely than any other racial group to be victims of hate crimes, according to statistics from the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety.
Canada is often celebrated as a multicultural nation, but Davis said that doesn鈥檛 mean racism isn鈥檛 a present and pervasive force here.
鈥淚t鈥檚 difficult for Canadians to hold in their minds at the same time this idea, this fervent belief, that they live in a democratic and even a multicultural society, and that racism can exist in that same society. When they see acts of racism like George Floyd鈥檚 death, they鈥檙e convinced that racism is perpetuated by only a few individuals or bad apples, but it鈥檚 not widespread,鈥� she said.
鈥淲e have to acknowledge that racism can look like hate, it can look like what happened to George Floyd, but that鈥檚 only one way it shows up. It shows up in apathy, in silence, in ignorance, in the refusal to really learn.
"The reality is that racism is expressed not just as conscious acts of hate or violence, but it鈥檚 far more complex than that. It evolves out of a set of deeply rooted systems in our country. So deeply rooted that it might be easy to miss.鈥�
