Systemic Racism? There is no such animal.
My grade five French teacher would tell us, “There is no such animal” whenever we would say a word in French that was mispronounced, an anglicization, or simply a butchered made-up proclamation of a French word. “Il n’existe pas de tel animal”, and then reinforce in English, “there is no such animal”, reminding us she had command of both linguistic worlds. She would remind us that you simply cannot make up a word, because there were established rules, mass social understandings and, above all, professionals that decide such things, not children. I really liked my grade five teacher, so this comparison is unfair to her intent. However, I cannot help but connect this memory to most of the white status quo managing systemic racism in higher education through Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) taskforces.
“Systemic racism? Il n’existe pas de tel animal. There is no such animal”.
Political leaders, such as former Quebec’s Premier Legault, insist that “(t)here is no systemic racism” in their backyard, despite their own Human-Rights Commission indicating it certainly does[i]. Scholar, Dena Simmons’ resignation from Yale University, cited systemic racism as being “tokenized, undermined and bullied” by colleagues as the cause, imploring in her letter of resignation to the university to “… do what I have obsessively asked for year after year—get racial and social justice right at home first before doing it disingenuously in the world”.[ii] The response from Yale? Entirely predictable, with words such as “we do not tolerate discrimination or bias” and “team well-being” and other buzzwords that I suspect are ultimately meaningless at best and hostile gaslighting at worst to Dr. Simmons and those of us in the BIPOC community that read such texts.
In a climate where authorities dismiss systemic racism as either nonexistent or as “an animal that does not exist in their home,” it is also necessary to consider university leadership’s long-standing record of encouraging, tolerating, or failing to address discrimination and injustice. Despite institutional apathy toward inequities affecting Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC), students continue to organize and protest. Yet “lively debate” may be unwelcome when it conflicts with a university’s public image and its neoliberal emphasis on client satisfaction. From this perspective, dissenting students must be pacified or isolated. Following the campus protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, universities established equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) task forces, ostensibly to address racism and avert backlash that might threaten their financial interests. However, academia’s harsh and inequitable response to the 2023 student movement opposing the war on Gaza, genocide and supporting Palestinian rights suggests that these task forces produced little substantive institutional change. The reason is structural: they were designed to fail.
At your university, you may have noticed the makeup of these committees for anti-racism change, wondering why it is composed with so few faculty, activists and/or community members whose careers are devoted to the subject of systemic racism. These taskforce groups appeared to be more “tasked” with establishing what exactly systemic racism is, or if it in fact exists at all, and if it does, whether such an animal exists in their own environment. Supposedly, unburdened by lived experience and expertise, their unbiased eyes are the only factual way such an unknown animal can be accurately categorized. Perhaps this animal, if it ever existed at all, is extinct and simply part of the collective memory of the BIPOC community. Like the instinctive reaction most humans have to spiders and snakes, the BIPOC of Canada are hardwired to think that racism exists, even if the animal has vanished. The White, unbiased eye must be used. White faculty with no scholarly expertise in anti-racism? Even better because they can bring their non-informed critical eye to the subject, unburdened by subject specific expertise.
I liken this approach to the many examples of White “explorers”, from the 1600s onwards, who would balk at local descriptions of animals that would dwell on their land, but were unknown to the European continent. “Nonsense, there is no such animal”. The Indigenous locals may counter and insist that the animal is indeed real, and they are all too familiar with it. Having closely resided with this animal, they have studied its patterns, its behaviours and above all how it impacts their community. They know, when you enter its space, it is the animal’s space, and you have to be mindful of its rules.
Like some mythical creature that the “natives” insisted was true, systemic racism must be discovered by EDI taskforce Bwanas, dragged from the fanciful imagination forests of child-like locals, and ready to be scientifically investigated through the impartial lens of Whiteness. In effect, you will be told that “there is no such animal, until we tell you there is such an animal”. This is not for children to decide. If the EDI taskforce Bwanas discover systemic racism, the animal will be placed on a scientific lab table, dissected, and treated as if it is something brand new. More than likely, we will be told that this is not the same creature we, our family, and BIPOC friends were thoroughly familiar with. It is not the animal that stalked you, attacked you, and made you afraid in the night. The children misunderstood.
Higher education relies on credentialism unless those credentials relate to the study of racism. Genuinely nice, intelligent, and well-meaning people have told me that I should have shown greater patience with these taskforces, reminding me that the members are all quite smart. After all, they work in universities. True. However, assembling a committee to tackle a problem with limited to no expertise indicates that your university does not take this potential animal as a threat, to them, first and foremost.
Let me put it this way. If your administration and leadership were faced with an apocalyptic hoard of giant multi-tailed scorpions that they knew was a dangerous and imminent threat to them, and they had to construct a submarine to carry them and their loved ones to a safe harbour inhospitable to said giant multi-tailed scorpions, would they task the Classics or the Engineering Department to lead in completing the effort? People in Classics are wonderfully smart, but I would rather take my chances swimming to safety than get in a submarine they designed and built. I suspect that your administration and leadership at your university would make the same choice if they believed that giant multi-tailed scorpions were going to harm them. In this case, they believe such an animal exists, it is a danger to them, and they count on established expertise to save themselves. In the case of systemic racism, if your university EDI taskforce was or is predictably absent of expertise and experience, they were or are probably thinking they can weather your danger by stating, “Systemic racism? Il n’existe pas de tel animal. There is no such animal.”
Apologies to my wonderful grade five teacher.
[i] https://ipolitics.ca/2020/10/07/quebecs-human-rights-commission-says-systemic-racist-does-exist/
[ii] https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-02-17-citing-racism-and-years-of-bullying-dena-simmons-resigns-from-yale-center-for-emotional-intelligence
