Systemic Racism: Its Too Sneaky and I'm Too Tired
One of the most thrilling things to do is speak truth to power. It's also one of the most exhausting. Especially when you're a racialized person in Canada, with competing layers of intersectionality woven into your very core. Being a North African makes me too many things that white Canada doesn't necessarily understand, let alone acknowledge or care about. I'm an African, Arab, Semite, immigrant, Muslim woman whose only real desire is to live truly free. But here's the glitch: I can't. Systemically and structurally can't, neither in Canada nor back home in Egypt. People think racism is this personality trait that someone can get branded with and punished for, and therefore can avoid if they were caring (or careful) enough. While overt racism exists in the form of explicit racist actions by individuals, like racist slurs for example, and can get really bad for the likes of me, I feel an obligation to my fellow humans to point out something more insidious, m