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, more sinister, and much more of a culprit than just calling someone like me a "Towelhead Mohameddan." 

I want to talk about systems. Those that enable and perpetuate the above slur. I want to call to your attention how on this land, historically, someone who was not white and Christian was considered less than, and unworthy of equal empathy, liberties, protections, and freedoms. In this democratic country that our Prime Minister so valiantly associates with the mighty rule of law in his news conferences, we have forgotten so consistently, so diligently, one simple fact: the lands this country was founded on are stolen. They are unceded to this day by their Indigenous Nations. Taken. Appropriated. 

The fact that I'm part of the system that has stolen and appropriated Indigenous lands, resources, people, and their cultures, makes me complicit by default. Paying taxes for any job here makes me part of the systemically racist structure that glues this country together. I am never just going to be a towelhead Mohameddan, or a racialized person. I am also a participant in racism, whether I want to or not, and despite my best intentions. So what, pack up and go home? I wish it was that simple. Egypt is oppressed by the same globally racist system that perpetuates white supremacy on this planet. So, even if I left for home tomorrow, there's no escaping systemic racism. Not truly. 

You know what really irks me? I didn't know any of that exactly four years ago. I thought I'd be immigrating to a Utopia of personal freedoms and protections, a land where the lines between fair and unfair, free and oppressed, hate and equity were drawn with intense clarity. After all, that's how mainstream global media sells the Canadian immigration dream, eh. But that marketing campaign is rigged and deceptive to a tee, by everyone involved. I had no idea the Indigenous name of Halifax was K'jipuktuk, for example. I did not even think that there was a possibility that the land was unsurrendered. I never once thought about the role I'd play in systemic racism, about the role that my country has played in it. I had no idea about any of this! History is told nice and white and complacent everywhere I've lived previously: the UAE and Egypt. And of course right here on Turtle Island. The global wheel of white supremacy, of which I'm a bolt not by choice, had fooled me from thousands of miles away - the Utopian dream was too sweet to resist, or to fully explore. 

This is not a piece on pessimism, despite its inherent darkness. This is about hope, and the desire to fully achieve systemic equity. Freedom is only a pipedream if it must be systemically selective; we are not free until we're all free. And we have to be honest in order to move towards freedom; we need to explore the past meticulously, and scrutinize the present conscientiously. The status quo can only be challenged when knowledge is complete and hearts are honest with true desire for change. Currently, the status quo is planted firmly atop a white supremacist past. It is not enough that racially privileged folks have good intentions - they've had those for a few centuries now. Yet, the systems still prop them, and only them. 

If you're white don't misunderstand me; I don't hate your privilege, I actually LOVE it! Its beautiful, its powerful, its unbelievably influential. I love it so much that I want it too. What I hate is that you don't use it in the right ways, forcefully enough. Ways that affect systemic change, not just for me, but for you. Equity benefits everyone, remember? Consider this: who gets to be a terrorist in Canadian media? And who gets blamed for dying?! If you still don't know, I'll give you a hint: look back on news releases in mainstream media in relation to the April, 2020 Nova Scotia mass murder. Check out how that terrorist was portrayed by media, how he was humanized, how some platforms spoke about his "passion for policing." Now check out the news releases related to the murder of Indigenous Chantel Moore, murdered by New Brunswick police in June 2020. Compare the writing. You'll find that the earliest reports on Chantel's murder managed to speculate on her character and lifestyle. This media bias is a systemic tool of oppression and racism, no question about it. Our media has always perpetuated the system. And as a result, white people die too. Because not naming things for what they are (not naming a terrorist a terrorist when he's white) is empirically and universally dangerous. 

Last night I watched on Netflix that short documentary about the Fyre Festival fraud. I came out of that feeling mad as heck, and thinking that if Billy was not white he would never have gotten away with that massive financial crime. I was also mad because he got away with essentially practicing a form of slavery on the Black folks of that Bahamian island on which the festival was supposed to take place. For a month or so he enlisted EXTENSIVE Black island labour and never paid them. Yet, take a look at the description of Billy on the Netflix title intro: a cocky entrepreneur. The man was convicted on several counts of massive financial fraud, and yet the word to describe him is "entrepreneur?" Was the word "criminal" too much to put into an objective Netflix intro? Are they saying that a criminal is equal to an entrepreneur if he's white??  Also, look at how the documentary participants spoke almost with an awe and fondness about him - especially the white ones. Notice how he was so humanized at the end of the film. Damn! A brother can't get into a store without showing his hands are free while this white criminal gets all the love, despite robbing innocent people blind and actively perpetrating anti-blackness in the most explicit of ways. 

There's no escaping racist systems like the media. Until we do. We can is what I'm saying. YOU can, as a white person. When enough of you protest it, elect only people that represent your equitable morals, and hold those people accountable vigorously to true equitable standards, then we can together escape it. Alone, BIPOC can't do it - we just don't have enough power to. 

So, if you're white don't misunderstand me; I don't hate you. I just hate the system you were born into. A system where my dress sizes and measurements are all Euro-centric, can never really fit my African body, and yet are considered "universal!" A system where classical music theory is portrayed as a universal one when it really is only Western European music theory! A system where the dances of my West African brothers and sisters have been colonized into "ballroom" dances and pegged as North American innovations! A system where every Egyptian "queen" on a Western TV show is sexualized! A system where Canadian immigration processes never mention even the Indigenous name of the land! Where Indigenous people have to apply to white government systems every ten years to maintain their natural rights! A system where science only exists if its European based, even when it was my early Muslim ancestors who put down the foundations for the scientific method in use today! A system where racial profiling by police agencies is normalized. A system here in Canada that tricked you into thinking niceness equals kindness. Niceness is dangerous when its accompanied by white supremacy, because it makes fighting systemic racism that much harder. You can't fight what you can't see. So be honest, and do the work. I know that you'll like the world better for it. 

If you're BIPOC, I'm sorry folks. I know you're tired and so am I. But also, don't misunderstand me; we're not racists the same way white folks can be. We don't have the systemic power to be, even if we wanted to. So, don't let anyone sell you on the lie of reverse racism. It doesn't exist. Because, remember, racism is always an institutional word, a systemic word; if the system is built to not prop you, then you cannot be a racist towards anyone from the group that is propped. Get it? What we can be is preferential, reserve trust till later, guarded, selective about folks, rude, and defensive. I'm okay with that. If that's what you gotta do to survive a system built to eliminate you, then so be it. Just remember that racist programming, racist conditioning, is present in us all on varying levels, hence all the internalized self-inflicted racism. The hate and competition between equity-seeking groups is a colonial objective and outcome. It is the manifestation of a system succeeding in dividing us to conquer us. Watch out for it. Equity is a free for all, not a zero sum game. 

Four years later, perhaps one of the best outcomes for me as an immigrant is the knowledge I have today - thanks to BIPOC women courageously speaking and writing to this. They need to be acknowledged more, boosted more, celebrated more. So I write this as a nod to them, more than anything else. I see you sisters, I hear you. I love you.