Systemic Racism and Defunding The Police in Canada

Today I want to talk about not just economics but politics as well. Racism is entirely a social construct. There are no races in the biology of the homo sapience. In-group genetic variations are larger than between-group variations. That is that. Racism is a sort of complex social construct. We as people invented it. Everybody is racist to a degree or more. It is important to acknowledge this. We more like people who are like us and we don’t who are not like us. We all have prejudices towards one another. This comes from our evolutionary past. It is built into us. But we are not our genes! The thing is: do we act upon it? Racist people do act upon it. 

You can not police people’s minds. You can not police polices’ minds. When you hire a policeman or woman you can not really know how they relate to other people. Their upbringing, their social milieu, many things determine and overdetermine that. You only find that out in their actions. And their position, as a police officer, confers them power over others. And they know it, and they behave like that. And that might bring out their racism and commit atrocities. Put ordinary people into power position and you find out who they really are! Usually white people are in the decision making and power positions in our society. And they wield economic power also over blacks and others. But, as I’ve said, everybody can be racist. Blacks can be racists. Lighter blacks are discriminating (1,2,3) against darker blacks in Africa. The Japanese can be racists against others. The Persians are discriminating against the Arabs. For the rich brits in the 19^th century, the poor were a different race. So, it is not just about black and white. And not just about the US and Canada. This is a worldwide phenomena going back ages. And Canada is one of the least racist countries. Look elsewhere in the world and you’ll be astonished on what is going on there.

The Black Lives Matter movement in the US and at home should go beyond the discussion of whites hating blacks. We’ve been there before. At the end of the 60s we had the Civil Rights movement. Bitter war was fought against racism. But if this movement, in the present, remains a fight without bringing into question class, it is doomed to die out. Coloured people and other minorities have always lived with the shorter stick drawn. They were and are more marginalized, more economically discriminated against than most whites. If we want real change, the fight of racial discrimination must go hand in hand with an emphasis on class. And it is not easy. Martin Luther King also have had an economic program for the black. So have the Black Panthers. They meant to go beyond just a plain war against racial discrimination. That is what the white people in power could not tolerate and exterminated them. So, without a strong demand for economic justice for the black (and others) the Black Lives Matter will die out without real change. Becoming shallower and shallower, just like in the 70s and on. We will repeat history.

Defunding Police is an outcry motivated by the Black Lives Matter movement to bring about change in police behaviour. In my view this belief is mistaken. Of course, we should defund police in the sense of not allowing them to have heavy armored assault vehicles and assault weapons against civilians. We do have them in Canada too, not just in the US! But defunding the police is a misplaced demand. What we rather should mean is to have community oversight over the police. The judicial system is not enough.

We need a Council or Committee of 20-30 elected people from the community, frequently rotating the members, reflecting the proportions of racial ethnicity of each community and evaluate and investigate based on evidence all and any disputable police action that can be uncovered. They would bring forward a recommendation on how the matter should be settled to the judicial. Still the “sentence” would be in the hand of the judicial system but they would be obliged to take into consideration the communities interest where the police operates. We should push for something like this. Not defunding the police. If there is a big difference between what the judicial systems says and what the community says, then we know we should push for changes further to the judicial system. We should put more funds to the education of wannabe polices.

We must have a say how we want to be policed!