Towards a Healthy City: Anti-Blackness Equity Principles For
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Prepared by: Prepared for: Oludolapo Makinde City of Vancouver Healthy City Scholar Social Policy and Projects August 12, 2019 Mentor: April Sumter-Freitag Acknowledgments Thank you to the City of Vancouver’s Social Policy and Projects Department for the opportunity to undertake this project. Special thanks go to my mentor, April Sumter- Freitag for providing invaluable support and guidance throughout the duration of this project. Thanks also go to Sadie Kuehn, Cecily-Belle Blain, Parker Johnson, Lama Mugabo and the Hogan’s Alley Society for their contributions to this project. I am also grateful to Lara Honrado, Nadia Carvalho, Karen Taylor, Tina Barisky, Amber Louie, and all City staff that provided insight, support and recommendations in the course of this project. Cover page photo by Bestbe Models (January 30, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.pexels.com/photo/three-woman-with-face-paintings-2170387/. 1 | P a g e Table of Contents Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... 2 Immediate Next Steps ................................................................................................... 8 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 9 2. Project Overview ................................................................................................... 9 2.1. Background and Objective .................................................................................. 9 2.2. Research Methods and Methodology ....................................................................... 9 2.3. Limitations .................................................................................................. 10 3. Anti-Black Racism in Canada ................................................................................... 11 3.1. Impact on Black People and Communities in Canada ................................................. 13 3.1.1. Income and Employment ............................................................................ 13 3.1.2. Education .............................................................................................. 16 3.1.3. Health Equity and Well-being ...................................................................... 19 3.1.4. Criminal Justice and Street Checks ................................................................ 21 3.1.5. Housing and Community ............................................................................. 23 3.1.6. Grants .................................................................................................. 25 3.2. Intersecting Barriers ....................................................................................... 26 4. Policy Review ..................................................................................................... 28 4.1. City of Vancouver .......................................................................................... 28 4.2. City Organizations .......................................................................................... 31 4.2.1. The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) ......................................................... 31 4.2.2. Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation ........................................................ 32 4.2.3. Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) ................................................................... 32 4.2.4. Vancouver School Board (VSB) ...................................................................... 33 5. Other Jurisdictions ............................................................................................... 34 5.1. Halifax “Formal Apology for Africville” ................................................................. 34 5.2. Toronto “Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism” ................................................ 35 5.3. City of Memphis “Black Restaurant Week” ............................................................. 36 5.4. New York City “Black in NYC: Protections against Discrimination for Black New Yorkers” ...... 37 5.5. City of Baton Rouge “My Brother’s Keeper” ............................................................ 38 6. Emergent Themes from Interviews with City Staff and Community Engagement ....................... 39 7. Gap Analysis and Conclusion ................................................................................... 43 8. Long-Term Recommendations .................................................................................. 45 8.1. Recommendations from the Report of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and Other Literature ..................................................................................... 45 8.2. Community-based Recommendations ................................................................... 48 8.3. Actions from Other Jurisdictions ......................................................................... 50 8.4. Principles for Ongoing Practice and Engagement ...................................................... 51 9. Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 52 Appendix: Summary of City of Toronto Action Plan to Combat Anti-Black Racism 2 | P a g e Executive Summary “Despite Canada’s reputation for promoting multiculturalism and diversity… Canada’s history of enslavement, racial segregation, and marginalization, has had a deleterious impact on people of African descent which must be addressed in partnership with communities.” - UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its Mission to Canada This project seeks to put forward recommendations which the City of Vancouver (hereinafter referred to as “the City”) can adopt to address anti-Black racism in Vancouver. This project entailed identifying how anti-Black racism impacts Black people and communities and reviewing City policies with a view to ascertaining measures that have been put in place to address anti-Black racism. Policies of City organizations such as the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), and Vancouver School Board (VSB) were also reviewed. A review of anti-Black equity best practices was also conducted and recommendations were provided based on the literature review, best practice review and interviews held with a handful of Black Vancouverites. In 2016, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent1 issued a report expressing concern about anti-Black racism in Canada. They pointed to “Canada’s history of enslavement, racial segregation, and marginalization” as the root of anti-Black racism in Canada. Through this project, we realize that anti-Black racism has far reaching implications on Black Vancouverites, and we understand why the UN Working Group is “deeply concerned about the human rights situation of African Canadians.” We discover that Blacks experience discrimination in various areas. In terms of income and employment, Black workers have the highest earnings gap compared to other ethnic groups that make up the Canadian workforce. Similarly, white employers and even governmental agencies rarely hire and promote Black people. In Vancouver, the median income of Black Canadians is $29,000 compared to $42,000 earned by white Canadians. Immigrants who are white also record increased earnings over time compared to Black immigrants. With respect to education, curriculum, pedagogy and assessments have steadfastly failed to recognize pertinent issues of anti-Black racism which take place in schools on a daily basis. Black students also have to deal with invisibility and erasure considering that curricula do not include topics about African Canadian contributions to the society or 1 The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent is a special procedure established by the Human Rights Council to look into issues of racism, discrimination, xenophobia, faced by Africans across the world. The Working Group visited Canada between October 17 and 21, 2016 and issued a report following the mission. See https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/WGAfricanDescent/Pages/WGEPADIndex.aspx. 3 | P a g e about the history of slavery and segregation in Canada. Additionally, Black students do not feel safe in school due to incidences of anti-Black racism (such as the Lord Byng Secondary school incident) which occur within the four-walls of educational institutions and are not adequately addressed or nipped in the bud. In the criminal justice system, Black people are overrepresented in prisons across Canada. In 2017, the VPD released data which revealed that despite making up one percent of the population, Black people accounted for five percent of street checks conducted. This has therefore caused concern about the manner in which street checks are being carried out. Racial profiling is also a challenge and statistics show that Black males experience racial profiling more frequently than white males. The incident at the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences which held at UBC, where Shelby McPhee (a Black student who was attending the conference), was racially profiled and falsely accused of stealing a laptop by two white women, is another case in point. Accessing housing and grants is another area where anti-Black racism occurs. For housing, studies show that white landlords are usually unwilling to rent to Black people and statistics reveal that Blacks