Content warning: This post discusses and describes the Canadian Residential School System and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Please take care when reading.
What is the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination?
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is recognized each year on March 21st to call attention to the ongoing injustices and discrimination faced each day by Indigenous peoples, racialized groups, and religious minority communities. The purpose of this day is to recognize that while we have come a long way, the work to end discrimination is nowhere near complete. This day marks the start of a week dedicated to standing in solidarity with those struggling against racism and racial discrimination.
History of International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination
March 21st marks the day that police in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire on a group of peaceful protestors protesting apartheid “pass laws” in 1960. These laws required Black citizens of South Africa to carry a document similar to a passport to segregate the population as well as track and monitor their movements. If a person did not have the correct permissions to be in a certain area, they were arrested. Though the apartheid system has since been dismantled, this tragic event sparked the need for a time designated to recognizing and fighting racial discrimination. In 1979, the United Nations General Assembly used the day of this event to mark the beginning of a week dedicated to recognizing and standing in solidarity with those struggling against racial discrimination, known as the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Racial Discrimination in Canada
Canada’s colonial past has shaped the discrimination and marginalization present in this country, which continues to remain a significant and dangerous problem. Higher poverty rates, poor quality healthcare, poor or lack of housing, lack of access to quality education, and higher rates of incarceration are all ways that discrimination impacts racialized communities in Canada. While many racist laws and practices have been eliminated, systemic racism continues to normalize these disproportionate impacts and reinforces biases towards racialized groups.
In Canada, Indigenous communities face intergenerational impacts of colonialism. Between the 1800s and 1996, Indian Residential Schools were opened and run by the Government of Canada and various religious organizations to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children to Canadian society. This resulted in cultural erasure and the death of thousands of the children who were taken from their families and forced to attend. Other historical policies such as the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act discriminated against Chinese Canadians by forcing Chinese immigrants to pay a tax in order to immigrate to Canada, then completely banning Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants also faced discrimination through segregation policies that disallowed them to swim in the same pools or sit in the same area of the theater as white Canadians. These policies separated families and had lasting intergenerational impacts on Chinese Canadians.
UBC Resources
The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at UBC addresses the impacts of Residential Schools and provides a space where survivors, their families, and other Indigenous community members can access their records and engage with academic collaborators around issues of information work.
UBC’s Equity and Inclusion Office has introduced the Strategic Equity & Anti-Racism (StEAR) Framework to help guide the university’s roadmap to change. The framework sets out a number of objectives and strategic actions to be implemented over the next few years to guide strategic, curricular, compositional, and interactional change. The StEAR framework also provides a Governance Model to support implementation and accountability.
In 2020, UBC began the implementation of the Indigenous Strategic Plan, taking a leading role in the advancement of Indigenous people’s human rights. This plan consists of a set of 43 actions the university will take based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and has been created in collaboration with community groups and Indigenous partners.
UBC Library
Dere, W. G. W. (2019). Being Chinese in Canada: The struggle for identity, redress and belonging (1st ed.). Douglas & McIntyre. [Available at UBC Library]
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism (1st ed.). Beacon Press. [Available at UBC Library]
Elliott, A., & Xwi7xwa Collection. (2019). A mind spread out on the ground. Doubleday Canada. [Available at UBC Library]
Methot, S. (2019). Legacy: Trauma, story and indigenous healing. ECW Press. [Available at UBC Library]
Morrison, T. (2017). The origin of others (1st ed.). Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674982628 [Available at UBC Library]
Web Sources Consulted: