Institutional Racism In Canada

Racism takes on many forms in Canada. For instance, new racism expresses racist ideas by using coded language and masking them behind other social ideologies while old racism is more explicitly racist. Given that most people would not admit to being racist, measuring and studying racism can be difficult. Victimization surveys are one way that researchers collect useful information about how visible minorities perceive racism. However, these types of studies fail to accurately measure racism since some interactions - such as denial of a housing application based on race - are not always perceived as racism by the victims. Another method researchers use measure racism is social distance surveys. These surveys can be worded in a number of ways to ask individuals about how “comfortable” or “concerned” they are with minorities in a variety of situations.
This chapter describes three types of institutional racism.The first type of institutional racism being that racist ideas and assumptions directly influence social policies, programs or institutional practices. The second type comes in the form of policies and practices that were originally based on racist ideas but are no longer sustained by them; even though racism no longer sustains them, the policies and practices still exist. For example, the Indian Act was created under the assumption that Indigenous people were inferior, although this belief is now outdated the Indian Act is still in place. The third type of institutional racism involves programs and policies that appear to be ethnically neutral but still put minorities at a disadvantage. Zero tolerance policies in school would be considered the third type of institutional racism because although it appears to be ethnically/racially neutral it disproportionately targets black and other racialized