Racial Profiling is rampant. We are still faces at the bottom of the well.
In Canada and the United States, racist rallies that were a thing of the past has publicly emerged and politics is moving to the far right.
Black kids are still profiled in school as requiring special education or having some form of exceptionality.
Black kids and their parents are increasingly stressed by Children Aid Societies and Black kids are more likely to be taken into care, sometimes for the least infractions or allegations.
Prisons are overpopulated with Black men who should be in Universities. The criminal justice system remains systemically racist.
Black men are in distress numbers are disproportionately arrested, charged, assaulted, seriously injured or killed by police in the United States, Ontario, Canada, Guyana, the United Kingdom, and Trinidad. Extra-judicial killing by state agents that are troubling but justice for the victims remain illusory.
Whether its dressed as implicit bias, implicit racism, systemic racism, institutionalized racism or personal racism: it is racism.
Our justice system participants still don't get it on what is racial profiling.
Consumer racial profiling remains prevalent.
Black people are excluded in large numbers from corporate Canada's boardrooms and large law firms. One can still count the numbers because they are so low.
Discrimination in employment, whether it is in the public service or private sector remains the second highest grounds for applications under the Human Rights Code.
Access to justice remains illusory. On March 21, 2000, I wrote:
For those of us who are true, committed anti-racist, we must continue to fight against all of the evils of racism which evident within our society. We are not the first to fight this battle. We do not want the next generation to have to fight this battle again.
March 21 is a time for us to re-dedicate and re-commit ourselves to fight any and all social injustices that isn't beneficial to the society in which we were brought up [and in which some of us has adopted as our home].
Our continued fight has reinforced the meaning of moral courage, humility and integrity. We hope that the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Human Rights Commission can learn the meaning of moral courage, humility and integrity from us.
The truth hurts but it must be told.
While I remain hopeful. I have little to celebrate in 2018.
March 21, 2018
Selwyn A. Pieters
Barrister, Solicitor & Notary Public
of the Bars of Guyana, Trinidad and Ontario.
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