At the End of the Day

Recently, I read the final report of the Toronto Aboriginal Research Project (TARP), a community-based needs assessment of Toronto’s Native community commissioned by the Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council. It is the most comprehensive study conducted on the topic to date. Over 200 pages in length, the report provides information on the social, cultural, economic and political aspects of the Native community in Toronto. Many statistics in the report are unsettling. The numbers systematically and undeniably reveal the social and economic disparities between Native people and other sectors of the city. One of the statistics that kept coming to my mind since I read the report pertains to Native elders and seniors. The majority of Native older community members earn less than $20,000/year (2011, 137). While that is disconcerting enough, the report also notes that there is no representation of Native elders and seniors in the over $70,000 income category (ibid). When I read these statistics initially, for some reason it reminded me of another set of statistics, pertaining to the USA criminal system.

In August 2013, a Washington-based advocacy group released Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee: Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System (The Sentencing Project, 2013). This report also presents some unsettling, if unsurprising, statistics, which underscore the well-known racial disparities in the USA criminal system. Indeed, the USA has the highest incarceration rate globally, with an astounding seven million people incarcerated as of the end of 2011(ibid, 1). That alone disturbs me. The report also states that men racialized as black are six times more likely to be incarcerated than non-racialized men (ibid). “If current trends continue,” the report elaborates, “one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males - compared to one of every seventeen white males.” (ibid) Wow. I wouldn’t want to live with those odds.

These are the realities that words like racism and discrimination often fail to convey, because at the end of the day they are just words. Numbers are also just numbers, at the end of the day. The lived experience is where the full meaning of racism and discrimination is to be found.

References

McCaskill, Don, Kevin Fitz Maurice and Jaime Cidro. (2011). Toronto Aboriginal Research

Project Final Report. Commissioned by Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council. Accessed October 31, 2013: scribd.com/doc/71035214/TARP-Final-Report-FA-All-Oct-25-2011.

Roman, Marisha and Jonathan Rudin. (Oct. 17, 2006). Brief to the Standing Committee on

Justice and Human Rights on Bill C-9. Commissioned by Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. Accessed October 31, 2013: aboriginallegal.ca/docs/c-9.htm.  

The Sentencing Project. (2013). Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human

Rights Committee: Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System. Accessed October 31, 2013: sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_ICCPR%20Race%20and%20Justice%20Shadow%20Report.pdf