Chapter 1: History of Race and Racism
Mackenzie Wiebe
Important Concepts and Definitions
Race is a way to categorize humans by their physical qualities, such as skin colour, eye shape, or hair texture (Smedley et al., 2020; Thurman et al., 2019). The concept of race was introduced in the 1600s, when Europeans were colonizing the Americas, Africa, Australia, and many parts of Asia (Santos Zanchetta et al., 2021; Smedley et al., 2020). By the 1700s, race was widely used to sort and rank people in society. It gave higher social status to White people and lower social status to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people (Smedley et al., 2020). These ideas about racial hierarchies were then put into laws, policies, and social practices. Many still exist in Canada today (Smedley et al., 2020; Thurman et al., 2019).
However, people in one racial group are not biologically or genetically distinct from people in others (Ackerman et al., 2019; Smedley et al., 2020). Across races, humans have much more in common biologically than not (Ackerman et al., 2019; Smedley et al., 2020). Race does exist, but racial differences are created by society (Ackerman et al., 2019; Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020; Smedley et al., 2020; Thurman et al., 2019). This is known as a social construct: over time, society has pointed out certain physical traits of humans to divide people nto groups, deeming one group superior and other groups inferior (Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020; Thurman et al., 2019). Race is then “used as a basis for privilege and economic exploitation” (Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020, p. 116). Race is used to create racism.
Racism is “a system of oppression and privilege based on race” (Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020, p. 115). It is a combination of racial prejudice and social power. This means that for racism to exist, there must be discrimination coming from those who have more social power than the people facing the prejudice (Calgary Anti-Racism Education, n.d.). In Canadian society, it is White people who hold the social power when it comes to race. Therefore, White people cannot face racism, but all other racial groups in Canada can and do. Racial prejudice can be any discriminatory or derogatory behaviour, attitude, or belief that is based on views about race (Calgary Anti-Racism Education, n.d.; Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020). Racism both influences and happens in economics, employment, politics, health, justice, education, and the environment. It can come from individual people, groups, companies, institutions, or major social structures (Coleman, 2020; Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020; Thurman et al., 2019).
Racism causes negative health outcomes for Indigenous, Black, and Brown people (Coleman, 2020; Iheduru-Anderson et al., 2020). As Coleman (2020) noted, “Studies have linked racism to higher mortality rates, earlier onset of more severe and progressive diseases, and higher levels of comorbidity and impairment” (p. 642). These phenomena are known as racial healt