Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Less than 9 percent of Toronto’s population is Black. But they are more likely than
any other ethnic group to be arrested, charged, and killed by Toronto’s police,
according to a report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. They found that
Black Torontonians are 20 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than
those who are white. Black residents are also over-represented in non-deadly force
actions taken by the police, they are:
• Four times more likely to be pepper-sprayed
• Five times more likely to be tasered
• Six times more likely to be taken down by a police dog
And according to a survey of 1,500 Ontarians, 72 percent of Black Canadians
report having experienced racial profiling, the act of being targeted and
mistreated due to negative stereotypes associated with Black people. The
over-policing and abuse of power towards Black Canadians further highlights a
systemic racism problem in Canada. And while many consider Canada to be
“better” than America when it comes to race relations, we have a lot of work left
to do before we can even begin to make that claim.
ARTIFACTS 2:
Suspensions and expulsions are not the only ways that racism presents itself within
the Canadian school system. Black students receive two times fewer “Excellent”
ratings from their teachers, despite achieving the same scores on standardized
tests as their fellow students.
ARTIFACTS 3:
THE IMPACT OF RACISM BEHAVIOR AND DECISION
MAKING.
Over the past two decades, thousands of studies have demonstrated that
Blacks receive lower quality medical care than Whites, independent of
disease status, setting, insurance, and other clinically relevant factors.
Despite this, there has been little progress towards eradicating these
inequities. Almost a decade ago we proposed a conceptual model identifying
mechanisms through which clinicians' behavior, cognition, and decision
making might be influenced by implicit racial biases and explicit racial
stereotypes, and thereby contribute to racial inequities in care.
This paper applies evidence from several disciplines to further specify our
original model and elaborate on the ways racism can interact with cognitive
biases to affect clinicians' behavior and decisions and in turn, patient
behavior and decisions. We then highlight avenues for intervention and make
specific recommendations to medical care and grant-making organizations.