A ‘Reality Check’ on Charges of Racial Discrimination in Canada and the US

A woman holds a placard reading "white privilege" during a demonstration in Barcelona, Spain, on June 14, 2020. Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Progressive politicians and academics often assert that particular communities face racial barriers to employment, justice, and full participation in Canadian society.

Recently, a new think tank called The Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy (AFPP) published an intriguing demographic reality check about charges of discrimination in Canada.

The author of the AFPP report was Canadian economist and Financial Post contributor Matthew Lau. He pointed out that in December of 2021, all members of the Cabinet received a letter of mandate from Canada’s prime minister that included a statement about “profound systemic inequities and disparities that remain present in the core fabric of our society, including our core institutions.”

The author found identical sentiments contained in the federal government’s 2019–2022 “anti-racism strategy,” which claimed that “even today there are people and communities who experience systemic racism and discrimination.”

Mr. Lau also drew attention to a Department of National Defence (DND) assertion that “white supremacy was first woven into the fabric of Canadian society with the colonisation of Indigenous lands by European settlers.” Canada’s DND claims that “government and institutional policies have exercised discriminatory control over the citizenship rights of Indigenous People, racialised people, religious minorities and LGBTQ2+ communities.”

‘White Privilege’ Not Supported by Data

For decades, powerful neo-Marxist cultural authorities have insisted that North American descendants of European settlers are, by proxy, racists. In almost every corner of society, grievance industry intellectuals claim that “straight white supremacists” exercise disproportional control over the “oppressed” lives of racialized victims and LGBT communities.

Mr. Lau contends that popular allegations of “white male privilege” aren’t supported by hard evidence.

“Contrary to the narrative that racial minorities in Canada suffer widespread disadvantage,“ he wrote, ”a Statistics Canada analysis of the weekly earnings of Canadian-born individuals based on 2016 Census data found many visible minority groups out-earn the white population.”

In fact, raw data put the “white cohort” in the middle range of 20 groups that Mr. Lau selected for his research. The report found that “11 groups showed no statistically significant difference in earnings from the white population.” On the other hand, “5 minority groups had earnings statistically higher than the white population after controlling for employment and sociodemographic factors.” The author described similar findings in areas such as educational opportunity and access to professional occupations.

Mr. Lau concluded: “If the typical anti-racism activist in Canada today is looking for widespread institutional or systemic racism of the kind the federal government describes, they will not find it. Disparities in income, educational attainment, and other outcomes do not imply the existence of such discrimination.”

He maintains that the evidence of widespread racism is scant and that taking action to mitigate imagined prejudice is likely to do more harm than good.

Echoes From the United States

Recently, Thomas Sowell, an economist from the United States’ Hoover Institute, also examined the degree to which racism and other forms of discrimination are to blame for alleged social disparities.

In his latest book, “Social Justice Fallacies,” Mr. Sowell observes that “much of what is said in the name of ‘social justice’ implicitly assumes ... the seemingly invincible fallacy that various groups would be equally successful in the absence of biased treatment by others.”

The fashionable assumption is that systemic racism, practiced by bigoted descendants of North American colonists, makes it impossible for all groups of citizens to achieve “equitable” outcomes.

Like Mr. Lau, Mr. Sowell found this assumption to be a fallacy.

“At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed differences in their innate capabilities, these disparities are evidence or proof of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination,” he said.

Mr. Sowell acknowledges that human biases can explain unequal outcomes in some contexts, but this doesn’t mean all inequalities are the result of discrimination by malevolent majorities. In fact, in countries throughout history, marginal cohorts have been known to outperform dominant majorities. He suggests there are innumerable things such as history, culture, marital status, geography, and levels of education that can produce unequal chances and outcomes.

“Nor have those who automatically invoke discriminatory biases, as explanations for unequal outcomes, been able to cite any country, anywhere in the world, that has had the proportional demographic representation which they have made a criterion,” Mr. Sowell wrote.

Set Aside False Charges!

“Thus,” wrote Mr. Lau, “whether looking at the raw data or the apples-to-apples comparisons, Statistics Canada finds the white cohort had higher earnings than some minority groups and lower earnings than others.”

With regard to the issue of “white privilege” in the United States, Mr. Sowell pointed out that “Even today, in the twenty-first century, there are counties in the Appalachian regions of Kentucky—Clay County and Owsley County—that are more than 90 percent white, where the median household income is not only less than half the median household income of white Americans in the country as a whole, but also thousands of dollars less than the median household income of black Americans in the country.”

It appears that in both Canada and the United States, the theory that institutions are rigged against visible minorities in favor of the white population isn’t supported by actual government statistics.

For descendants of Europeans who arrived between the 17th and 19th centuries, it’s encouraging to hear from a Canadian author of Asian descent and one of the most distinguished black scholars in American history, who both have the courage to challenge unfounded accusations of ongoing “white privilege.”

This Christmas season might be a good time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden to set aside politically motivated charges of discrimination and begin to restore peace and goodwill among all citizens.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.