Racism is when people in power decide groups of other people, for whatever reason, are different, that they’re inferior in some way.

But it doesn’t always have to be white people in power framing people of colour as inferior. That certainly qualifies as racism, but it ignores other racism.

For example, 100 years ago, Anglo-Saxon North Americans saw Irish people as inferior. They saw Italian people as inferior. They saw Slavic people and other Eastern Europeans as inferior. But put any of these people against Anglo-Saxon people and you’d barely be able to see the difference between their skin colour.

Yet despite both groups being “white”, one group was racist toward the other. That was possible because the ethnic group in power decided that other ethnic groups were inferior.

Or take the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia. They were forced to learn the languages of the imperial states who claimed ownership of Sámi ancestral lands. There was also pressure on the Sámi to become Christian. The Sámi were subjected to forced sterilization. The Sámi were displaced to make way for settlers from the south and for economic development of the region. All this despite looking superficially like the southern people who oppressed them.

And it’s not just “white” people either.

For example, when the Japanese occupied the Korean peninsula, they outlawed education beyond just primary school, which, of course, limited social mobility for Koreans. The Japanese owned about 94% of the capital produced by Korean factories. They severely limited the freedom of the Korean press. By WWII, the Korean language was no longer taught in school. The Japanese stole tens of thousands of Korean cultural artifacts. They saw Korea as backwards and in need of modernization, yet that modernization benefited Japan, extracting and exporting natural resources for Japan’s use. Koreans were forced to take Japanese names. Finally, they forced Shintoism onto the Korean people, displacing other religions.

Korea wasn’t the only area occupied by Imperial Japan. Okinawa, Taiwan, Micronesia, parts of eastern Russia, parts of China, also fell victim to their colonial efforts.

You can see this same sort of racial hierarchy throughout the world. The Rwandan genocide, the Guatemala civil war, the Ürümqi riots in China, and others all have race at their core.

Racism isn’t about the colour of skin. It’s about power. And those who have the power get to decide who belongs to the empowered race.

Let’s take mass shootings.

According to Statista, of the mass shooting that occurred in the United States between 1982 and 2019, 2.6% were committed by women. However, women make up 36% of the people who own guns. If gun ownership is connected to gun violence, then shouldn’t women make up a proportion of mass shooters closer to 36% than 2.6%?

Likewise, during the same period, black people accounted for 16.7% of the perpetrators of mass shootings. Gun ownership is 19% black. Same goes for Latin Americans: 8.8% of mass shootings but 20% gun ownership. If gun ownership is connected to gun violence, then shouldn’t black people make up a proportion of mass shooters closer to 19% than 16% and Latin Americans closer to 20% than 8.8?

On the other hand, men make up 97.4% of those responsible for mass shootings yet only 64% of gun owners. As well, white people make up 57% of mass shootings despite making up only 41% of gun owners. Men make up a larger proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings than they do for gun ownership. Likewise, white people make up a larger proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings than they do gun ownership.

Maybe it’s not gun ownership we should be talking about.

Maybe we should be discussing why men are responsible for almost all of the US mass shootings over a period spanning nearly 4 decades? Maybe we should be discussing why white people are disproportionately responsible for more US mass shootings than any other ethnic group.

When we call out the racism of other people, we perpetuate the idea that racism is restricted to a small collection of acts. We otherize racism: these things that other people do is racism, and since we don’t do them, we’re not racist.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Donald Trump calling Mexican immigrants animals and rapists or it’s Justin Trudeau wearing brownface. The point is the same: when we highlight their specific acts—especially when they’re acts that we wouldn’t partake in—we make racism foreign to us, making us immune to it.

Except we’re not immune to it; each of us is racist. You see, racism isn’t innate; it’s something we have to learn. We learn it from our friends, from our parents, from the media, from classmates, from neighbours, from Sunday School teachers, from siblings, and from a whole host of everyday interactions with others.

Racism can be taught in several ways. It can be how a parent responds to a person of colour walking by on the street, or how a cashier responds to a non-white customer, or how a cop changes how they talk to someone based on their skin colour.

And we all pick it up over time. We internalize it. And it becomes part of our understanding about racialized people. It’s how groups of people become racialized. And we can’t hide our own racism behind the overt racism of public figures. Focusing on their racism doesn’t absolve us of ours.

See the attached photo by Sean Kilpatrick of The Canadian Press? Where are the people of colour among the reporters questioning Trudeau on his racism? Maybe while the media is nailing Trudeau to the wall for his racism, they can investigate why their reporting corps is so white.

Speaking of hypocrisy, where are all the people calling on Trudeau to apologize and step down on the racism inherent in the justice system? Where are they on the racism inherent in the everyday lives of people of colour as they try to shop, try to rent homes, try to get jobs? Where are they on the racism inherent in the systematic removal of children from Indigenous communities?

You want to call out political leaders on their racism? Fine. But you better be calling out all the racism around you while you’re at it, including your own.

This might come as a shock to people who actually know me well, who have seen me criticizing racist power structures that favour white people. But let me explain.

You see, racism isn’t innate; it’s something we have to learn. We learn it from our friends, from our parents, from the media, from classmates, from neighbours, from Sunday School teachers, from siblings, and from a whole host of everyday interactions with others.

The thing about racism is that it doesn’t need to be overt for it to be racist. Just because I never call a black person a nigger, for example, doesn’t mean I’m not racist. Likewise, someone doesn’t need to tell you that “Indians are drunk and lazy” for them to teach you racism.

Racism can be taught in several ways. It can be how a parent responds to a person of colour walking by on the street, or how a cashier responds to a non-white customer, or how a police officer changes how they talk to someone based on their skin colour.

It can be how your neighbour responds abruptly to an old First Nations person walking on the sidewalk because he doesn’t realize the Blackfoot he is speaking is simply, “How are you”. It can be your brothers making fun of your sister’s new friend because she happens to be Cree. It can be your parents mentioning that someone breaking into your house was “Indian”, as if that explained their actions somehow. It can be your boss charging a surcharge every time he has to do a cleaning job on the nearby reserve because a previous customer out there wasted his time. It can be your classmates saying Sikh classmates never shower. It can be your Sunday School teacher telling you to marry only white people. It can be your friend saying, “It’s okay if I say ‘prairie n——’ because I’m part Métis.”

All these things add up over the years, and unchecked, can influence how you perceive someone based on their skin. And that can take a long time to undo.

Recognizing that you have prejudicial biases, I think, is the first step to eliminating those biases. What matters is being self-aware enough to notice when your biases surface, and changing your response to them. Instead of feeding and perpetuating those biases, we need to question them and prevent them from manifesting in our words and deeds.

Check it and correct it.

Ask yourself why you feel uncomfortable when three persons of colour are coming toward you on the sidewalk. Ask yourself why your circle of friends include so few persons of colour. Ask yourself why you view your person of colour friend as an exception; why you don’t use them to inform your opinion of others from that group.

I’m white. 100% European white. I’m the product of settlers, some of whom invaded Canada over 400 years ago. I grew up in white communities. White communities that, while predominately white, still had sizable populations of persons of colour. All this influenced what I was taught, both directly and indirectly. And all those lessons I learned stuck. And though my first memory of standing up against racism was 35 years ago, I still catch myself entertaining these biases.

And noticing them hasn’t been something that has come naturally. Just like I learned racism; I have had to learn how to recognize it and try to change it. I’m still learning. If I had to guess, I’d say that every day I’m exposed to new insights or information that help me to better understand the challenges persons of colour face living in a white persons world. And how my attitudes toward those challenges perpetuate white privilege.

So, yes, I’m racist. It’s how I was raised by my racist community. But I recognize my racism, and I’m trying to change it.