Special to National Post
By Dr. Kwame McKenzie
© Provided by National Post People walk by a mural of George Floyd in Graffiti Alley in downtown Toronto, on June 11, 2020. The well-known Toronto alleyway was painted with prominent Black figures and messages of solidarity against anti-Black racism.
COVID-19 has taught us a lot about ourselves as a country. It has shown us that we can be resilient when we work together. We have worked hard to protect each other and that has kept the rates of COVID low compared with many other countries.
It has also increased our understanding of mental health problems. On top of the physical health challenges posed by COVID-19 there have been many other concerns including people worrying about families, finances and housing. Canadians understand that these stresses increase the risk of mental health problems and are one explanation for the higher rates of anxiety, depression and substance use that have been reported in pandemic surveys .
But some groups may be at higher risk than others. The Canadian Medical Association has calculated that 85 per cent of our risk of any illness is based on such factors as poverty, unemployment, bad jobs, poor housing quality, lower levels of education, being victims of crime, pollution, discrimination, and poorer access to health and social care . Communities with greater exposure to the negative aspects of any of these social factors have a higher risk of mental health problems.
The Black population of Canada is exposed to many of these factors .
For instance, the Black population has one of the highest rates of poverty and food bank usage in Canada and things are getting worse. The general rule for immigrant populations in Canada is that each generation outperforms the next. It is hard to start but once you find your feet in this country, your children and then their children reap the benefits. Rates of poverty for your children are lower and for their children lower still. But in Ontario, the opposite is true: Black grandchildren are more likely to live in poverty than their grandparents.
Black children, particularly boys, do less well at school than their parents, especially if their parents came to Canada with a degree. This is not for want of trying; Black kids are more likely to want to get a degree than white kids according to Statistics Canada, but something goes wrong in the school system. Thwarted aspirations are linked to poorer mental health.
And even if people progress at school, Black people in Canada are paid less on average than other people with the same education, and are sometimes paid less for the same job. There are a huge number of scientific papers demonstrating increased rates of anxiety, depression and even psychosis in people who believe they are being unfairly treated by employers because of their race.
'We have to believe': Youth can fight anti-Black racism in Canada
COVID-19 has taught us a lot about ourselves as a country. It has shown us that we can be resilient when we work together. We have worked hard to protect each other and that has kept the rates of COVID low compared with many other countries.
It has also increased our understanding of mental health problems. On top of the physical health challenges posed by COVID-19 there have been many other concerns including people worrying about families, finances and housing. Canadians understand that these stresses increase the risk of mental health problems and are one explanation for the higher rates of anxiety, depression and substance use that have been reported in pandemic surveys .
But some groups may be at higher risk than others. The Canadian Medical Association has calculated that 85 per cent of our risk of any illness is based on such factors as poverty, unemployment, bad jobs, poor housing quality, lower levels of education, being victims of crime, pollution, discrimination, and poorer access to health and social care . Communities with greater exposure to the negative aspects of any of these social factors have a higher risk of mental health problems.
The Black population of Canada is exposed to many of these factors .
For instance, the Black population has one of the highest rates of poverty and food bank usage in Canada and things are getting worse. The general rule for immigrant populations in Canada is that each generation outperforms the next. It is hard to start but once you find your feet in this country, your children and then their children reap the benefits. Rates of poverty for your children are lower and for their children lower still. But in Ontario, the opposite is true: Black grandchildren are more likely to live in poverty than their grandparents.
Black children, particularly boys, do less well at school than their parents, especially if their parents came to Canada with a degree. This is not for want of trying; Black kids are more likely to want to get a degree than white kids according to Statistics Canada, but something goes wrong in the school system. Thwarted aspirations are linked to poorer mental health.
And even if people progress at school, Black people in Canada are paid less on average than other people with the same education, and are sometimes paid less for the same job. There are a huge number of scientific papers demonstrating increased rates of anxiety, depression and even psychosis in people who believe they are being unfairly treated by employers because of their race.
'We have to believe': Youth can fight anti-Black racism in Canada
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I could add other factors such as precarious housing, increased rates of criminal prosecution and imprisonment (though there is little evidence of increased offending), and more recently, poorer public health responses to COVID-19, which have meant that the Black community in Toronto, which comprises eight per cent of the population, has accounted for 17 per cent of the people hospitalized .
The term anti-Black racism was coined in Canada to describe the sum total of the social inequalities that the Black population lives with day in and day out, and the fact that as a country, we are not doing enough to deal with them. The social inequalities lead to increased stress, but this stress is supercharged by the fact that the Black community sees that the inequalities seem to be linked to race and that action supposed to promote equality for them has not been effective and rarely goes beyond words.
It produces a toxic psychological environment for Black people in this country.
That environment is worsened by the history of slavery and the lack of an apology for slavery in Canada. It is not helped by increasing rates of hate crimes and everyday racism. It is not helped by seeing that Muslims in Canada can be murdered outside their mosques or just walking along the road.
Black people have worked hard over centuries to build Canada, but the Black population has been left behind when it comes to sharing in the economic benefits of their labour.
The Black population is resilient and there are those who have managed to use adversity to move themselves forward. But they are more likely to be the exception rather than the rule. Studies show a predictable increased risk of some mental health problems in Black people in Canada.
Decreasing the mental health problems linked to COVID-19 requires government policies that recognize the strain we are putting people under and the development of strategies to help those who predictably will struggle. Decreasing the mental health risks for the Black population requires us to recognize the impacts of anti-Black racism.
The recovery gives us an opportunity to start a new chapter in Canada. It could be a chapter where we give everyone an equal chance. To do that we have to decide whether we want to continue racial trauma in Canada or whether we think it is time for all of us to work together to build a better and fairer country.
National Post
Dr. Kwame McKenzie is CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a research and policy institute that works to improve health and health equity in the Greater Toronto Area.
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