Anti-Racism, Ontario Style

In: Race & class: a journal on racism, empire and globalisation, Volume 37, Issue 3, p. 35-45

Abstract

Conceptualizes the history of antiracist policies of the Canadian Labour government in Ontario (1990-1995) as an attempt to change the culture of the civil service, a basic conflict between older ideologies & new social movements, & as the creation of an uneasy relationship between antiracism & class politics. More specifically, it is suggested that the Anti-Racism Secretariat & the culture that developed in its bureaucracy constrained antiracist efforts in a variety of ways, perhaps most importantly because the secretariat held to a multicultural rather than antiracist understanding of racism. Whereas antiracist ideology took the position that racism was deeply embedded in capitalist institutions, systems, practices, & cultures, multicultural approaches gained ascendance because they steered clear of class politics. Thus, antiracist policies ultimately foundered on the shoals of class politics, as the Anti-Racism Secretariat ultimately proved incapable of satisfying the social movement that founded it, the bureaucracy that resisted it, or the older multicultural ideology against which it fought. D. M. Smith