Rebecca Johnson says racism was first officially identified in 2005 as an issue in Thunder Bay.
A dozen years later, and nothing much has changed.
The long-time at-large councillor and anti-racism advocate on Wednesday said she’s hopeful a newly launched community survey on racism and discrimination can provide an understanding of just how widespread the problem is and finally start the down the healing road.
It’s troubling it’s still a problem, Johnson said.
“Our whole society is changing and it’s unfortunate the people who are in our community and the people who are here have racism issues and they don’t like each other,” Johnson said. “I don’t know why we can’t respect each other, but we seem to not want to get along.”
Thunder Bay is not alone, Johnson added, pointing south of the border of an example of widespread racism. But it’s most definitely harming Thunder Bay’s reputation around the country, national media reports painting an unfavorable picture of the community and its relations with minorities, its Aboriginal residents and neighbours in particular.
The survey, which includes an online portion open to everyone and a scientific poll of 500 randomly selected individuals, should start to provide answers on what needs to change.
“It will give us a baseline of what’s happening. Maybe there are some issues that will come out of that that we can work on. I don’t what those will be at this point in time, but we have no ground, we have no baseline, we have nothing that says we have racism except we know that it’s here and it’s prevalent,” Johnson said.
“Hopefully this survey will help us determine next steps.”
Sandra Albertson, the director of community impact with the United Way of Thunder Bay, said there are several reasons for conducting a racism and discrimination survey.
First and foremost is the fact it is a pressing concern.
“Over the years, racism has come up again and again in the media and on social media, and is talked about in community conversations and personal conversations,” Albertson said.
“So what we want to do is get a better understanding of what racism looks like in our community and find out more from people who are affected by it and what types of actions are happening in the lives of people who are being affected by racism.”
The survey information will then be shared with community groups, who will be brought together around specific issues to help plan better ways to approach racism and discrimination going forward.
“The survey is a snapshot in time,” Albertson said.
The goal, if successful, is to repeat the process in future years to measure change.
Both the online survey, which can be found at www.uwaytbay.ca, and the telephone survey will be conducted between now and Feb. 3.
Results will be available in the spring.
