Some of us wrongly interpret systemic racism as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. Systemic racism means almost the opposite.
It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them.
This means police alone are not the problem. We should not jeopardize the trust relationship among key partners committed to addressing systemic racism and hate. We need to rise above the narrow focus on one institution or another.
Chief Peter Sloly sums it up very well here https://lnkd.in/dKPk-P3 :
“….individual and systemic racism exists in Canadian policing, in all Canadian institutions and in Canadian society as a whole…. these institutions are interdependent, interactive and compounding on each other…. To dismantle systemic racism (along with all forms of discrimination) in policing, we need to make positive investments in police culture, police operations and the broader institutional ecosystem that the police operate in.”
