“Government is a colonial institution … It is government’s ethical and moral obligation to undo this legacy.”
––B.C. Ministry of the Attorney General
It’s official. Woke identity ideology is now law in British Columbia.
On May 16, B.C.’s Anti-Racism Act came into force, legally embedding identity politics into our formerly impartial public institutions.
The act’s stated aim is to rid provincial ministries, agencies and institutions of system-wide racism, colonialism and gender inequity. Under the law, the B.C. government must “create and support an anti-racism strategy that will identify and address racism in public policies, programs and services.”
This includes developing “anti-racism training standards, indicators and recruitment targets.” It must also measure progress towards those goals, as well as “hold government accountable” and “promote compliance” with the law.
“Government is a colonial institution and many of its existing policies and programs do not adequately represent or serve the province’s diverse populations. It is government’s ethical and moral obligation to undo this legacy…”
BC Ministry of the Attorney General
In fact, it is an astounding piece of legislation which opens the door for massive grift by diversity/equity/identity hucksters. And it will tie up huge amounts of public resources in government-wide navel-gazing and self-flagellation. The tragic kicker is that it will likely increase, rather than decrease, racial tension.
Content of character or colour of skin?
Readers may wonder if this assessment is over-reactionary. After all, most of us agree racial discrimination is wrong and we shouldn’t prejudge people based on race.
Neither would we disagree with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous dream of a society where people are judged by the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin.
Unfortunately, B.C.’s anti-racism law does not affirm these popular and common-sense sentiments. Instead, the progressive activist orthodoxy behind this legislation assesses King’s sentiments as “colorblindness,” and have branded it racist and white supremacist.
To supporters of this strain of activism, treating people equally minimizes the importance of race and denies their “lived experience.” For them, equal rights are a tactic for white people to ignore racism and the many benefits they receive from their “white privilege.”
“I did not see colour.”
John Horgan
The ruling NDP’s fealty to this ideology was vividly demonstrated during the 2020 provincial election, when then-premier John Horgan was asked to speak about his white privilege during the live televised leaders debate. In response, Horgan reflected on his time playing lacrosse with Asian and Indigenous players and how he had viewed everyone as the same: “I did not see colour.”
After the debate, he was verbally lambasted by party progressives and activist critics, and soon issued several groveling statements apologizing for the hurt and harm his comments had caused, noting that he was in fact “the personification of white privilege.”
While academics and media elites tut-tutted at what to them was an obvious misstep, the comment sections of media reports were filled with people questioning why he’d been attacked for expressing reasonable sentiments. Some were even upset that he caved to critics and apologized.
Imposed discrimination is okay in anti-racist agenda
So what does anti-racism mean to progressive activists?
Ibram X. Kendi is an academic and anti-racist guru. He is the best-selling author of books such as “How to be an Anti-Racist” and “How to Raise an Anti-Racist.” Kendi says anti-racists are defined by their opposition to racist policies, and “a racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.”
Kendi is adamant there can be no middle ground.
“There is no such thing as a non-racist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”
For anti-racists like Kendi, racism isn’t about ending all discrimination. Some types of discrimination are fine. In fact, racial discrimination can even be anti-racist if it’s serving their agenda.
“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is anti-racist. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination,” he says.
“If discrimination is creating equity, then it is anti-racist. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination.”
Ibram X. Kendi
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” according to Kendi.
The anti-racism apostle is also clear that anti-racism is something that will need to be imposed on people.
“An anti-racist America can only be guaranteed if principled anti-racists are in power, and then anti-racist policies become the law of the land, and then anti-racist ideas become the common sense of the people, and then the anti-racist common sense of the people holds those anti-racist leaders and policies accountable.”
Anti-racism is new law of the land
If this is the path to anti-racist nirvana, B.C. is well on its way.
Because Kendi’s catechism is having an increasing influence on our public institutions, media, academia, and the BC NDP itself. In fact, we are now at the point in Kendi’s manifesto where anti-racist policies have become the law of the land.
The stage was set with the 2022 passage of the Anti-Racism Data Act, which was based on various feedback and survey responses from thousands of British Columbians, many from groups paid to submit responses.
Ultimately, the data act concluded more race-based data was needed and it required the collection of additional information about such things as racial diversity in the public service and the racial identity of people who interact with the justice and healthcare systems. Policymakers can now use this data to sort policies, programs (even entire departments) into racist versus anti-racist categories.
After the data law was enacted by the Ministry of the Attorney General, work soon began on follow-up legislation with another call for responses. This round of consultations led with the assumption all institutions are riddled with systemic racism, and went so far as to dismiss concerns of respondents who disputed widespread societal racism, labelling them denialists.
The new Anti-Racism Act followed. It leveraged the race-based data from the previous law to construct a framework for discriminatory policies in pursuit of anti-racism. From this, we can expect an expansion of programs such as racially segregated events in schools and universities, and segregated public housing.
The latest anti-racism legislation accepts as a given several principles: B.C. is saturated in systemic racism; this racism is actively harming people; government must act urgently to create an equitable society and enable people to heal.
DEI bureaucracy will balloon
The Attorney General, the government’s top legal authority, is the ministry shepherding this manifesto into being across government.
The AG ministry will oversee and hire seven to 11 members to sit on the permanent “provincial committee on anti-racism.” In a blatantly hypocritical act of anti-racist discrimination, the ministry will ensure committee members are all “racialized,” with a majority experts in anti-racist advocacy, theory and training.
Growth of the diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy around this committee is baked into the legislation, with a provision for hiring an untold number of consultants and specialists to support its implementation.
This committee will create a blizzard of directives our public institutions will be required to comply with. There will be a “provincial anti-racism action plan,” with specific instructions for every public body on what to do to eliminate racism and advance equity.
Directed at all provincial public bodies – which are broadly defined and include everything from government ministries to professional regulators like the Law Society of BC – the action plan will be reviewed and revised every two years.
Mandatory training, racialized hiring, ‘intersecting identities’
The committee will be responsible for creating and implementing mandatory training for all employees and contractors. It will take a lot of time and grow the already expanding industry of “experts” who deliver this content into public servant minds. Never mind that research increasingly indicates this type of training generally feeds prejudice and hostility between groups, rather than reducing it, and has even been linked to the bullying and suicide of a principal in Ontario.
In keeping with Kendi’s philosophy that the only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination, the committee will create hiring targets for all public bodies. This will include targets for racialized and Indigenous people, and separate targets for general recruitment and recruitment to senior positions.
Just in case DEI apparatchiks run low on work, the legislation makes vague reference to also addressing Islamophobia, antisemitism, and “intersecting identities.”
Hiring targets are likely to drill down into ever more granular detail of applicants’ identities.
Administrators are instructed to focus on a person’s “intersectionality,” by considering “the ways in which an individual’s intersecting identities, including, without limitation, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, sex or religion, or an individual’s physical or mental disability” results in inequity.
This means hiring targets will likely drill down into ever more granular detail of applicants’ identities.
It won’t be enough to consider whether the number of racialized nurses at the hospital reflects the make-up of the general population. How about trans-racialized nurses? Or gay, trans-racialized nurses? Or Hindu, gay, trans-racialized nurses?
This may sound like parody, but it isn’t. This is what a hiring policy based on racial and intersectional equity actually looks like.
Of course, this will not be nearly enough guidance for our public servants. So, the provincial committee will create an “anti-racism assessment framework” for “systemic racism specific to Indigenous peoples.” This must be done in consultation with Indigenous people. It doesn’t specify which Indigenous people, but one suspects it will be the highly paid consultant variety.
And for regular non-Indigenous racism the government will create an entirely separate assessment framework, which will necessarily involve an entirely separate consultation process, with an entirely separate group of representatives from “racialized communities.”
Anti-racism ‘marching orders’ will tie up civil servants’ time and be a boon for consultants
Each public body will have to follow their marching orders in the constantly-updated provincial action plan. In doing so, they’ll be required to conduct yet another round of consultations with Indigenous and racialized communities. And they’ll need to conduct ongoing anti-racist assessments of their own work.
This will mean constantly working to identify racist policies and demonstrate how they will replace them with anti-racist policies, while also tweaking the racial and identity requirements for hiring and employee advancement.
All this will keep our public servants (the ones who are meant to spend their time providing us with services) very busy. To complete this work they will either need to reassign staff from their present duties, or hire new staff dedicated exclusively to anti-racist work.
My money is on the latter.
DEI hucksters in the non-profit sector will get a big boost from this law, which sets up a permanent open call for Indigenous and racialized consultant organizations to apply for government grants to unearth and fight racism.
DEI hucksters in the non-profit sector will get a big boost from this law.
It will be up to the legislature to decide how much money will be set aside for these contracts, but expect the not-for-profit bureaucracies that will come to depend on them to lobby hard for ongoing increases.
Some public bodies may be tempted to ignore or pay lip service to these requirements, and instead focus on delivering services to citizens. Not to fear, the anti-racists are prepared for racism shirkers.
Each public body must submit an annual report on its anti-racist activities. And no doubt the provincial committee and its army of consultants will be continuously consulting with them to ensure they keep marching forward.
If there’s doubts about compliance, the Attorney General has the power to appoint special anti-racist investigators – qualifications to be determined – to review compliance and report back with results and recommendations.
For especially wilful departments or administrators, the Attorney General can follow up with compliance orders.
And in case a future Attorney General isn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about delivering on the goals of this act, every 5 years an independent expert will review whether the government is faithfully implementing it. Naturally, this independent expert will be required to consult with DEI experts and consultants, among others.
Systemic racism is confirmed; no more hiring based on merit
The upshot is that B.C. has now effectively legally embedded the world view of ideologues like Ibram X. Kendi into every aspect of our public service.
Hiring based on merit is over: the best candidate will only get the job if hiring them also promotes racial equity.
The systemic racism of our government and society is now confirmed in law, and incessant witch hunts will be conducted to root it out.
The systemic racism of our government and society is now confirmed in law.
Anti-racist action is required every year, so woe unto any public body unable to find racism to act on. Expect the demand for racism to very quickly exceed supply.
Countless cadres of DEI experts – with strong echoes of Soviet political commissars – will be installed across government departments and agencies. Massive amounts of resources will be spent on interminable meetings, consultations, training, and self-flagellating, one-upmanship discussions on the escalating intricacies of intersectionality.
If you think our public service is wasteful and ideologically captured now, wait four years – the governing BC NDP is only a couple months into their new term.
And the politicizing of our once non-partisan public service will continue unabated as long as this law remains in place.