Toronto bus shelter posters target anti-black racism in hiring

People using Toronto public transit will be seeing some striking posters in city bus shelters as part of an anti-racism campaign targeting the way employers may be dismissing potential hires based on race.

One of the posters features a black man beside a white man. Underneath is the question: "Which one wouldyou hire?" The posters urge people to confront their attitudes about race.

They're part of a campaign launched by the City of Toronto and the Ontario Council of Agencies ServingImmigrants. OCASI executive director Debbie Douglas is leading the campaign called Toronto for All.

Douglas says the posters ask employers who see them to think about their gut reaction to the images.

"And to be honest with themselves, and to say, 'Why did I automatically choose the white guy, why did I automatically choose the white woman? What does that mean?'"

She said organizersdon't expect the ads to change systemic racism, but they may helpTorontoniansraise their awarenessand join the fight againstracism.

"Anti-black racism happens on a daily basis ... in all of our lives," she said.

"In my own life, it's everything from walking into a high-end store and being approached right away and told how expensive the goods are. It's walking in to do a keynote address and it's assumed that I'm a student who's walked into the room."

Racism is "pernicious, it's buried, and it's always there," Douglas told Metro Morning on Friday as the campaign got under way.

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As for inequality in the workplace, Douglas said black women in Canada make 37 per centless than white men and 15 per centless than white women, citing a 2011 report from the Wellesley Institute, by Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi, called Canada's Colour-Coded Labour Market.

Racism, she said, also shows up on the TTC. "I watch how black students are over-policed in terms of having to prove school identity if they're using a student card as TTCfare."

She said the accumulative effect of racismon the psycheshows up in the stress levels of young people and their families, "and in the kinds of illness we see in blackpeople, everything from hypertension to diabetes."

Last June,OCASI launched a similar campaigntargeting bigotry against Muslims, following attacks on women wearing hijabs and negative comments about newly settled Syrian refugees.