Why We're Not Racist

We've "shatter[ed] the myth of Canada as a colour blind nation," the London Free Press declares. "Canadians admit racist tendencies," asserts the Calgary Sun. It's "un sondage sans précédent," quips le Journal de Montreal. "59% of Quebecers say they're racist: Poll," reads the title of a CBC news story. You know, these polls are actually really starting to bother me. They distort public perceptions of reality and cause a sensation to sell stories, but they're just plain untruths! At the very least, they're half-truths - poorly conducted surveys masquerading somehow as facts. In what can only be described as an example of the Jon-Stewart-coined "Scare Font", Leger Marketing reported through its "representative" internet survey that 59% of Quebecers say they're racist, while 47% of Canadians overall say they're racist.

I don't know where to begin ripping into this poll. How about here: the question respondents were asked is as follows: "Personally, to what extent do you consider yourself as someone who is racist?" The answers were: 'Not at all racist', 'slightly racist', 'moderately racist', and 'strongly racist'. Obviously, this is some half-hearted attempt at a likert scale. The problem is this: it's assymetrical. Three categories of answers have people in some way labelling themselves racist. Of course you're going to force bias into these questions if the categories of answers aren't symmetrical!

The sampling in this poll is a joke. The report claims that it is a "representative" poll. That leaves out one crucial point - it's an internet survey. What does this mean? It means that the respondents are going to be disproportionately those WHO HAVE INTERNET ACCESS. This means that the respondents will tend to be urban, upper-middle class, well educated people who read the news and would spend their time on an internet marketing survey. Combined with the assymetrical categories, this creates a fundamental problem. The people who the poll will tend to sample from will be well-educated. A well-educated or better-educated person may attempt to look further into the question than the marketing firm would like. For example:

"I mean, platonically, on some grander scale, we're all racist in some way, right? I notice the race of my taxi driver. I see skin colour. I guess that means I'm slighty racist. If I'm not a 'Stephen-Colbert-I-don't-see-race' type then I should answer in the slightly racist category."
I assure you that's what a huge number of people who took this poll thought. And that's why we're supposedly all so racist - because we gave too much thought to a question.

What is racism? Can this one question be a valid indicator of racism? No! In fact, there are tons of statistics from the same survey that the news networks neglected to pick up that indicate how Canadians are tolerant. Other statistics include:

• 68% of Canadians believe all races are created equal. 11% answered 'don't know'.
• 92% don't care what race their cab driver is. 90% don't care what race their boss, neighbour or doctor is. Almost 70% don't care what race their child's spouse would be.
  
• 70% of Canadians believe racism is decreasing as a problem. 13% answered 'don't know'.

Canadians overwhelmingly think racism is declining. 90% don't care what prominent people in their lives are, whether it be a co-worker, someone who is serving you, someone who is caring for you, whatever. A large majority of Canadians believe that all races are equal.

Canadians as a whole are quite tolerant, but the sensationalist media decided on a whim to take a horribly misguided poll, misanalyze it, and report it to the masses. It's another sad day for the media in Canada.

-Tim Mak