It’s a line heard so many times before, and with each utterance of this trite response by someone—usually a stuffy white guy in a position of power—I wonder the same things: what draws white people to use food‐based metaphors to dismiss complex social issues? Are they aware in every instance where they default to this contemptuous idiom it makes them sound just a little bit more racist? Are they aware that in offering this sad and tired turn of phrase they’re actually admitting they don’t understand the situation—be it actual bad apples or institutionalized racism—at all?
In its entirety, the saying goes a bad apple spoils the bunch. Today it’s used to illustrate how the undesirable actions of a few individuals within a group can not only tarnish the reputation of the entire group, but, more importantly, could cause those undesirable actions to spread if left unchecked. This second part of the metaphor appears to be where the lesson has been lost, so perhaps a literal examination will help clear things up.
What happens to actual bad apples? They’re disposed of. Why? Because no one wants them. They’re not desirable or generally useful when compared to good apples. Bad apples don’t get to continue hanging around the other apples once they’re discovered. They don’t get a chance to attract flies as they continue to rot and stink up the place. And they don’t get promoted to be head of the apples or king of the pies. Would you accept a grocer’s explanation of there’s always a few bad apples when questioned about the declining quality of the apples in their store? If there’s indeed always a few bad apples, when does the conversation move away from acknowledging what’s already painfully known about the state of some of the apples to what’s going on at the orchard?
Throughout last week I had been watching videos by Amber Ruffin on her experiences with the police:
In Ruffin’s first video she shares an experience where she feared for her own life. As upsetting as it was to hear about her experience, it wasn’t the most upsetting thing she said in the video. That came near the video’s conclusion, when she said every black person she knew had a few stories like that. Not a few black people, but every. And not one story, but a few. That’s too many. That’s a few too many stories about a few bad apples.
I don’t know how many black people Ruffin knows. But does knowing either way make the situation any more or less horrible? Any number over zero starts to paint a grim picture almost immediately. How grim? Let’s look at some uncomfortable numbers and make some uncomfortable assumptions. Yeah—it might get a little uncomfortable. And if reading about this situation is uncomfortable then imagine what living it must be like.
But first… I am not a researcher, statistician, or sociologist. I am not a member of a traditionally marginalized racial community. I’m not even American. I am an outsider to a situation attempting to generalize the experiences of another individual and scale them up to gain a rough idea of what’s being experienced at a national level.
Data from the US Census Bureau shows 40.9 million people living in the Unites States who identify as African American. That’s more than the entire population of Canada, and amounts to about 12% of the total population of the United States. Ruffin says every black person she knows has a few stories like the ones she shared. She shared four stories out of what she said were thousands more. I would hope there was an amount of hyperbole in her statement, but—
Step into a hypothetical world where each of those 40.9 million people will each have a few experiences like the ones Ruffin had. In this world a few will mean 5 experiences. That’s 204.5 million frightening—possibly fearing for one’s life frightening—experiences with the police. These experiences will happen over time, and in this world that time will be 10 years, so that’s 20.45 million terrifying interactions with law enforcement per year. That works out to just over 56,000 people terrified per day, everyday, anywhere in the land of the free, for the next ten years. That’s just over 2000 people per hour, just under 40 people per minute. That’s a traumatic experience starting about every 1.5 seconds for the next decade.
Data from the US Department of Justice shows about 800,000 sworn officers (officers authorized to make arrests) working part and full‐time in state and local law enforcement. There are roughly 120,000 federal officers authorized to make arrests as well. That’s about 920,000 officers. How many of them are poorly trained, overly aggressive, violent sadists? Just a few? Is a few 1%? That would suggest 9,200 of America’s finest are responsible for 56,000 traumatic experiences per day.
—it’s just a few bad apples.
As Canadian it’s easy to see the blatant racism in America and condemn it—without hesitation. But as is often the case in Canada, this condemnation comes with its own set of national blinders. Canada too often pats itself on the back when it comes to progress on social issues, too often congratulates itself for being better than United States of America, too often forgets that being better than among the worst is still not great. The racism in Canada is different than the racism in the United States. It’s not nearly as blatant here. It sits just below the surface, cropping up just often enough to create the illusion of isolated incidents which reinforce a notion of it can’t happen here.
But it does happen here. The Ku Klux Klan registered their first provincial chapter in Toronto in 1925. Their activities spread throughout the still developing country, taking hold primarily in Saskatchewan where a membership of about 25,000 included Walter Davy Cowan, the Mayor of Regina. Cowan would later go on to serve as a federal MP for two different ridings under two different political parties, all while serving as the provincial treasurer for the KKK until his death in 1934. In Ontario, cross burnings took place outside of London and Kingston in the mid to late 1920s.
Racially segregated communities for black and white Canadians existed and were challenged in 1946 when Viola Desmond was removed from the whites only section of a theatre in Nova Scotia. Africville, also in Nova Scotia, was a predominately black segregated community whose history predates Canada’s. This settlement was left to crumble in the 1960s as the city of Halifax failed to provide such basic services as roads, water, and sanitation. The last segregated school in Halifax closed in 1983.
Black Canadians experience disproportionate levels of poverty and incarceration as compared to white Canadians, particularly in Toronto. Black Lives Matter protests have been held in Toronto since 2015 when Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby were both shot to death during separate incidences with police. A major protest was held in 2016 at the headquarters of the Toronto Police Services. By then a deemed illegal yet still practised form of policing known as carding had overwhelmingly been demonstrated to target black people.
Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, said recently the racism in Canada had none of the systemic, deep roots that are present in America. Ford later retracted his comments. Perhaps he was made aware that the last segregated school in Ontario closed one year after he was born, in 1965. Or perhaps that the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in Ontario was created in 1990 as a response to the Black Action Defence Committee accusation of the Toronto police being the most murderous in North America.
On May 27th of this year Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell to her death from a high-rise balcony. Officers from the Toronto police were the only witnesses to this event. Compounding the tragedy is an open question over how Korchinski-Paquet came to fall: was she pushed by the police?
That the question is even asked, that the question is unanswered pending investigation, that alone should be enough to exemplify the level of distrust and trauma present in the experiences of black Canadians. Those experiences are the result of the systemic, deeply rooted racism too often denied as existing in Canada. And the existence of that unanswered question says more about the state of racism in this country than the 21 infuriating and embarrassing seconds of silence used to denounce the state of racism in another.