Episode Transcript
Elizabeth: Welcome to “Advancing justice,” a podcast that explores the interface between human rights, poverty, racism, and the criminal justice system by inviting researchers and practitioners to deepen our understanding of the issues. My name is Elizabeth McIsaac, president of Maytree. We’re a Toronto based organization exploring solutions to poverty in Canada using a human rights-based approach.
For this episode, I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Mai Phan. Mai is a data expert consultant who is passionate about data equity, social justice, equity, and human rights. She has over 20 years of experience teaching, researching, developing, and leading initiatives to address systemic barriers and promote inclusive practices and policies in public sector organizations.
Mai’s currently supporting the Toronto Police Service’s Race and Identity-Based Data Collection Strategy, an anti-racism data initiative. Previously, she was a senior research and policy advisor at the Anti-Racism Directorate at the province of Ontario, where she led the development of the Ontario Anti-Racism Data Standards and provided strategic advice to public sector organizations regulated to collect race-based data under the Anti-Racism Act.
In our conversation, Mai talks about the importance of collecting race-based data to address some of the systemic issues in the criminal justice system and what we need to consider before we proceed to collect and use race-based data to inform the way we achieve public safety and justice.
Welcome Mai, it’s so great to have you on the “Advancing justice” podcast. I want to in advance say thank you for the article that you submitted to the series that can be found on the Maytree website. It lays out such a great argument about the need for race-based data, in particular in the criminal justice system and how we think about it.
In the last 18 months, there’s been calls for race-based data in all kinds of areas: education, health, and most critically in the criminal justice system. Can you speak a little bit about how the collection of race-based data in the criminal justice system can address the over-representation of Black and Indigenous persons in that system?
Mai: We understand that over-representation in the criminal justice system is a complex thing. And it’s really just the tip of the iceberg that we see when it comes to systemic racial biases and racism in society. And it’s the result of so many interlocked processes that can lead to those outcomes as we heard Professor Owusu-Bempah explain in the first article for this series.
Data gives us the tools to see those broader patterns going beyond individual factors. We know there’s unique circumstances. Every family and individual face their unique strengths and abilities to overcome barriers.
But without data, it’s hard to identify the systemic issues so that we can make and drive structural changes in our systems and work together on solutions that can cut across those different systems. The way I see it is that in the criminal justice system, race-based data has the power to help us to uncover the portion of responsibility for those outcomes that lies within how we practice justice and apply the laws.
So, for example, how do we pick who sits on juries in ways that may contribute to unfair trials? Do judges on the whole tend to give different sentences in relation to similar cases when it involves black indigenous or racialized accused and / or victims? Data helps us to answer some of those really specific questions when it comes to how our justice system operates.
We know that oftentimes small differences in outcomes or in decisions along a justice pathway can lock someone into a trajectory that may be more negative than had a slight difference in decision gone the other way. And so disparities in one part of the justice system can really accumulate and reinforce biases that may occur in other parts.
And so we really need data to track all of these things, to really measure and understand what is happening in order to address this really complex phenomenon that is systemic racism in our society.
Elizabeth: Given its importance, and I think you’ve made an excellent case for how this can reshape outcomes and get at some of the systemic issues, why hasn’t race-based data been collected in a consistent manner up until now? What has stopped this from happening?
Mai: I think the answer is not that simple, and we can probably find different reasons and different responses that resonate in one period of time in a different way than in another period of time.
Some of these reasons really change as our country changes.
On the question of consistency, race as an idea is fluid. It’s a bit like trying to nail jello to a wall. Race is a social construction, meaning that people, often those with power to do so, have the ability and have been able to make up: what is race? Who fits into what categories? What does it mean? And it was perhaps at an earlier point in time and it’s evolved and it’s looked differently in different ways in different contexts, but overall it serves a particular function and that is to uphold power among groups interested in keeping and maintaining their power and taking power away from other groups.
And so some of these ideas can be repurposed for different things. And people as creative beings, we respond and we are reactive and we reject or oppose these different ideas. And so they can really change the shape that they take. And therefore trying to collect data – and what is race – will look very different depending on who’s collecting, why, and how it’s going to be used.
And so it’s my understanding of why we have not been able to collect race in a consistent way. We thought about it as ethnicity, there’s a period of time where religion was very racialized. And so it’s a really complex nebulous kind of concept.
On the question of why haven’t we been collecting race in whatever form it takes or however way we understand it, I think we haven’t always appreciated or invited the kinds of questions that race-based data could help us to uncover or reveal about ourselves.
When we think about race in an earlier period of time when colonies were first being settled in North America, our attitudes about race, particularly the colonial administrators, was really about who was not English or French or whoever was the colonial settlements, where they were from.
So those who were not that were racialized in a different way and understood in different ways. And we understood Indigenous people – those early set of settlers recognized the uniqueness of different Indigenous communities. Race was really much in flux at that time. But given that, the early settlements that France had established, a new France, had lumped them all together as Indians.
These things take shape and are influenced by official administrative tools and they change over time. And then when we introduced in Canada the policy of multiculturalism as the official policy to promote our national identity as one that embraced many different cultures, I think we came to be much more comfortable believing that we lived in a mosaic that respected differences and appreciated the cultural richness that came with all of that and less comfortable with acknowledging the fact that systemic racism does exist in Canada and that racism seriously impact people’s life chances, depending on where you are, where you’re from. And so people were afraid, I think, to be called racist or just really didn’t have to think about it because for the vast majority of Canadians who are not racialized or not Indigenous, it was easy to ignore something that didn’t affect our daily life.
And so it meant being colourblind seemed like a good idea. By extension, we don’t see race or colour. Collecting that information seemed to be a very wrong thing to do because it made us think about race. So acknowledging big systemic racism, seeing colour for what it is – a manifestation of racism and its complex legacy rooted in power dynamics – required us to understand and think about structural inequities that are built into our way of life, which meant we had to question our way of life. It’s not as easy as just celebrating differences and goodwill towards others.
Elizabeth: So in each of those, it’s very clear that how we think about race, the extent to which we collect data on it, has always served a political agenda of sorts of where we’re at. And we’re in a particular moment now. As we think about going forward on the collection of race-based data, do you see further barriers in our current moment as we look forward to the solutions?
Mai: Definitely, there’s growing pains, and there’s a lot of uncertainty with whenever dynamics shift.
There’s a broad questioning of the status quo. Some people will become more entrenched in their denial, or wish to deny, that systemic racism is a thing. Many people are still very uncomfortable talking about race and racism, and to reflect on our collective roles in upholding systems of power and disadvantage centred around race.
And, you know, I understand that and it’s very relatable. We are being asked to question what we know, how we do things, what we’re used to, and so it’s uncomfortable. This extends to leaders of institutions who have to make those decisions around direction, resources, organizational goals.
We’re being asked to change the direction of the ship, we’re at being asked to abandon the ship, in some cases. It’s just not serving everyone. And so that’s a hard thing to grasp.
Getting people to understand, what is systemic racism versus feeling like they’re being attacked, being called racist, I think that’s one of the things I’ve seen people really struggle with.
When you’re not a racialized person, you don’t go through and have experienced systemic barriers. You tend to see your successes and failures as something that was a result of your hard work, and privilege is very hard thing to see. We take it for granted.
We all have privilege in different ways, and so trying to reflect on the struggles that some people face, and the sometimes daily indignities that people face and the toll that it takes, it’s hard to imagine.
When we talk about systemic racism, people see it as an attack on their personal integrity, or their morality, when really it’s not about the individuals, it’s about the system. It’s about the water we all swim in, regardless of who we are. If we grew up and live in this society, we’re all touched by it in one way or another, we’re just touched differently.
On the one hand you want to change the way we think about race so that it has to neutralize its impact. And yet, by collecting data, by defining concepts in a certain way, are we entrenching it further in our system?
That’s a risk. And so we really have to think thoughtfully about, how are we collecting, what are we using it? How are we using it for and how are we interpreting these trends in a way that can move us towards change and move us towards a future where those categories no longer have any meaning or impact, and neutralizing their effects?
Elizabeth: We’re in a moment where systemic racism has never been so much a part of the public discourse. It’s surfacing, there’s more discussion than ever. So where are the opportunities as we go forward to actually seeing race-based data making a difference in policy?
Mai: I think the conversation we’re having right now is wonderful and I hope it’s sustained.
I hope, it starts to evolve and move us in a positive direction together. That means we all have skin in the game. When we all recognize that, I think there’s a lot of hope in this present moment
I see a lot of opportunities: with race-based data, the conversations that are happening, and with the enhanced and increased understanding, and vulnerability that people are showing.
When we talk about organizations starting to collect and use race-based data to surface where there may be barriers or room for improvement or / and change, I think, one of the things that this presents us in terms of opportunities is this is a great time to use data, to help us to better understand people and communities.
We’ve become so much more sophisticated in terms of our use of data, including its limitations. There is greater literacy, there’s greater involvement and engagement with data than ever before. And so this openness today will really enhance and advance the conversation that we have together in an informed way.
It’s also an opportunity to build stronger, meaningful relationships between stakeholders and partners and connecting with communities, so that we can work together towards more holistic solutions, not isolated efforts here and there.
For real sustainable change, it’s also an opportunity to embed greater accountability to the public, especially when the data’s being collected by governments and public sector organizations. It’s an opportunity for greater transparency on how the system functions overall, so that we can focus on big meaningful changes. If we can make change and drive change and hold people accountable and systems accountable on a wider scale, then we can have impact for whole communities.
I’m super excited about where we are right now. I’m also a little bit cautious about how this all goes, but the conversations and the series that Maytree is putting out, I think is a beacon of hope.
I look forward to continued conversations.
Elizabeth: So optimism – grounded in the reality of there’s still a lot of work to be done. And a lot of good values to guide that and principles around accountability, transparency, and really relentlessly looking at why we’re collecting, what we’re collecting, and how we’re using that.
Mai, thank you so very much.
Mai: Thank you.
Elizabeth: Thank you for listening to the second episode of our podcast, “Advancing justice,” with Dr. Mai Phan. To hear all episodes in this series, please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. You can find the full transcript of this conversation, Mai’s article, links to resources, and other contributions to our series on the Maytree website at www.maytree.com.
