Rewinding the VHS tape of progress

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Last year at this time the BC government brought in the Anti-Racism Data Act. ? What does that mean?? And what’s with the connection to the 1980’s? ?Do read on.

Why this idea matters?

One of the actions used address systemic racism are paradoxically, also the same tools that can cause harm.? I’m talking about collecting data on humans, which certainly has a dark history, and the categorization and classification of humans often has no humanity.?

However - and that’s a big however -?we feel a need to quantify, to measure what matters, to provide evidence of system shortcomings and failures.? While the failures are so very obvious to those who personally experience them, they are maddeningly intangible to those who don't. So we use data and its powerful friend storytelling to open eyes, ears, hearts and minds to better support our fellow humans.? How do we do this well?? We think about context and we listen. ? And we go at this by evolving our practices, improving on the ideas from decades past.

Give me the TLDR version?

Policy matters - these are the rules that govern our daily lives, an invisible hand of compliance, influence, and sometimes aspiration. Add these up over time and stir in years of advocacy, scholarship and other forces that keeps these issues in mind, and you have….change.?

Tell me more….?

Here’s an example of this long arc of change: the Employment Equity Act was brought into effect in 1986. Personally, I was working at Expo 86, coordinating the volunteer force, before Excel was a thing.*? This biographical detail is just to say - that was a long time ago. While the act itself applies to federal government offices and federally regulated industries, the idea behind it?shapes aspects of employment today: changing recruitment practices, workplace accommodations, data collection and reporting. And, the concept is interpreted for healthcare and other public services. It’s not perfect and it certainly doesn’t give the kind of rapid improvements that MS-Excel did, but there is a dotted line from BC's 2022 Anti-Racism Data Act back to 1986.?

The Anti-Racism Data Act became law in British Columbia on June 2, 2022.? Read the legislation in full here. Have your say on the online public questionnaire

Foundational to the Anti-Racism Data Act is a must-read report by the British Columbia Office of the Human Rights Commissioner.? Disaggregated Demographic Data Collection in British Columbia: The Grandmother Perspective?is a guide to those evolved practices. An executive summary of this report is available in multiple languages: Arabic, Farsi, French, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, Traditional Chinese and Vietnamese.?

* the highly useful Excel was released in 1985, developed for the “Apple Macintosh computer”. Pretty sure we used punch cards to schedule those volunteers.?

The views and opinions expressed in this news item are those of its author and not the official policy or position of the report author(s) profiled here.