Explicit racism has turned inadvertent as the face of Canada has changed drastically and nine years later, an award-winning anti-racism campaign is still whittling away at Canadian bigotry.
The Canadian Race Relations Foundation launched the third phase of See People for Who They Are campaign yesterday in Calgary, a 48-minute documentary entitled Directors Speak that follows the lives of five videographers developing 15 anti-racism television spots released as phase one of the project in 1999.
Those spots are being re-released in nine languages and as the largest anti-racism campaign in the nation’s history, the visionary nature of the films keep them pertinent still, said Gail Picco, the campaign’s director and producer.
“The issues in Canada today are not dissimilar to what they were nine years ago.”
It’s all part of an ongoing battle CRRF executive director Ayman Al-Yassini hopes will both breed tolerance and diminish ignorance.
“In the past racial discrimination used to be quite crude, sort of up in your face, now it’s becoming more subtle,” he said, noting workplace glass ceilings are preventing minorities from getting promotions while racial profiling is sweeping through the streets.
