March 21, 1960. The streets of cities and towns across South Africa are filled with angry people. National demonstrations were organized to protest the Pass law system, which forced Black South Africans to carry "passes" and obtain permits to travel from one district to another. In Sharpeville, the scene quickly turned ugly.

Organizers had insisted that the demonstrations be non-violent. But police in Sharpeville saw the peaceful march in that city as a threat to their power and opened fire. 69 people were murdered, most of them shot in the back as they attempted to flee the carnage. The event sparked international outrage against the apartheid regime and eventually, the proclamation by the United Nations of March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racism.

We’d like to think that we’ve come a long way from those times, and in some ways we have. But racism still exists around the world and it exists right here in Canada too. There are still extreme forms of racism, such as the skinhead movement, but more pervasive in our society are the unseen, subtle forms of racism that people of colour and indigenous peoples face every day. We need to know that racism is not simply name-calling, or ethnic jokes or slurs. If that is all there was to racism, then we could, as Dr. Linda Murray has said, eliminate it in one generation. But racism runs much deeper than that. It is in every institution of our society: government; education; the media; the banking system; churches and yes, even in our unions.

Ask yourself some of these questions: When a person of colour applies for a bank loan, can she or he be absolutely certain that the loans officer isn’t taking their colour into consideration? When a white person is intoxicated in public do you ever hear anyone say "look at that drunken white guy?" Did George Bush and CNN use racism to justify their attack on Afghanistan? Can a worker of colour make an achievement and not be referred to as a "credit to their race?" Have you ever heard any backlash against affirmative action programs that try to bring balance to a workplace and make it truly representative of the community? Do news stories involving missing children give the same exposure to a child from a reserve as they would someone from a suburban neighbourhood? Is the leadership of your union a reflection of its membership?

None of this is meant to make people feel guilty about the racism that exists today. In some ways we can’t help but fall into the trap because it is so much a part of our society - we become socialized into it. But what we need to do is actively combat racism. We need to celebrate difference and sometimes we need to overlook it. Because if we don’t take on the challenge of fighting racism, it will continue to divide us. It will weaken our communities and most importantly, it will weaken all of us in our struggle for social justice.