ms to bring equality to everyone and it has, created human rights acts to protect people of different races.Before we talk about the laws that Canada has put into motion to help combat racism we must first define what racism is. The term Racism is hard to define. Racism is more then just an attitude; it is a policy or practice of persecution or domination by one group over another. Due to this explanation the word racism is not found in statutes or court decisions to the same extent as the word discrimination. Discrimination in the ordinary sense of the word means to treat a person or group differently because of prejudice. However in the legal sense this definition had been expanded to include human rights. Today the word discrimination can include concepts such as adverse effect, or unintentional discrimination, and harassment. Both discrimination and racism come from prejudice. In short prejudice means to pre-judge. In other words to have negative attitudes towards a person based on stereotypical thinking about the group which the person belongs to. This stereotypical thinking comes from believing that all people in one group have the same characteristics. There are no laws which prohibit racism because you cannot control a persons state of mind only his actions. (Cohen; 1987)In Canada the road to racism is compared by John Boyko to ladder the first rung being stereotypes. These stereotypes are brought to existence by popular culture such as newspapers, magazines, cartoons, and movies. The next rung is prejudice, which is the belief that stereotypes are true. These beliefs are portrayed in phrases such as, “They are all…” or “Those people…” prejudice only looks at groups not individuals. The next rung is discrimination which is an action based on prejudice. For example an employer not hiring someone because they believe the stereotypes about the group that that person belong to. The next rung that...
