In most cases, my emotional ties to various topics is what inspires me to dig further—largely in search of a truth that can help mediate my thoughts between research and experience. It’s this emotional tie that has led me to the subject for this piece, largely because far too often I see and hear opinions and manipulated facts that discredit the efforts of Black people to escape poverty. And it troubles me.

For as long as I can remember there’s been a debate about how to contextualize the plight of Black people. This debate has created a fixed cultural divide, with people on both sides arguing whether or not the social determinants of health, income, and crime (as understood through the legacy of systemic racism) are relevant to the current conditions of Black people. If you have read previous chapters, it’s no secret that I believe social determinants are relevant to the current conditions of Black people. And although I don’t point to a single factor in history (or presently) as the main cause of present conditions, I do believe the cumulative effects of myriad systems of overt and covert oppression is what we are seeing manifested today in Black communities.

With this in mind, my aim in this piece is to systematically walk through how the layering of the multiple systems of oppression that Black Canadians have had to navigate have aided in creating current conditions. Being that I have spent a number of chapters discussing the history of Black people and the effects of racist laws and segregated societies, I will only focus on how the history has shaped today’s communities.

Unpacking the Arguments for the Rejection of Social Determinants

As with any topic of two opinions, the debate around the social determinants of health, crime, and income has supportive and rejectionist arguments. Rejectionist arguments are often rooted in the idea that it coddles Black people into accepting mediocrity. In doing this, it’s believed that Black people have lacked accountability and absolved themselves of their role in producing their present reality. For this reason, any argument that aims to contextualize Black experiences and struggles is vilified by rejectionists because they argue that it reassigns blame to the racist policies and societies, which removes any form of agency and judgment.

In holding these ideologies, rejectionists have offered some simple solutions. The first is to accept that inequality is a factor of life that largely impacts all low-income people similarly, despite an individual’s race. The second is that stewing in self-pity perpetuates beliefs of innate inequality, which in turn pushes Black people to look to the government for bailouts. In this regard, they suggest that Black people should stop seeking assistance and making excuses as it presents Black people as incapable of moving beyond their positions. The third is that Black people must advocate for self-discipline and pursuits of higher education to escape the poverty trap.

I’ve come to understand that this perspective is more popular than I realized. In fact, in addition to the white conservatives, it’s often used among middle and high-income earners in the Black community and immigrants whose families left their home countries with ‘nothing’, worked hard, and created a comfortable life for their families. Of course this can be said in many cases irrespective of race. Yet, it discounts the many people who have taken similar paths and have worked hard, yet still found themselves in poverty because of systemic forces.

Still, some feed into this argument by suggesting that being a low-income citizen is a product of their own doings. Thomas Sowell famously argued that the spending habits of Black people in a consumerist culture has caused massive dents in their pockets. Others have suggested that it’s their poor decision-making in terms of education, career choices, criminal offence rates, and the prevalence of single-parent households that has put Black people in such predicaments. To varying degrees, the statistics in relation to education, single-parent households, and crime certainly reify that these are all elements that impact the quality of life and income of all people. But the data often fails to contextualize how historical factors contributed to creating these low-income, clustered—or segregated—neighbourhoods, where people become weighted averages of their environment.

Defending Social Determinants and Unpacking Influential Factors

The biggest flaw in rejecting the role of social determinants is that it presents the social determinants of health, income, and crime as synonymous with racial determinism. Social determinants help us to understand how the wider set of forces in the environment an individual grows up in shapes their lives and behaviour. But what racial determinism argues is that race is a biological factor that regulates and ultimately determines how Black people behave and make decisions. The fundamental difference here is that social determinants don’t dictate how Black people behave because of their racial biology making genetic prompts; rather, it contextualizes how a series of events (rooted in intentioned racism) when layered, have put Black people in unequal, undeveloped, and neglected positions. Ultimately, this makes it harder for them to succeed in comparison to non-racialized people. I will acknowledge that today we can say that affirmative action, the welfare state, and diversity policies have made it easier for Black people to thrive. However, the implementation of these policies and approaches doesn’t mean all barriers have been accounted for, and it also doesn’t erase or rectify the history that created these environments and structures, given that they continue to have negative impacts on Black people.

If we think about the layering of these negative influences in Black communities, it can help us to understand why policy attempts to remedy past wrongs (which some see as sufficient) don’t erase the history that created these communities. It also helps us to understand why the solution isn’t simply self discipline and accountability, particularly because studies have demonstrated that we are weighted averages of the communities that we grew up in. Notably, the effects of where we grew up wear off the less time that we spend in the core environment that shaped us. But the key takeaway here is that living in a toxic environment throughout one’s life increases the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviours, especially when compared to those who didn’t grow up in such an environment. In saying this, I want it to be clear that I have used the description of “toxic” not because of the people that live there. I want to emphasize that government neglect in terms of services and resources plays a dynamic role.

Taken together, the impact of these negative influences in combination with the lack of government resources for some is a strong pull towards drug abuse (often as an escape from their environment), criminal activity, and early sexual activity (resulting in teenage parenthood) among other things. Of course, not all people subjected to these conditions make poor decisions at a significant cost of their future success. However, the increased level of exposure to poor decisions by merely living in these environments must be accounted for if we are to have a serious conversation about the present conditions of Black people.

The question in relation to all of this is not should we blame or absolve these people of their crimes or decisions; but can we contextualize what influenced them to make these decisions, and use that information to make positive changes to communities with these issues? An additional question would be, does this context allow us to justify providing greater resources and support to these communities?