Black lives matter.

Indigenous lives matter.

All lives won’t matter until they do.

It has taken the Real Estate Foundation of BC longer than it should have to publicly acknowledge the pain, damage, and fatigue caused by anti-Black racism. Of anti-Indigenous racism. Of racism faced every day, in every way, by people of colour. To recognize the relationship to what we do, and how we show up. To change how we listen, learn, and act in an authentic and persistent fashion.

The heinous killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, and Chantel Moore by police are just the most recent and extreme expressions of a long history of racism and white supremacy in Canada and the United States.

While a pandemic, independent media, and public outrage may have helped prompt fresh perspective, the incidents should not really come as any surprise.

They aren’t new.

Nor are the jabs and beatdowns, physical and psychological. The preconditions have, and continue to be, baked into design of systems of policies and practices, teachings, rules, and interactions that shape our beliefs, behaviours, and decisions. In formal and informal, overt and covert ways, the primacy of whiteness has been centered, reinforced, and protected in places we live, work, learn, and play.

Whether we like it or not, experience benefit or harm, we are conditioned by racist and colonial beliefs, rules, structures, and practices. Our systems have been designed to produce such terrible outcomes.

It includes the anguish of preparing children to face racism from peers and caring adults, whether from teachers, police, coaches, or store clerks, and how to protect their personal safety and dignity. The toll of having your experience and perspective ignored, diminished, or brushed off by employers and co-workers. Not having your religious or cultural calendar recognized. Not seeing your history, language, and culture valued in books, curricula, training, certifications, celebrations beyond an awkward multicultural lunch day and a pro-d session once per year. Being asked to speak for all people of your racial or cultural background. Being asked where you’re really from. No, really. Being asked to explain, do, and represent the “diversity” work of your organization. By yourself. Not seeing people who look like you or share your lived experience reflected on the staff, executive, or boards of institutions that claim to reflect your interests. Putting on your armour, just in case, before meeting with a bank, mortgage broker, or going to an open house.

We recognize these are but a few examples of the daily and lifelong labour that Black, Indigenous and people of colour are asked to carry.

We acknowledge that we have been complicit in our silence and inaction. Racial equity and social justice considerations have not been applied as a consistent lens in fulfilling our mandate of advancing sustainable land use and real estate practices, whether through our grantmaking, human resources, internal operations, governance, communications, advocacy, or investment efforts. We also recognize that it is problematic that our staff and board is overwhelming white, which requires us to do internal and external work to change culture and composition. This is despite the fact that racist and colonial land use and real estate practices have been so important to shaping our province and the opportunities to create families, homes, neighbourhoods, and build and transfer wealth.

Our efforts to decolonize our work, as well as land use, real estate, and philanthropic practices, have only just begun. Over the past few weeks, REFBC staff and board members have stumbled in thoughtful-and-uncertain reflection and dialogue.

We recognize the urgency and relevance of dedicating time and resources to hard, uncomfortable learning, acting, and reporting in service to racial equity and social justice. Of its fundamental connection to our relationships with land, and pursuit of resilient, healthy communities and natural environments. We have begun the work of making commitments to specific, measurable goals, and publicly reporting on our learning, mistakes, and progress.

We have much to learn. We have much to do.

Mark Gifford
Chief Executive Officer, Real Estate Foundation of BC