The Ontario Science Centre hopes its new exhibition will help visitors better understand how their biases and blind spots shape how they see the world.
Behind Racism: Challenging the Way We Think delves into the science behind the brain processes that can lead to racism.
“The intention isn’t to point fingers or blame, or anything like that. It’s for us to all get educated,” said Bhavleen Kaur is a Senior Scientist at the Ontario Science Centre.
“As adults we haven’t had a chance to go back to school to get that education,” she said.
Bhavleen Kaur, Senior Scientist at the Ontario Science Centre looks devotedly at one of many data filled displays at the Behind Racism exhibition.
The exhibition is the product of a partnership between the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and the Science Centre.
“Sometimes, to be frank, we ignore individual racism by just pointing to systemic racism, but it needs to address systemic racism,” said Mohammed Hashim, Executive Director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
Hashim explained the exhibition is geared toward helping us understand our own built-in bias through a scientific lens.
Kaur says while it’s easy to be swept up by the mass amount of race-related news we consume from the United States, this exhibit looks at data collected from Canada.
“One of the most shocking things is a large three-dimensional graph that we’ve presented the data of hate crimes. The disproportionally of who is bearing the burden of racism in Canada. It’s not that we didn’t know that, but to see it represented in that graph is overwhelming,” said Kaur.
One of many displays seen at the Ontario Science Centre’s Behind Racism: Challenging the Way We Think exhibition
Kaur says there’s no outright answer to ending racism, adding we all need to work at it.
“We have to continuously pay attention to our internal thought processes, and be cognizant of how policies and laws and values make racism embedded and change that,” said Kaur.
The exhibition was initially set to launch in the spring of 2020 but was unable to due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
It can be viewed for free at the Ontario Science Centre until Apr. 24.
After that, the exhibition will travel to venues in Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg and Halifax.