What makes something systemic?
After reflecting on a conversation I had with a friend over the weekend, I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the word systemic.
“Doesn’t it mean it’s widespread?” is what he asked, when I suggested the people didn’t really understand what was meant by the word systemic in the context of any form of discrimination.
In a medical context, when we are speaking of a disease and we use the word systemic, it does mean widespread. Everything is affected; the whole system. For something like high blood pressure, the entire body and all of its systems are affected. It’s pretty straightforward and it’s easy to understand.
When it comes to discrimination, we find those few places where it doesn’t occur and then rationalize that all the places where discrimination does occur must be isolated cases, definitely not connected to everything else and, therefore, not a systemic problem. When we don’t view the problem as widespread, we downplay the impacts, and ignore anyone who tries to point out the problem. It becomes invisible, or more to the point, we make it invisible.
Instead, let’s take a different view to defining ‘systemic’. Here’s how I’d do it:
A systemic problem results when the system is built from a few perspectives instead of a diversity of perspectives, when one view attempts to represent a spectrum of views.
For example, Canadian institutions, such as the legal, regulatory, education, and medical systems, are built on a western worldview that understands written communications to be the default means of documenting knowledge. These systems, by default, are not able to accept or understand the oral histories of Indigenous people. There are people working inside these systems that understand the importance of including indigenous knowledge and wisdom, but the systems themselves were not designed to accommodate such diversity.
Dr. Reg Crow Shoe, a Blackfoot elder, describes it this way:
If we look at the dominant society and the Western knowledge base that exists, we access it from a Western written system, so whether it’s management systems or educations systems, it’s a written management system that we need to navigate to get rights or privileges or to add to that knowledge base, and the products that come out are written books.
- Dr. Reg Crow Shoe, Voices of Understanding – Looking through the Window
It’s not just culture. Whenever a diversity of views is absent in the design of a system, a systemic problem arises. Here’s another example, this one based on gender:
After an earthquake that hit Gujarat in 2001, the disaster-relief rebuilding project built houses without kitchens, because the project was planned exclusively by men. Because cooking is women’s work, “women weren’t included or even consulted in the planning process” (Criado Perez, c. 15: Who Will Rebuild?). Happening once is one thing, but kitchenless homes were again built after the tsunami is Sri Lanka, only 4 years later. And one more: “[a] related issue arises in refugee camps when humanitarian agencies distribute food that must be cooked – but forget to provide cooking fuel”.
Criado Perez points directly to the problem: “weren’t included or even consulted”. That’s the test we need to apply is looking at whether a problem is systemic, and not whether we can judge how widespread an issue like discrimination is.
So, with this new definition, we have a lot easier time identifying where changes are needed. Indigenous people were not included in the design of the justice system, so therefore it has a systemic problem. Women were not included in the design of the disaster relief program, so it has a systemic problem.
Now can we move on to solving some of these problems, rather than arguing whether they exist?
