Recording hate to fight hate — racism mapping tool launched in Surrey to help newcomers feel safe

A website designed to gather data around racism and hate incidents taking place in Surrey has been launched by a local immigration partnership made up of government, business, non-profit and community agencies. 

The Racism Mapping Project or RAMP, an initiative by the Surrey Local Immigration Partnership, will allow people to report incidents of hate anonymously in order to place them on a map to show the prevalence and location of such incidents in the city.

This mapping tool gathers information directly from those who have themselves been the target of hate incidents or have witnessed someone else being discriminated against, according to Mariam Bilgrami, the senior manager innovation, engagement and advocacy at DIVERSEcity.

"It takes a lot of variables that have to be met for any reported incidents to qualify as racist or discriminative in any way. When I was a settlement worker, I would have so many clients come to me and say, 'Well, this happened or this happened.'" 

"When we started reaching out to community service providers to talk about any anti-racism initiatives that they were undertaking, a lot of the responses that we were receiving, the data shows, that there isn't any racism here."

Bilgrami says the purpose of this tool is not to present Surrey as a racist environment but to enable organizations and government bodies to be more responsive to unreported race-based hate crimes. 

Hate crimes in Surrey under-reported

According to the Surrey RCMP's, police saw five incidents of hate crime or bias related crimes in the fourth quarter of 2021.

All five of these incidents involved racial remarks made either verbally or though graffiti. None of them involved physical assault.

But Neelam Sahota, the CEO of DIVERSEcity and the co-chair of the Surrey Local Immigration Partnership, says her organization has heard many distressing stories from newcomers, including physical assault based on skin colour, lack of housing accessibility, along with issues within the school system.

"We have received anecdotal first-hand information of things, disturbing things that newcomers are witnessing."

Sahota says the pandemic has also highlighted the race-based discrimination within B.C.'s health-care system. 

How to use the tool

The website provides two options: reporting an incident in which the person was the victim or reporting an incident the person witnessed.

"There's going to be a questionnaire that ask you where this happened, when this happened, what the circumstances were. And you can fill those out and then you can pin the location on the map," said Umer Hussain, a grad student at the School for International Studies at SFU, and a DIVERSEcity volunteer, who is leading the online workshops this weekend to explain how to use the new racism-charting map.

Hussain says the map will give the initiative a quantified visual understanding of how spread out the racist incidents in Surrey are so the organizations working toward anti-racism can focus on those areas more. 

"My hope is that a lot of people will respond to it and then we can implement this project on a broader level and have more people participate. And hopefully this gives rise to more awareness around racism and hate incidents," said Hussain. 

CBC British Columbia has launched a Surrey pop-up bureau to help tell your stories with reporter Kiran Singh. Story ideas and tips can be sent to [email protected].