Before Drake moved to eclipse him, the most visible fan of the Toronto Raptors was Nav Bhatia, a 67-year-old auto dealership owner who has attended every home game in franchise history, and a turban-wearing Sikh whose front-row presence embodies the team’s cross-cultural appeal.

And before other NBA teams started hosting post-season street parties the Raptors turned the bottom of Bremner Blvd. into Jurassic Park, where a multicoloured crowd of thousands convenes on game nights, and where basketball shatters cultural barriers between people from disparate backgrounds.

So when journalist Muhammad Lila published a Twitter thread on Sunday, highlighting Bhatia and Jurassic Park, and contrasting Toronto’s multiculturalism with Milwaukee’s racial segregation, the posts predictably went viral. Self-congratulation on racism is practically a national pastime in Canada, and the initial response to Lila’s thread hinted that many people on Twitter were set to position the NBA finals as a referendum on race relations.

But if Torontonians want to dunk on bigotry south of the border they better be ready to play defence, because using Raptors fans to prove Toronto is less racist than major U.S. cities doesn’t achieve much. Not when interpersonal and systemic racism keep making news in the GTA, and not when white nationalist Faith Goldy garnered 25,000 votes to finish third in last year’s mayoral election.

None of those facts diminish the magic of Jurassic Park.

The easy mingling of basketball fans from various racial backgrounds feels remarkable, but it’s also par for the GTA’s multicultural course. Game-day crowds reflect both a city where, according to the most recent census, more than half of residents identify as “visible minorities,” and a younger demographic that has only known Toronto as an NBA city.

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But Toronto is also big enough to accommodate an NBA team, a culturally diverse fan base, and deep-seated systemic racism. We’ve known that since former Raptor Dee Brown’s conviction on drunk driving charges 2000, and the successful appeal overturning the ruling in 2002.

Brown’s lawyers argued that the arresting officer racially profiled the player, pulling him over because he was young and Black and driving a nice car, and not because he had committed an obvious infraction. Justice Brian Trafford of the Superior Court of Justice agreed, issuing a ruling that served as a landmark acknowledgement of the role racism plays in criminal justice.

Even here in multicultural Toronto.

Even for NBA players.

“The only basis for stopping (Brown) was a stereotypical assumption concerning young black men driving expensive vehicles,” Justice Trafford wrote in his decision. “It’s helpful to emphasize that racism … conscious or subconscious, will rarely, if ever, be proven directly.”

So, while Jurassic Park’s street parties showcase the kind of racial harmony that’s possible given the right circumstances, the news cycle tells us racism still thrives here.

A study published in December by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found a racialized and gender-driven wage gap in Toronto, with women of colour earning just 58 cents for every dollar a white man earns.

And when mapping census data about Toronto’s neighbourhoods, U of T professor David Hulchanski found a steadily increasing segregation of Black residents.

Earlier this month, Toronto resident Tara Quansah sued the TDSB, alleging staff at Glenview Senior Public School failed to protect her daughter from racist, sexist bullying.

And those examples are a close-up, only highlighting racism in Toronto over the last seven months. If we pull the camera back, the picture doesn’t get any prettier.

Here’s where some folks will point out than I’m lucky to work in a city this diverse and tolerant. Maybe they’ll Canadiansplain U.S. racism to me, as if my family didn’t endure every permutation of it during our countless generations on American soil. Slavery; Jim Crow; the de-facto segregation of big northern cities — my folks lived all of it. You don’t need to explain to me how Toronto is different. I can make the comparison myself.

So if it makes you feel better, I can report that Toronto is less racially segregated and stratified than Boston, Chicago, or any other U.S. city in which I’ve lived. And it’s probably less racist than both Oakland, where the Golden State Warriors play, and San Francisco, where they’ll move next season.

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But if knowing Toronto is merely less racist than big cities in the U.S. makes you proud, why are you so satisfied with so little? Is Cleveland throwing a parade this spring because the Cavs were less bad than the Knicks? Or do they realize “not the worst” isn’t worth celebrating?

And if we’re making Jurassic Park an example of interracial unity around a common cause, the next step isn’t to shame U.S. cities because we don’t think they could recreate that atmosphere. It’s working to make the rest of the city more like Jurassic Park.

Less racist is still racist. And if you’re satisfied that Toronto is less racist than some other NBA city, you should set bigger goals.