Black On Both Sides

I. Crossing the Border Into Familiar Territory

The original proposal for this essay was a bit ridiculous. Thinking that I had just had a pretty good idea, I suggested to the editor if Is Greater Than that I write something that would be framed around the idea of the “Afro-American Experience v. the Afro-Canadian Experience.” I wanted to clarify some misconceptions by both Americans and Canadians about whether and how these experiences diverged and converged. Retrospectively, it was a naïve suggestion. The Experience? As if there is one? As if it is unidimensional and easy to explicate?

This really came home to me a few weeks ago when I had an unpleasant discussion with a coworker, who sat down next to me at lunch one day and proceeded to say something along the lines of, “How about that speech on racism by Obama? Wasn’t it fantastic?” My feelings about his speech are somewhat complex and primarily can be boiled down to, “He said what he had to in order to still have a chance at the election.” It wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X. It wasn’t a speech for Black folks like me. It was a speech for whites (and others) who are anxious about where a Black presidential candidate stands vis a vis radical Black activism. My white colleague (who is not American or Canadian, it should be noted) didn’t ask me about my day. He didn’t ask about my recent nuptials. He didn’t ask what I thought about Barack Obama or whether he was my candidate of choice.

The conversation ended up being frustrating, apparently for both of us. As I wrote to some friends to complain about getting “Black” questions again, I started to type, “What, do I have a stamp on my forehead that says ask me about institutionalized racism? That I want to answer questions for Black folks, instead of just eat my lunch and get back to PHYSICS?” Well, that was the thought. But before I got past a few words, I answered my own question. Of course I have a stamp on my forehead! And on my hands, my legs, my neck, my hair. I am not white. I am Black. And because all self-respecting Blacks (we subtract out Black Republicans here) love Barack Obama, we must have all particularly loved his response to Reverent Wright’s sermon, right?

Wrong. Actually, I thought Wright was right about a few things. Institutionalized racism being one of them. But in some sense, what I think is not central to this story. What is central is that it upset my colleague when I said I didn’t want to talk about it with him. That perhaps I was a little too honest and told him that if I took the time asked of me on a regular basis by white people to explain my thoughts about Obama, I wouldn’t get physics done, which is what I am at Perimeter Institute to do. Clearly infuriated, he wrote to me a little bit after lunch and demanded that I be better behaved next time, more “friendly.”

I ended up crying, quite bitterly. Not because of anything that he had said per se, but because there was no one in the building for me to talk this out with. I was on my own in this instance and several others that were far worse, one of which included a statement about “you Black people.” I have two white colleagues who are actively anti-racist that I sometimes talk to about these things, and unfortunately for me they were both travelling. The idea of having a Black peer in the building is a bit of a long shot. Actually, the idea of talking to anyone Black in that building is a bit of a stretch - I’m the only one who works there, out of something like 70 people. Indeed, the number of people of colour on staff at Perimeter can be counted on one hand.

Having said that, Canada prides itself on an expression of multiculturalism that Americans only dream of. This is the legacy of the late great Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Yet, having spent seven years in academia in the USA, I have never seen academics behave as abominably when it comes to the topic of race as I have seen in Waterloo, the world’s Top Intelligent Community in 2007 and 70 miles southwest of Toronto, the second most diverse city in the world. From comments about “whining aboriginals who get away with too much” to “you Black people,” I continue to be shocked and even surprised. It has been pointed out to me repeatedly that all but one of the aggressors in my stories of racism in Canada have been European by birth, not just descent. This supposedly implies that this is not a Canadian problem but perhaps a European problem.

But, my environment here is not significantly more international than the one in the physics department at UC Santa Cruz, which also had a largish Italian and German membership. It seems to me that the more reasonable conclusion is that in Canada it is safer to behave these ways. Ironically, this is in spite of the fact that Canada has much harsher laws about hate speech and discrimination, particularly in the work place. Potentially, that “you Black people” comment was legally actionable, and my place of work is responsible according to Ontario Human Rights Law. Yet when I told people at work what happened, people told me that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Others insisted it was an isolated incident. That was in September of 2006. Since then, my life has been filled by a series of similar isolated incidents. In mathematics, we would say that this is a sequence with a convergence, with a continuous representation. The only way these incidents are isolated is if we redefine the word “isolated” to mean its opposite.

II. How to turn a pattern into a series of isolated incidents

To be sold - A Black Woman, named Peggy, aged about forty years; and a Black boy her son, named Jupiter, aged about fifteen years, both of them the property of the Subscriber.

Until just over a year ago, I would have assumed that this advertisement selling slaves originated in the United States. Maybe England. Growing up in the US, every one learns at least a little bit about that nation’s tragic history with slavery. Many of us also learn to see Canada as the great symbol of freedom during times when the US failed to even give the appearance of being one. Yet, that ad is a piece of Canadian history, not American. It was, once upon a time, an advertisement in the Upper Canada Gazette.

If you are American and are surprised by this, it is somewhat excusable. It’s not like we’re taught anything substantive about Canada at school or in the media. What is inexcusable is how shocked many Canadians would be by the true story. For all the talk about how outrageous the USA’s national myth about being a freedom and peace maker is, equally grotesque is Canada’s national myth that its only relationship to people of the African Diaspora has been one of liberation.

That said, as a Black woman living in Canada, I have been told repeatedly by my white Canadian peers that the instances of racism that I have seen/experienced aren’t really racism. They are a function of my perception as a Black woman raised primarily in California. Nevermind that a significant amount of my upbringing also took place in London, England, a very international city like the one where I currently live, Toronto, Ontario. Nevermind that a white person is likely not an expert on what racism feels like, and it seems that the ones who have encouraged me to think that “it’s just me” haven’t seemed to consult any Black Canadians. “Black Canadian history is so different from Black American history,” they tell me. “You simply cannot compare the two.” And my favourite: “Canada is so multicultural that racism of that kind is mostly a thing of the past.”

Liberal Americans, aware that the historic Underground Railroad ended in Canada, are happy to buy into this. I was too, once upon a time. As a child, I watched Degrassi High and for the first time saw a TV show where the friendship circles and families reflected the diverse make-up of my real life friends and family. No longer were people of the same racial group ghettoized together in platonic and romantic relationships. Mixing was possible! I believed this to be some reflection of a progressive mode of thought in Canada which had failed to manifest itself in the US. To an extent, this is true. Canada has tried hard to make the concept of “multiculturalism” part of its national story and an underpinning of its national culture.

The impact of this national storytelling is profound. As I stare at my copy of Joseph Mensah’s book Black Canadians, I recall the instance where a white friend told me that in Canada the concept of Blackness doesn’t have much meaning, that Blacks, who are often immigrants, are much more focused on nationality. I was told that Bajans (people from Barbados) see themselves as Bajans. At which point, I had to say, “excuse me, but I am Bajan, and I see myself as Black, and so does pretty much everyone in my family.” Sure, I wasn’t born there, but I cannot remember a time in my life where I did not see myself as Bajan or where I did not see Bajans as Black. It doesn’t matter though. My friend didn’t get it anyway and was most likely shaking his head about my American Arrogance in thinking I understood.

III. Arrogant Enough to Know the Real Story

I don’t think I was then, but maybe I am a little bit arrogant now. The cover of The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill shocked me when I walked into my local bookstore in the first week of February last year. “Mofo wrote WHAT?” was my first reaction. But within minutes I was crying from the beauty of Hill’s tragic tale, and in the weeks (and years, I imagine) to follow, I came to appreciate the profound gift that Hill gave, first and foremost to Canada, in writing this book. It is the tale of a young girl from the interior of the African continent, a survivor of kidnapping, the Middle Passage, plantation slavery, the American Revolution (AR), North America’s first race riots (in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia), the settling of Sierra Leone, and the English abolition movement. You can imagine my shock as I learned what removal to Canada really meant for the Black Loyalists who fought for the English during the AR. That the ship from New York carried not only the freed Blacks (whose names appeared in the actual Book of Negroes) but also white loyalists and their Black slaves.

Since reading Hill’s book, I have gorged myself on all the Black Canadian (or Afro-Canadian or Africadian) literature that I have been able to find. Central to one of the first books of scholarship I picked up, Why We Write: Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists, ed. H Nigel Thomas, is why Africadian literature and scholarship is hard to find. Blacks in Canada have never made up more than 2% of the population, and Mensah has suggested that this has stifled active anti-racism and voices for change. It’s worth noting that one reason the population has remained so low is that until the 1960s, most Blacks in Canada were transplants from the USA, and often, Canadian racism sent them packing home to the South. (See Mensah for more on that)

This is key to the story of Blacks in Canada and in the USA. We are the only minority group that was forcibly brought to the Americas (North, Central, South, and Caribbean) en masse. (The experience of Chinese railroad workers notwithstanding) We have since wandered the continents, looking for a place where we can drink in any water fountain we want, eat at any lunch counter we want, have access to quality schools, and the right to join the military in times of need (it was Canada who wouldn’t let Blacks fight in World War I, thus spurring on Black re-migration to the US).

In the end, Canadian slavery, by virtue of the forbidding nature of the land, never attained the levels of atrocity of southern slavery. But it is also the case that 40% of Black youth in Toronto do not graduate from high school these days. When looking at males, the number jumps to 50%, soaring above the averages for Canada overall and for other minority groups. Meanwhile, in Calgary, Alberta, night clubs regularly and somewhat openly deny Black men entry. So much for the myth that a diverse city is a victory for diversity and that it is always “better” or “easier” to be Black in Canada than in the US!

Yet, Blacks continue to come here, primarily from the English-speaking Caribbean to Toronto and the French-speaking Caribbean to Montreal. Indeed, between 1981 and 1991 the Black population more than doubled, with many seeking refuge from cultures and economies depressed by centuries of colonialism. We continue to look for a place where we are safe, free and equal. It is most unfortunate that what we have found across all borders is a monumental travesty and failure of humanity.

Recognizing this is not about a mere exercise in self-flagellation or intellectual masturbation for white Canada. It is a matter of urgency as we confront, for example, Toronto’s undereducated Black youth. When a police officer in Barrie (near Toronto) recently joked to his coworkers that math classes in a school with a Black-focused curriculum would centre on guns, drugs, and pimping, the Barrie PD claimed it was an isolated incident. But no man is an island, and racist jokes are not told in a vacuum. It’s time for Canada to face up to that. I certainly have been forced to.

Getting many of the whites I have met in Canada to actually do that has been an uphill battle. Part of the work of making the narrative of Blacks in Canada visible will be done by our award-winning storytellers - talented authors like Lawrence Hill and the celebrated Black Nova Scotian poet George Elliott Clarke. It will also be done by activists seeking reparations for the razing of Africville, a beloved community in Halifax, Nova Scotia destroyed during the 1960s in the name of progress by an all-white establishment. In time, I hope white Canada will join the effort by learning the story and helping us ensure that Black youth learn not just white Canadian history, but also Black Canadian history. Indeed, if Canada is serious about achieving a post-racist society, then acknowledging the many narratives of its many peoples is essential.

That’s not to say things are that much easier in the US when it comes to acknowledging racism. As the US heads into an election year, I am weary of the many declarations that Barack Obama’s success signals the start of the post-racist era. While I ask my Canadian peers to look south to learn about Black Canadian history, I must also ask my American peers to look south to learn about the Black American present. George Bush may be to blame for how Katrina was handled on August 29, 2005. But who was to blame for the levees that went unrepaired? What of the high school drop-out rates of Black youth in American cities? What of the high incarceration rates? What of the accusations of systematic disenfranchisement?

From where I sit, Blacks on both sides of the border are still struggling to ensure their voices are heard.

Note: If you go looking for Lawrence Hill’s book and you live in the US, be aware that, as discussed on Disordered Cosmos, for American publication, his publisher forced him to change the title to the less interesting Someone Knows My Name.  Thanks to Chris Dixon, Peter Onyisi, and Nick Konidaris for useful discussions.