On race

I reread the book, Black Berry Sweet Juice over the last few days
and it was a nice reminder of the issues surrounding being both "black" and "white" in this country It's a look into the issue of race from those who are of "mixed" race having a black and a white parent.


These conversations can be difficult, even more so in Canada, where we try desperately not to label people. This is often a strength, but in many ways makes certain conversations about issues such as race more difficult. In fact at a recent talk I was at by Adrian Harewood, a black news anchor from the BCC, he spoke of going to a school classroom and saying the word "black" and having some kids recoil in shock that he even uttered the word.


It's been particularly interesting to re-engage with this book and topic as I finally got around to listening to a series of podcasts from the Agenda where they examined immigration and often ethnicity or race was discussed. In fact the way that certain communities are labeled had an impact of their sense of identity and how they engage with the dominant culture. In fact the one thing that seems to link the disparate black communities is that they are seen by others as black. It's an odd thing in many ways to think that the thing that links them, may not have anything to do with their own shared history, but with the reaction of others to them. At the lecture, that seemed to be a question that was struggled with, as Adrian was asked about what links the changing black community together. For me it was interesting to learn about the fact that in the past it was largely immigrants from the Caribbean , who have been increasingly been supplanted by French speaking Africans and Haitians and also Somalians.


In both the book and one of the podcasts it was interesting to note the comparison with the United States, particularly hearing from one of the U.S. guests who pointed to something that isn't often remarked about and that was how racial groups in the U.S. are labeled. In other words difference is much more noticed and labelled. This is where I see the advantage in Canada, or our more open and fluid sense of identity. I will always remember the comments made by Alberto Manguel in his comments following his 2007 Massey Lectures about how he had always wanted to choose his citizenship, and found it odd that it was simply granted depending on where you were born. He remarked that he was astonished at how easy it was for him to be able to contribute and participate in Canadian society, without being labeled or judged. Despite now living in France and being from Argentina and having lived in United States, he felt that being Canadian had meaning and therefore it was important for him to assert that he was Canadian.


What I am increasingly afraid of is that we are losing that openness and that reluctance that we often have here to label people. Increasingly we are told and often (perhaps exclusively?) by those on the right who feel the danger in not defining what it means to be Canadian. This open identity seems to scare them, I'm not quite sure why. In fact I saw a title in a bookstore recently which captures the obvious fear quite clearly it read " Mayday. Mayday: Curb immigration. Stop multiculturalism or it's the end of the Canada we know."

I seem to keep coming back to those Massey lecture often in my thinking about identity, but I found them so interesting and inspiring and relevant. They remind us that cultures change, and there is no such thing as a living culture which is static. If it remains static it will die.

Confronting difficult situations is never easy

There have been few occasions where I have felt so mad at myself for biting my tongue as two separate occasions where comments I would deem racist have been uttered and I remained silent.

These events occurred over the past year or so and I think they are always a bit of a difficult issue. Even more so in a country, which proclaims its colour-blindness and refuses to acknowledge race as an issue, or when it does simply claims " Things are better here than in the United States" rather than dealing with the substance of the issue. I think the best description of this is in the book Black Berry Sweet Juice by Lawrence Hill. Though there were some parts I couldn't relate to, the experience he tells, of being a mixed-race person, half-black half white, like I am in Canada resonates with me.

In each situation, I was the only non-white person in the room, and the person's comments clearly made me feel uncomfortable. How do you reproach someone for such comments though? It isn't easy, especially in a social situation, where there are others around, and raising your voice and yelling and screaming at someone clearly isn't appropriate. How do you even broach the topic without making everyone involved feel uncomfortable.

Now there are those who claim that making the person uncomfortable is the point, and that such comments need to be held up to scrutiny and shouldn't be allowed to pass unchallenged, and while that's easy in theory in practice it's much more difficult.

I will try to be more assertive in the future. After the second of these situations, and how angry it made me, I hope I can rise to the challenge, of confronting these kind of racist statements.