Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives

 

• “To be Black in Canada is to live slavery’s ‘afterlife’…”

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Barrington Walker, “Finding Jim Crow in Canada”

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• “[Anti-Black  racial  discrimination] is embedded in history, and historical understanding is essential to unlocking solutions with any promise of success.”

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Defining Anti-Black Racism – City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit:

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• “Anti-Black Racism is policies and practices that are embedded in Canadian institutions that reflect and reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination that are directed at people of African descent and are rooted in their unique history and experience of enslavement and colonization here in Canada.”

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Historical Roots of Anti-Black Racism in Ontario and Canada

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• Ideology of Blackness (Dr. Christopher Stuart Taylor):

  • Most importantly, anti-Black racism is rooted in the negative ideology – the negative belief – of what it means to be ‘Black.’

  • To be ‘Black’ was created deliberated to justify the brutality of enslavement; Black people had to be (and continue to be) dehumanized to justify the horrors committed against them.

  • ‘Black’ signified an imagined history; a Black person was a social construct.  They were as real as ‘race’ was biological. They were created through ignorance, prejudice, and a means for class and socio-economic exploitation, justified through the hegemonic ideology of ‘White’ ‘racial’ superiority.  A Black person, was not someone who happened to be black in colour, but ‘Black’ in existence.

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• Enslavement in Canada:

  • Black and Indigenous (Panis) enslavement existed in Canada until 1834.

  • The importation of enslaved people was abolished in Upper Canada in 1793 by Lord Simcoe (i.e. Simcoe Day in August).

  • Contrary to popular belief, Canada was not the actual ‘Promised Land’ of racial equality during the Underground Railroad; White Canadians tolerated Black Freedom Seekers to punish American slave (property) owners.

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• The Liberal Racial Order:

  • The idea that “Blacks are to blame” runs rampant within a liberal democracy that has a formal commitment to equality (i.e. a Human Rights Code and Multiculturalism Act).

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• Anti-Black Immigration Policies

  • 1906 and 1910 Immigration Acts

    • Openly stated that Canada could exclude those based on race.

  • Climate Discrimination

    • Section 38 of the 1910 Immigration Act:

    • “empowered the Governor in Council to prohibit entry of immigrants belonging to ‘any race deemed unsuited to the climate requirements of Canada’.”

  • Canada’s racist immigration policies officially abolished in 1962.

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• Colourism (Pigmentocracies)

  • Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the ‘father’ of Western Art History, 1764:

    • “A beautiful body will be all the more beautiful the whiter it is.”

  • During enslavement: “A body will be all the more superior the Whiter it is – an enslaved body will be closer to the slaveholder the Whiter it is.” – Kendi, 2019.

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How does history impact our lives today and contribute to contemporary instances of anti-Black racism?

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• It influences the stereotypes (pathologies) we have of Black people today. Stereotypes that were created during enslavement and colonialism.

  • Black man = Criminal

    • Blackness and criminality has roots back to fugitive slave advertisements, where it was seen to be ‘breaking the law’ if a Black person tried to seek freedom.

    • Enslavement and immediately following Emancipation in the 19th century, Black men depicted as ‘Black-male-as-rapist’ as an anti-immigration measure to stir public opinion to keep Black people out of the country.

  • Black woman = Sexualized Body

    • The ‘Jezebel’ stereotype, justified the profitable rape of Black women during slavery.