Last week’s apology by city of Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly, for the evictions and razing of the African-Canadian community of Africville in Nova Scotia during the 1960s, marks a small but significant moment in the history of slavery and racism in Canada. The official apology issued February 24, 2010, made on behalf of Halifax Regional Council and Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), was accompanied by terms of the 2005 agreement reached between the municipality and the Africville Genealogy Society, which, along with a formal acknowledgment of loss, included:

• $3 million (CAN) contributed towards the reconstruction of the Seaview United Baptist Church which will serve as a memorial to Africville;
• 2.5 acres of land at Seaview Park to be provided to the Africville Heritage Trust Board;
• a park maintenance agreement to be established between Africville Heritage Trust and HRM for the lands known as Seaview Park;
• and, the establishment of an African-Nova Scotian Affairs function within HRM

Roots in slavery and war

Africville’s roots go far back to the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) when approximately 3,500 Black Loyalists (free or former enslaved African-Americans who escaped to the British side of the conflict) migrated to Nova Scotia, many of whom fought for the British in return for the promise that they would not be allowed to be enslaved. Slaveholding Anglo-American Loyalists also migrated to Nova Scotia bringing with them about 2,500 enslaved African-Americans. But unlike their free counterparts, these African-Americans remained enslaved until the practice of slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834—meaning, for a few decades, Nova Scotia simultaneously had two distinct Black populations: one whose freedom was protected, and the other whose enslavement was sanctioned.

The Black Loyalists had been promised free land and equality, however these—not unlike other broken promises and treaties made to First Nations by the Crown—were never kept. The area on the southern shore of the Bedford Basin began being settled after the Anglo-American War of 1812, though it was never established as an official, incorporated community. Industrialization soon began to encroach on the small but hitherto self-sustaining community as railway after railway started running through the area. Other facilities unwanted by white communities—a prison, slaughterhouse, an infectious disease hospital, and depository for fecal waste—were located in and around Africville.

Systemic abuse and neglect

Racial inequality kept Africville in an impoverished state. Job opportunities were mostly limited to working as seamen, porters or domestic workers. Education was severely deficient amongst Africville residents, who only had four boys and one girl reach the 10^th grade out of 140 children that ever registered in the school. Despite paying city taxes, the residents of Africville went without the basic amenities other towns enjoyed such as proper roads, electricity, health services, or sewage. Even running water was not made available; residents of Africville had to rely on an assortment of wells, the water from which required boiling before drinking or cooking.

While other parts of the city of Halifax, which had amalgamated Africville, was receiving investments for modernization efforts, the racially isolated community of Africville was left to ruin. The final result of 150 years of unequal opportunity, municipal neglect and institutionalized racism was Africville being literally reduced to a slum; a label it officially gained in 1958 after Halifax moved the town dump to the area. In 1962, Halifax City Council decided to expropriate the land and remove the “blighted housing and dilapidated structures” in the interest of “urban renewal.”

Eviction and destruction

Between 1964 and 1967, residents were removed and placed in public housing projects; those who were previously homeowners became renters. Despite their relocation, Africvillians still faced the same problems of inequality and poverty. Social programs that had previously been promised never materialized. The city of Halifax lent their assistance to the people of Africville in such a manner that perfectly illustrates the attitude with which City Hall regarded them: they moved the residents of Africville with the city’s dump trucks.

The Africville community was razed to the ground. The houses, school, and the Seaview United Baptist Church—which played an integral role in the social life of the community—were bulldozed to make way for development of the north shore of the Bedford Basin and the A. Murray MacKay Bridge, which crosses the Halifax harbour. Due to the controversy surrounding the events, commercial development did not take place and the waterfront was left intact. In the 1980s, Halifax created Seaview Memorial Park on the old Africville site, which was declared a national historic site in 2002.

Reaction to the apology

Reactions to the apology from former residents and their descendants have been mixed. Most were optimistic and hopeful for the future; former Africville resident Brenda Steed-Ross, who was evicted along with her parents and her infant daughter when she was 18, said she feels “we’re moving forward, not backward.” Rev. Rhonda Britten, a leader within the Black community in Nova Scotia, welcomed the settlement, saying “I know that there are some among us who are wounded, and some among us who bear those scars. But, in spite of all of that, the victory has been won.”

However, not everyone shared Rev. Britten’s optimism. According to a report from CBC News, while most of the crowd offered cheers, there were others voicing dissent, shouting: “Not enough.” Some of the descendants of Africville claimed the settlement was illegal because the Africville Genealogy Society (AGS) didn’t have the right to negotiate on their behalf. One criticism of the agreement is that there is no provision for individual compensation. Eddie Carvey, whose brother Irvine is president of AGS, has been actively raising the issue and protesting since 1994. Along with individual reparations (a word the Canadian press has decidedly avoided using, which I will not), Carvey is also seeking a public inquiry and for the city to return ownership of Africville to its former residents and descendants.

There are apologies and there are apologies

In the interest of reconciliation and restorative justice, formal apologies are more than just gestures; they are vital to building trust between those who have been harmed and those who committed the harm (including the descendants of both sides). They are not to be confused with the actual work to be done to achieve reconciliation and restorative justice, but they are important to begin with. After all, if you can’t start with “I’m sorry,” then what else can you really say that will have any meaning?

For an apology to be a catalyst, it needs to have weight; for an apology to have any weight, it needs to be sincere. But, what if it is incomplete? I do not wish to challenge the sincerity of anyone involved, but I do want to draw attention to the history I have outlined above and the content of the apology below. I want to ask: is it complete?

On behalf of the Halifax Regional Municipality, I apologize to the former Africville residents and their descendants for what they have endured for almost 50 years, ever since the loss of their community that had stood on the shores of Bedford Basin for more than 150 years.

You lost your houses, your church, all of the places where you gathered with family and friends to mark the milestones of your lives.

For all that, we apologize.

We apologize to the community elders, including those who did not live to see this day, for the pain and loss of dignity you experienced.

We apologize to the generations who followed, for the deep wounds you have inherited and the way your lives were disrupted by the disappearance of your community.

We apologize for the heartache experienced at the loss of the Seaview United Baptist Church, the spiritual heart of the community, removed in the middle of the night. We acknowledge the tremendous importance the church had, both for the congregation and the community as a whole.

We realize words cannot undo what has been done, but we are profoundly sorry and apologize to all the former residents and their descendants.

The repercussions of what happened in Africville linger to this day. They haunt us in the form of lost opportunities for young people who were never nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville.

They play out in lingering feelings of hurt and distrust, emotions that this municipality continues to work hard with the African Nova Scotian community to overcome.

For all the distressing consequences, we apologize.

Our history cannot be rewritten but, thankfully, the future is a blank page and, starting today, we hold the pen with which we can write a shared tomorrow.

It is in that spirit of respect and reconciliation that we ask your forgiveness.

Amongst the recognition that people have suffered and continue to suffer due to wrongdoing on the part of the city council, what are the reasons being given in the formal apology? They acknowledge loss of their houses, loss of their church, and that repercussions “linger to this day”—and this is important to acknowledge. Their loss is tremendous and it is real, and the repercussions continue to manifest 50 years later. But two parts of the apology trouble me, leading me to believe that the greatest loss has been widely overlooked.

For what, exactly?

When they “apologize to the generations who followed” and lament the “lost opportunities for young people who were never nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville,” flags go up. First question: the generations who followed what? The evictions and bulldozing of homes? Second question: which opportunities do Mayor Kelly, Halifax Regional Council and Halifax Regional Municipality think the young people living in Africville have lost? Their use of the words “nurtured” and “rich” have a certain ironic flair considering Africville was in shambles, with no health services, sewage or running water. Why no apology for that?

Failure by design

On April 26, 1965, the Mail-Star newspaper quoted the Welfare Director saying “the City has fallen down on its responsibility to Africville. Providing proper water and sewerage [sic] facilities for these people, when needed, would have enabled them to give as good an account of themselves as any other families in the area and would make relocation unnecessary.” It is important to keep in mind that Africville becoming a slum was not the making of its residents. External forces played an active role in forcing the community onto a path to destruction.

The high level of poverty and low levels of education were perpetuated by racism towards the African-Canadian community. Africville residents paid city taxes but were deprived of the basics that other communities enjoyed, which speaks to institutionalized racism. The slaughterhouse, infectious disease hospital and fecal waste depository were placed in the Africville area because white communities didn’t want them in theirs—and that speaks to environmental racism.

From the broken promises of the Crown to the city dump being placed at its doorstep, Africville was practically doomed from the beginning. Despite the unfair hardship its residents were subjected to, they still bonded together and made for themselves a community. When that community finally became an eyesore or an inconvenience—depending whose story you believe—to the Halifax city council, they capriciously tore it asunder.

I bring up the inconvenience aspect because there are a few facts that have slipped by many of the newspaper articles writing about the razing of Africville. The Civic Planning Commission recommended the removal of the residents of Africville to make way for development of a residential, park and shopping centre complex as early as 1945. Two years after that, the Halifax City Council approved the designation of Africville as industrial land. In 1948, the Council approved the borrowing of funds in order to provide water and sewer services, but these services were never installed—the residents were left to use well water that became contaminated by the railway and surrounding industrial waste.

Africville was a Black neighbourhood on waterfront property, and at least 17 years before the evictions started, the city of Halifax was looking to oust its residents and usurp their land. The Council’s avarice and willful disregard for the people of Africville are not at all, in my opinion, addressed in the words or spirit of this apology. It is very hard to work on restorative justice when the full weight of the offence has not been accounted.

A Canadian pathology

It’s not all that shocking that even while issuing a formal apology as an act towards reconciliation, a government body would avoid the larger and much uglier issues at the very heart of what it is they are apologizing for. It’s also not surprising that the government kept “individual compensation” off the table, because Canada doesn’t like “the R-word” any more than the US does. For Canada, the subject is even more intractable because a discussion about reparations can’t happen without a discussion about slavery, and we as a country do our best to avoid that topic altogether—unless it’s about slavery in the US and how Canada was part of the underground railroad; we love to talk about that slavery.

In the end, the apology as it stands is still a sign of modest progress. Many claim it isn’t enough, and I agree with them.The $3 million towards reconstruction of the Seaview United Baptist Church, the 2.5 acres of land to be provided to the Africville Heritage Trust Board, and the establishment of an African-Nova Scotian Affairs function within HRM is still a fair start, but the ball really needs to keep rolling. As a recent (though extremely rare) crossburning in Poplar Grove—a town about 65 km (40 mi) northwest from the Africville site—demonstrates, the province of Nova Scotia is still not without its own racial problems—even within the HRM itself.

I’m glad that Brenda Steed-Ross and others are finding some peace from the apology and agreement. I hope Eddie Carvey gets the public inquiry he is looking for. I also hope Mayor Kelly and the Halifax City Council wake up and realize that it is more than the “repercussions of what happened in Africville” that “linger to this day.” The deeper issues at the heart of the Africville affair—racism, both systemic and environmental—are still haunting them. And unless they decide to seriously address these issues, there will be no lessons learned from Africville.

The 2010 winter Olympics kicked off in Vancouver, British Columbia with its opening ceremonies on Friday, February 12, 2010. Being perhaps one of the least athletically-minded people on the planet, I wasn’t even aware the ceremonies were happening until comments started flooding my Twitter timeline. I would have ignored the tweets were it not for the praise people were giving for my country’s tribute to our indigenous peoples, which immediately started to give me the creeps. Let me explain…

The Aboriginal peoples of Canada are comprised of three groups: First Nations, which is actually comprised of hundreds of distinct nations or bands (such as the Mohawk Nation and the Algonquins, for example); the Inuit, who inhabit the Arctic and subarctic regions of Canada (no, they are not “Eskimos”); and the Métis, who are of mixed Aboriginal and European (mostly French) ancestry. According to the 2006 Canadian Census, the Aboriginal population of Canada is 1,172,790, which makes up 3.8% of Canada’s population of 31,612,897. The Census counted 698,025 First Nations people which is 59.5% of the Aboriginal population and only 2.2% of the overall Canadian population.

The opening ceremonies were indeed a beautifully choreographed and brilliantly executed event, and the inclusion of Canadian indigenous culture in the ceremony is not the only place where Aboriginal culture is being featured in the winter Olympics. The logo of the 2010 Olympics contains the Inuksuk, which has deep cultural roots for the Inuit people. With all this tribute to Canada’s first peoples, you would think Canadians in general have a deep respect and love for them and their culture. The truth is that all this “inclusion” is right in line with Canada’s theme of parading multiculturalism and Aboriginal heritage when it suites us to do so.

I might have been able to enjoy the exhibition if not for the fact that Canada has very serious issues when it comes to the treatment and attitude towards its Aboriginal people. According to Phil Fontaine, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, “As far as Aboriginal people are concerned, racism in Canadian society continues to invade our lives institutionally, systematically, and individually.” For example, the First Nations peoples suffer disproportionately higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and incarceration; substance abuse and suicide rates in some areas, such as the northern coast of Labrador, are so high they qualify as epidemics. The general attitude of Canadians is classic blaming the victim; no consideration is given to the systemic abuse the Aboriginal community has historically been subjected to.

Whenever a group of Aboriginals engage in any non-violent action of protest to bring attention to their struggle, the op eds and letters to the editor more often than not express opinions ranging from mild disapproval—criticizing their “confrontational” tactics while being obtuse to the fact that more diplomatic or litigious tactics had already been tried and failed—to outright racist vitriol—typically characterizing Aboriginal people as drunk, lazy ingrates living off of welfare, etc. Even some of my more progressive, liberal-minded acquaintances have made blanket comments about Aboriginal people that left me both stunned and embarrassed for all involved.

In northern British Columbia, there is a 716-kilometer (445-mile) section of the Trans-Canada highway that runs between Prince George (near the Rocky Mountain Trench) and Prince Rupert (which is just south of the British Columbia-Alaska border) that has come to be known as the “Highway of Tears.” Since 1969, at least 32 women—many of whom are Aboriginal—have been killed or have suspiciously disappeared along this stretch of road. For decades, these deaths and disappearances have received minor if any interest from law enforcement. This is just one instance of the systemic absenteeism and institutionalized racism Canada’s Aboriginals have had to deal with for a very, very long time.

With all that in mind, you will have to forgive me for being a “party pooper” when it comes to this so-called tribute. While a beautiful spectacle it may be, it’s little more than lip service. The only time Canada really seems to care about the First Nations, Inuit and Métis is when it serves the national self-image. You may think me cynical, but this little dog and pony show is nothing more than a farce unless it can lead to serious consideration for the justice and needs of the Aboriginal people.

In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), Tourism British Columbia released a new commercial it spent millions of dollars on in order to promote tourism in the province. The fact that most of the world already knew the 2010 winter Olympics were being held there apparently was not enough. The commercial features notable Canadians Michael J. Fox, Sarah McLachlan, Ryan Reynolds, Kim Cattrall, Steve Nash, and Erick McCormack; what it doesn’t feature is much ethnic diversity.

There are two versions: the 90-second and the 30-second version. The version most are likely familiar with is the 30-second version. I say that because it is the only version I have personally seen aired on Canadian TV; I wasn’t aware the 90-second version even existed until I came across it while searching for the commercial on YouTube. In either case, it is clear the intended target amongst potential tourists are only those as white as the snow featured in the many expensive aerial shots.

You Gotta Be Here (30-second version)

Never mind the fact that all the celebrities featured are White, in this version of the commercial there is not a single tourist with a discernible race other than White to be found. There is a token nod to Aboriginal culture for literally a second towards the end, but that’s about the only thing “ethnic” you’re going to see in this version of the promo.

You Gotta Be Here (90-second version)

I think I spot a people of color (PoC) tourist at 00:01:07 (not the Asian chef, but the “tourist”) but I have to admit, it could just be the lighting that makes his skintone appear darker. Oh, look… there’s an Asian child at 00:01:22. So other than a few flashes of Pacific Asian and Aboriginal culture, we have what could be two PoC amongst a sea of White faces.

What is Tourism British Columbia thinking? Is it that there are aren’t PoC out there with money that are worth marketing to as well? Surely, they’re not thinking that the only good tourist dollar is a White tourist’s dollar, are they? We can’t really know what their intention—conscious or subconscious—was in making obviously Caucasian-centric tourism ads, but the result is promo that exclusively targets Whites. Perhaps they didn’t feel the need to tout BC’s multiculturalism because they didn’t feel it was in their interest to do so.

Canada is fairly well known for its multiculturalism; in fact, multiculturalism is protected in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” And while Canada does often do well by this declaration, it often has moments where it fails to truly live up to its reputation.

Despite the cultural diversity in urban centers such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, it is still a country where White is considered the norm and this attitude is systematically reflected in our institutions, our culture, our history, and our national self-image. In other words, we like to think of ourselves as a country that is very divers and multicultural, but the truth is we are more ethnocentric than we want to admit. Canada usually jumps at the chance to put our multiculturalism on parade when the world is looking, but the rest of the time—as this Tourism British Columbia ad exemplifies—it’s “White as usual.”

Engaging with issues regarding race and racism are critical in the fight for social justice. Due to the inherent complexities of such discussions, they easily become minefields for those who would casually wander such terrain. Two salient examples of such dilettantism from this past week are Lisa Solod Warren and MTV News (Canada).

Lisa Solod Warren (www.lisasolodwarren.com)

On December 16th, 2009, an article posted on The Huffington Post by Virginia-based author Lisa Solod Warren stirred up a whole lot of justifiable anger from the public. Both people of color and whites were expressing offense to Warren’s article titled Two Black Role Models Done in by Hubris (removed from HuffPost posted in a forum here) in which the author draws racialized parallels between US President Barack Obama’s waning public support and Tiger Woods’s sex scandal. The article—which has been overwhelmingly panned throughout Internet blogs, forums and Twitter as both condescending and racist—was removed from both The Huffington Post and Salon.com within two days of its publication. I managed to find the first paragraph still online:

“In the past few weeks, the two most famous and arguably most successful black men in America have taken a huge fall. It has become clear that both pro golfer Tiger Woods, just named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, and the American president, Barack Obama, the first black person to lead the country, suffer from a surfeit of hubris which has finally caught up with them. If both men somehow thought they were untouchable, they have been put to right. Both have crashed to earth and it may well be true that they can never recover their earlier status again.”

I’m not going to spend time here picking apart each erroneous statement; that’s beyond the scope of my article (though I do strongly recommend reading Sister Toldja’s visceral commentary and response “Put To Right”: Lisa Warren and the Liberal White Hood). What I want to discuss is Warren’s first mistake in writing the article, which is what many white authors tend to do when broaching the subject of race: neglecting to check her privilege.

For white people wanting to become sincere allies in the fight for racial justice, they need to acknowledge the white privilege that underscores their position in our racially stratified society. It’s not an easy process, and to be honest it is a life-long one; but constant mindfulness of white privilege is fundamental in order that white journalists become allies. In order for a white person to write about race with any credibility or competency, they need to go through the same personal confrontation. Otherwise, they are setting themselves up to repeat the same racist attitudes with which they’ve been programmed throughout a lifetime of privilege.

I and many others don’t believe that Warren was being intentionally offensive in her writing, but then again racist thought, or a racist perspective, is seldom intentional. Part of the definition of white privilege is color-blindness. It could have been in the most well-meaning of spirits that Warren set forth to write the article, but the consequences of her words were hurtful and offensive. Intentions can be good and sincere, but they don’t mean a thing if the resulting work leads to exacerbating the situation instead of helping it, which brings us to MTV News.

I’m not a fan of MTV by any stretch of the imagination (I don’t even get cable). I only became aware of MTV host Aliya Jasmine when she posted this on Twitter back in late November:

“Speaking @ Diversity conference for high school students in Toronto this morning. Canada is multi-cultural, but does RACISM still exist?”

I find the very framing of the question extremely troubling. To me, and dare I say most adult Canadians not living inside a bubble, the existence of racism in Canada is not open to debate at all. Racism’s existence in Canadian society is an absolute fact. Though it doesn’t get reported nearly as often as it occurs, racist violence in Canada does get occasional newspaper coverage. While they ostensibly aren’t as prevalent as they were back in the early 90’s, Canadian white supremacist and neo-Nazi skinhead groups are still around. Stories of racism amongst members of our military and first responders still creep up in the media. In fact, a 2007 Canadian study found that “fifty-nine per cent of Quebecers admit to being racist to some degree [while] only 47 per cent of those outside Quebec say they are racist to some degree.” The very idea that racism’s existence in Canada is up for grabs is as offensive and ignorant as if asking “did Nazi concentration camps really exist?” The answer to both questions is an overwhelming and document-supported YES.

On its December 14, 2009 Canadian edition, MTV News broadcast the footage from the November 17th conference Jasmine mentioned in her tweet. It was sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and had a panel of young adults, including Jasmine, talking to a group of high school students in Toronto about prejudice. For its newscast, MTV News aired some of the students responding to the question “does racism still exist in Canada?” (Watch the newscast online — it’s the fourth segment.) Engaging students on issues of racial justice is critical, and while MTV News may have had good intentions with this piece, they ended up doing more harm than good.

The first student’s response to the question is “wherever there are a lot of cultures and races, there’s going to be discrimination.” On the surface that appears to make sense. But research has shown that differences in skin color itself does not logically lead to racism. Diversity trainer Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise demonstrated that “prejudice and bigotry [are] an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors.” While the young student can’t be faulted for her answer, the people at MTV News didn’t help at all by repeating the falsehood, thereby perpetuating the myth that racism is a natural consequence of diversity.

MTV News’s naiveté is not surprising considering the source. Let’s be real: the network which brings us “Jersey Shore” is not going to engage complex racial issues with any degree of competency. Regardless, their dilettantish attempt at discussing racism gave nothing to their young viewers to actually think about. Worse, their “shucks, ain’t it a shame racism is still around?” puff piece reinforced the misconception of racism as something natural, prompting viewers to conclude that it’s human nature to be racist — which in turn makes them less inspired to fight back against racism and more likely to embrace it. This is clearly not helping.

The young students can’t be blamed for their naiveté because they’re not being given the tools needed in order to think critically about racism. Their minds are being hamstrung from identifying or understanding racism in the present because they are not being taught racism’s roots in the past.

As I mentioned in my last article, I am currently working on a documentary film titled A Past, Denied: The Invisible History of Slavery in Canada. One of the recurring themes in Canadian life my film sets out to confront is the general denial about our (Canadians, that is) slave past. During its first 200 years, Canada—like the US—relied on slave labour; and like in the United States, it was a prevalent part of our society. Yet despite its pivotal role in the establishment of the first colonies in Nouvelle France (now Québec) in the late 1600’s and ubiquitousness in day-to-day Canadian life until its abolishment in the 1830’s, Canada’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and its slavery of Aboriginal and African people completely escapes mention in our history textbooks and classrooms.

The result of this is slavery’s total absence from our national historical narrative and our collective social conscience—except, of course, for the bits that make us look and feel good vis-a-vis the American Civil War and the fight to abolish slavery there. Canadians, for the most part, are kept ignorant about the roots of racism and white privilege in our own country.

If we’re going to be serious about ending racism, we have to get serious about educating young minds about the various forms of racism and how they manifest. We also need to talk openly about white privilege and how it persists. Through teaching a more complete (and less biased) history, we arm students with the tools and knowledge to better engage complex issues like systemic racism and white privilege and to hopefully solve them rather than contribute to their insidiousness.

These past two interviews have been two years in the making. It was late November 2007 when I initially contacted Dr. James Loewen and Dr. Raymond Winbush about being in my documentary. At the time, I figured that finding support for a project such as this one would be relatively easy. I assumed that either the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) or the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) would be eager to participate in the production of a documentary taking aim at confronting the lie in our historical narrative that we are a country free of the racial past that embroils our southern neighbours even to this day. I assumed that I would be ready to begin photography as early as Summer 2008. How naive was I!

So here we are, winter 2009. Progress is being made, slowly but surely. Back in March 2009 I was able, with the great help of Randal Martin, to shoot an interview with Dr. Dorothy Williams (who is featured in the first teaser) in Montreal. These two most recent shoots were made with the help of Adam Reuter (camera op) and Michelle Farrell (Absolute Independent Pictures equipment rental) of the Baltimore area. The world of independent filmmaking is built and sustained by the spirit of co-operation and giving and all three of these individual embody this spirit.

Thursday (3 December, 2009), was my shoot with sociologist and historian James W. Loewen. Dr. Loewen is the author of such great books as “ Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong,” “Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong,” and “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” (all three of which I consider to be required reading for anyone and everyone interested in social justice issues or just history in general). Scheduling issues resulted in an interview that was shorter than I would have liked—about 25 minutes total of recorded footage—but I am still thrilled to have had the opportunity to sit down with Loewen and get what I did.

On Saturday (5 December, 2009), was my interview with scholar/activist Raymond Winbush. Dr. Winbush is Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, editor of  ”Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations” and author of “Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade” and “The Warrior Method: A Parent’s Guide to Rearing Healthy Black Boys”. We sat down for about an hour and a quarter for a fantastic and inspiring interview.

I’m going through the interview material over a very large cafe mocha, drinking in every word along with the coffee-choclate blended goodness. The road ahead is still long. Without any real  financial support at the moment, I rely on my own financial health (for what it is) to keep things going. I will spend some time over the next few weeks cutting something together to present to the Canadian film industry powers-that-be and hope that it will entice them out of their complacency and inaction. Stay tuned.

Brandon Huntley

Last week the story emerged that a white man from South Africa was granted refugee status by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. The claimant is Brandon Huntley, a 31 year-old former carnival worker who now lives in Ottawa. Huntly alleges that “whites are targeted by black criminals in South Africa and that the government does nothing to protect them.” He said he was “attacked six or seven times by black South Africans and that those beatings left him with scars on his stomach, right eye, right side of the body and hands.”

William Davis, the chair of the tribunal—which operates independently at an arm’s length from the federal government—says that he believes Huntley would “stand out like a ’sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of (South Africa)” and that he finds “the claimant was a victim because of his race (white South African) rather than a victim of criminality.” The African National Congress, the current majority party in the South African government, has denounced the ruling as a “racist move.”

I had been holding off on commenting on the situation because I don’t really know enough about the situation in South Africa to make a competent, informed comment and wanted to wait until some other South African citizens (white and black) weighed in to give their perspectives on life in SA and the claims made by Brandon Huntley. The general consensus among the Tweets, blogs and news interviews is that Hurley’s claims are nothing more than race baiting rubbish. To wit:

If white and black South Africans can share prison cells without us hearing reports that whites are being attacked because of their colour, then what makes this guy think he is being targeted because of his skin colour? – Mathapelo Mgodini, 24

One thing aside from the racial issue is that Huntley was in Canada illegally for more than a year before he made his refugee claim. That alone makes the veracity of his claim of persecution a bit suspect in my mind. If he truly felt that persecuted, wouldn’t he have made his claim as soon as he hit Canadian soil?

Invoking the Black “Boogieman”

There is no shortage of incidences where white “victims” have made false allegations against black men (some of which are made up). In the US media, the generic African-American male is the standard go-to fall guy.

Bonnie Sweeten

Take the recent case of Bonnie Sweeten: a 38-year-old white paralegal from Feasterville, a town north-east of Philadelphia, who claimed she and her 9-year-old daughter Julia had been kidnapped by two black men. 100% of the story was a fabrication. A few hours after making her cell phone calls to 9-1-1, claiming she was locked in the trunk of a Cadillac, both were captured on security cameras at Philadelphia International Airport en route to Florida (where she was later arrested). Sweeten was apparently under investigation for stealing $300,000 (USD) from her former employer, an attorney in suburban Philadelphia.

Ashley Todd

Then there is Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas. While working as a McCain-Palin campaign volunteer, Todd cooked up a politically motivated (not to mention racist) hoax about being robbed by a 6-foot black man, pinned to the ground and having the letter “B” (for Barack) scratched on her face with a knife. The fact that the “B” was backwards was a dead give-away and she soon admitted to making the entire ordeal up.

Charles Stuart of Boston shot and killed his wife, blamed a fictitious black man. Susan Smith drowned her kids, blamed a fictitious black man. The list goes on.

The generic African-American male is the default red herring when someone wants to redirect attention from their own mischief. What Brandon Huntley  is doing here is the moral equivalent: he is invoking the specter of the Black Boogieman in the form of a nation. It is a cynical ploy to exploit the misconceptions (at best) or racial bias (at worst) of the members of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board’s tribunal. The really sad thing about this is that it appears to have worked! But then again, perhaps not.

On Thursday, September 3, the Canadian federal government said that they will challenge the ruling in the Federal Court. What good this will do is uncertain. No new evidence will be presented. All that will go before the court is what evidence was presented in the initial tribunal, which means additional facts and context will not be introduced. Is anyone else feeling skeptical?

No one is going to claim that South Africa is without problems. It certainly has issues with violence and crime, but as the South African Institute of Race Relations says, “the vast majority of victims of crime are black.” Furthermore, they find “no evidence that there is a general pattern of racial attacks” where violent crime is concerned. White South Africans are speaking out saying that Huntly’s allegations are false and baseless. Clearly, I’m not the only one that smells a rat.

A History Lesson, Forgotten

The previous examples of race baiting are occurrences within recent history; one more example, from the 1930’s, demands to be brought up.

Scottsboro Boys and Samuel Leibowitz, 1932

1931 Scottsboro, Alabama: nine African-American boys (ages ranging 12-19) were falsely accused of raping two white women. Eight of the nine were convicted and sentenced to death by electrocution, their sentences later commuted by the Supreme Court. The dire lessons of the case of the Scottsboro Boys is obviously lost on those who would callously engage in race baiting, but the injustice and consequences should be remembered by the judicial system when it comes to dealing with those who would so easily perpetrate it.

It’s been a bit of a frustrating time getting this thing out the door. Just when you think it’s all finished, you spot a detail that takes you back a number of steps in order to correct. Was it Lucas or was it Speilberg that said “Movies are never finsied; they are abandoned”?¹ Well, this is only a teaser—a minute and a halfpseudo trailer, if you will—to give you a little taste of what’s going on with this thing. I’m very happy with it and am excited to share it with you.

The teaser is available in four sizes: HD (50 MB), Large (19 MB), Medium (9 MB) and Small (5 MB). QuickTime Player or something else that supports playback of H.264 mp4 files is required.

Download, enjoy and pass it along to your friends. Please spread this video around and help get the word out. In this economy, independent productions—documentaries especially—need all the support they can get!

¹Whoever it was, they were actually riffing off Leonardo da Vinci who originally said “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

Eric Schweig talks to CTV News. August 15, 2009. (CTV)

Erick Schweig told CTV News that when the first responders arrived, the firefighters started making racist comments. According to Schweig, one firefighter said “That’s what you get for drinking Lysol all day.” A paramedic on the scene pointed to a crowed of aboriginal children that had gather and told Schweig to get “his children out of the way.” Needless to say, it was a stunning display of the opposite values one would want in a first responder. Here we have a firefighter who jumps to a conclusion based on racist stereotypical (that Aboriginal people are all lazy drunks) and a paramedic that in a group of Aboriginal people either a) they all know each other or b) they’re all related. No need to make inquiry, no need to bother with finding out the facts. These two sure don’t have time to waste empathy on some drunken indian. Fuck you Ira Hayes, we’ve got white people to save.

Anthony O'Brien "Dudley" George (March 17, 1957 – September 7, 1995)

You know who else was overheard making racist comments about Aboriginal people before one died? The OPP at Ipperwash, and by “one” I mean an unarmed Dudley George, and by “died” I mean shot by police, while unarmed. The exchange of the two OPP officers went a little something like this:

Cop #1:  Is there still a lot of press down there?

Cop #2:  No, there’s no one down there. Just a great big fat fuck Indian

Cop #1: The camera’s rolling, eh?

Cop #2: Yeah.

Cop #1: We had this plan, you know. We thought if we could get five or six cases of Labatt’s 50, we could bait them.

Cop #2: Yeah.

Cop #1: Then we’d have this big net at a pit.

Cop #2: Creative thinking

Cop #1: Works in the (U.S.) South with watermelon.

(You see, all them injuns loooove beer and all them negros loooove watermelon… get it?)

Racism in this line of work is, unfortunatly, not that uncommon. A quick Google search will easily bring you stories of racist attitudes and incidents found among nurses, firefighters, and police. And until the people involved in overseeing these public services gets serious and treats it as the systematic problem that it is, we will continue to hear the same stories of the same bullshit for a long, long time.

Qasimali Baig, a 59 year-old journalist who has lived in Vancouver for 22 years, was returning from evening prayer at his mosque. He had just boarded the bus in East Vancouver when a white man at the back of the bus got up, raced towards Baig yelling “Bin Laden is coming. All these Muslims are bad people,” before landing a blow just above Baig’s left eye.

The bus driver stopped the bus and called for police, who responded quickly. What Baig’s fellow passengers did was run away. That not one person stood up and took any sort of action against what was an overtly racist attack speaks louder than the idiocy of the attacker’s motives or his preceding declaration that all Muslims “are bad people.”

Being witness to a sudden outburst of violence, regardless of the motivation behind it, is an unnerving experience. I understand how the first thought, or rather instinctual reaction, of the bystanders was to make sure they were themselves out of harms way but that after that first blink wouldn’t you think someone—at least one person—would have snapped out of it, regaining function of the rational part of their brain and leap into action? If you were in Mr. Baig’s situation, wouldn’t you want or hope that one of your fellow human beings would come to your aid?

During the summer of 2003 I was one of the performing artists employed by the City of Hamilton, Ontario to perform on the sidewalks in the downtown core as part of a cultural program. One sunny afternoon—it was either a Saturday or Sunday, I can’t recall which one—I was one my way to perform at the intersection of King and James. This intersection is arguably the busiest intersection in the entire city (population > 680,600). It is where Hamilton is divided east/west and north/south, it is the main entrance to the Jackson Square mall, it is where nearly a dozen public transit routes converge—it is the heart of the city. In other words, on a sunny weekend afternoon in the summer, you will find no shortage of people there.

On this particular afternoon I was about 60 meters (65 yards) from the intersection when I noticed across the street, right at the north-east corner of King and James, two men beating another man. They had him pinned, bent over backwards on a fire hydrant; one holding him down while the other punched him repeatedly in the face. From where I was—60 meters away, and across the street with cars driving by—I could hear the victim moaning in pain as he received blows to the body and face. I also happened to noticed that there was a crowd of at least two dozen people—some waiting for a bus, some waiting to cross the street—that were less than 5 meters from the assault happening in broad daylight, and that they were doing nothing to intervene.

I spotted a man talking on his cell phone heading into the mall and interrupted him, pointing to the attack across the street and asking him to call the police. I then turned and darted across the street (carrying the heavy wooden box in which I carried my musical instrument—it was a sitar, in case you were wondering) to help the man.The time from when I first noticed the happening assault to the time I arrived at his side was probably less than five minutes, and by that time the two attackers had already started to head north on James street. Their victim rolled from his position bent over the hydrant to fall on the pavement below, face down.

When I got to him, he was barely conscious—that was the first thing I noticed about him. The second thing was that he was aboriginal. His two assailants, of whom I did get a good look and was able to positively ID to the police, were white. All three appeared to be of the same age, somewhere likely around 40 to 45 years old. Those are all the facts about the three that I know. Whether or not the victim and the attackers knew each other is unknown to me. What the motivation behind the assault was—whether it was motivated by racial hatred, or something completely unrelated to race—is unknown to me. The crowd of bystanders that either ignored or failed to notice the mid-day assault was mostly composed of people who, like me, were white.

Two white men beat an aboriginal man to the point that he lost consciousness in the middle of the day while an audience did nothing. It can’t be said if the attack was motivated by race or not; but what about the motives of the inaction by the predominately white bystanders?

If all three men were aboriginal, would someone have stepped in? Likely not. What about if all three were white? Impossible to say for sure, but quite possible to imagine someone acting to stop the assault or at least come to the aide of the victim afterwards.

What if the victim was white and the attackers were aboriginal? In a blue-collar industrial city like Hamilton, Ontario (think of the town the TV show “Roseanne” took place in), it’s likely the aboriginal two would have ended up in the hospital.*

By looking at the different likely outcomes of the situation based on simply reversing the racial identities of attackers and victim and we can reasonably assess the bystanders’ attitudes and extrapolate their motivation for not acting in any way, shape or form.

(As an aside, the fact that the victim was aboriginal—as opposed to belonging to any other visible minority—is especially significant. In both Canada and the US, I have been shocked by the utter lack of any basic empathy for the aboriginal people of North America that has been expressed by some individuals who I would otherwise describe as being very progressive thinkers. Why we can so easily feel shame and sometimes even guilt over what our ancestors did to the people of Africa, yet have little or no empathy for aboriginal people who are still fighting oppressive policies and living conditions today, is a bit bewildering.)

So we have two instants to compare of white-on-non-white violence. Set aside whatever motive there is behind the attack and focus on the motives of the people witnessing the violence and ask yourself, are they not coming to the victim’s defence because they are reluctant to get involved at all? Or are they not coming to the victim’s defence because he is not white?

* Hamilton, Ontario gained dubious notoriety on the world stage back in September of 2001 when, less than a week after the September 11, 2001 attack on the US by Muslim extremists, a Hindu temple was burned to the ground by arsonists who couldn’t tell the difference between Hindus and Muslims.