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.

Lisa Solod Warren’s December 16th, 2009 article (which has since been deleted) in The Huffington Post titled Two Black Role Models Done In By Hubris invoked a great deal of outrage. I caught wind of the article via Twitter where people were expressing emotions ranging from utter dismay to outright anger at – among other things – the racially patronizing tone in which the article was written. In a previous article I used Warren’s article as an example for the importance of white writers to check their privilege before embarking on writing about racial issues. However, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the aftermath.

If you ever find yourself in this kind of situation, the best thing you can do is set aside your ego and listen. The knee-jerk reaction is to go on the defensive, but the best thing is to ignore that impulse and take in what is being said to you. Even in the heat of disagreement, it is crucial to try to empathize. Unfortunately, that’s not what Warren chose to do.

Beware: The symptoms of Foot-in-Mouth Disease

First, Warren became dismissive, glibly stating:

“it seems I am being labeled by some a racist. No rationale for that but people like to call out names.” Then—not content with having only one foot in her mouth—she became defensive, saying “seems anyone who speaks about race is a racist.”

Let’s break this down one foot at a time.

If you write an article that results in a mass of people denouncing your article and possibly yourself as racist, it’s not going to be for some arbitrary reason. Though it won’t be comfortable, you need to accept the idea that you may have done what it is you are being accused. Calling the large group of people whom you offended irrational is not going to help. They’re angry for a reason, you have to acknowledge that.

No serious person is ever going to say it’s racist to talk about race. That’s nonsense. The whole it’s racist to acknowledge/see/talk about race thing desperately needs to go away. While the idea of colour-blindness may seem altruistic to some, it’s really a byproduct of white privilege. The ability to see race as a “card” to be “played” is also a byproduct of white privilege. The problem isn’t in acknowledging race but in letting race be a marker for determining a person’s worth or quality as a human being. Since Western society confers unequal privilege to those who are white, white people and people of colour experience life differently. To ignore this reality, to refuse to acknowledge race, is to willfully promote this inequality.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation and decide to respond, a piece of advice: don’t ever try to back up what you said by citing the number of people of colour that are your friends/colleagues/acquaintances. Saying something like:

“you would be surprised at the number of black people I know”

will not bolster your credibility. What will also not help is stating your political ideology as evidence of your lack of racism, even if it is “liberal democrat.” Just because you consider yourself “liberal” or “progressive” doesn’t mean you are automatically free of aversive racism. (Not to mention, the Democratic Party was known as “the white man’s party” for much of its early existence. Don’t forget, the KKK was comprised of mostly Democrats in its beginning.)

The last best hope for redemption

Even if you managed to fit not only both feet but your entire lower torso into your mouth, there is still an opportunity for redemption. You can make all the mistakes above and still manage to turn the situation around into a true learning experience. The way to allow such an experience help you grow as a person is by staying engaged.

Amongst the (justifiably) angry tweets, some including myself tried to reach out and engage Warren via Twitter in hopes of educating her on privilege. What could have transpired is a healthy dialogue on white privilege, aversive racism and how to identify and confront these within ourselves. The outcome of such a dialogue could have been Warren writing a new article about the whole experience and how she came to identify the racially condescending overtones of her previous article. She could have held herself accountable for her words. At the very least, she could have apologized.

Any or all of that could have happened, but it didn’t. Warren chose to ignore the opportunity. Her last public words on the matter (that I could find) was “I am the naive one. I never expected the post in HuffPo yesterday to go viral. I’m not a racist but it will be hard to convince otherwise.” To forgo for now the logical quagmire of trying to prove a negative, it’s unfortunate that Warren tuned out. Perhaps the sting of irony was too great; after all, her offending article was based on the alleged hubris and supposed downfalls of President Obama and Tiger Woods. If ever there was a more profound example of irony or hubris than what happened with that article, I don’t know what it is.

Final piece of advice: Start here

Peggy McIntosh’s paper White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1988) is widely considered the primer on the topic of white privilege. Despite being written over 20 years ago, much of what McIntosh says still applies to our contemporary Western society. It truly is required reading for white writers and activists who wish to seriously engage in discussions on race. Lisa Warren may have brushed off the suggestion to read it, but I hope those of you reading this article that are white will take the few minutes it requires and read it now.

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.

Kirk Cameron’s—wait, no—James Cameron’s latest epic Avatar is now playing, and if you’re like me, you’re thinking to yourself “big fucking deal.” I can’t see myself watching it anytime soon. Cameron’s work generally bores me to tears, and Avatar looks like no exception. I don’t care about his fancy-pants VFX; the trailer simply bored me. People I know who have seen it in 3D rave about its epic visuals, but from what I hear about the basic storyline my initial reaction to the trailer is being confirmed.

When I watch the trailer, I see absolutely no emotion in the CGI characters’ face. None, and that’s the dealbreaker. Looking into the CG characters’ eyes, I see the same dull expressionlessness I saw in the characters of

Robert Zemeckis’ 2007 atrocity Beowulf (which had to be stopped less than 20 minutes in). In 2009, if you spend 10 years making a film and you can’t even match the emotional quality of Gollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), then you did something horribly wrong.

Other than the ostensible style-over-substance quality of the film, something about the story itself makes me loath to give both time and money to this movie. One review online has convinced me that I am right to not waste either: When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? by Annalee Newitz. Newitz sums up Avatar as a film where “a white man who was one of the oppressors [of those fancy blue creatures that are thinly veiled stand-ins for North American indigenous people] switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.” In other words, it’s Dances with Wolves, but in space!

Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode.

Sound a little heavy for an analysis of a sci-fi movie? If you think that movies are just movies and that their sole contribution to our social schema is entertainment and therefor critiquing their treatment of race is absurd, then I’m guessing you are both white and really need to read this from the comment section to Newitz’s piece (comment posted by Moff):

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to think about a work of art. I don’t know anyone who thinks every work they encounter ought to only be enjoyed through conscious, active analysis — or if I do, they’re pretty annoying themselves. And I know many people who prefer not to think about much of what they consume, and with them I have no argument. I also have no argument with people who disagree with another person’s thoughts about a work of art. That should go without saying. Finally, this should also go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t: Believe me, the person who is annoying you so much by thinking about the art? They have already considered your revolutionary “just enjoy it” strategy, because it is not actually revolutionary at all. It is the default state for most of humanity.

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too manypeople are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what’s going on in their own heads, you’re not helping anything; on the contrary, you’re acting as an advocate for entropy.

And most annoyingly of all, you’re contributing to the fucking conversation yourselves when you make your stupid, stupid comments. You are basically saying, “I think people shouldn’t think so much and share their thoughts, that’s my thought that I have to share.” If you really think people should just enjoy the movie without thinking about it, then why the fuck did you (1) click on the post in the first place, and (2) bother to leave a comment? If it bugs you so much, GO WATCH A GODDAMN FUNNY CAT VIDEO

Don’t be passive. Go tell McDonald’s what you think of this ignorance.

UPDATE (9/12/09): I have asked McDonald’s UK corporate office to comment on the policy outlined in the above notice. I’ll post their response when/if they issue one.

UPDATE (9/13/09): I’m starting to wonder if this is actually a clever hoax. First, there is no date on the document. Second, is a the use of the word “decent” when they really mean “descent”. Possibly just a typo, either way it is worth noting.

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.

When we hear stories about it in the media, it is usually surrounding the issues of women suffering eating disorders vis-a-vis the daily bombardment of images and messages in the media and popular culture espousing a certain aesthetic standard for women. The message they receive is that “beauty looks like this; and if you don’t look like this, then you are not beautiful.”

North American culture being predominantly white-oriented, the stories we hear in the media are typically about young white women who believe they are overweight, that their breasts are too small, that their lips are too thin, etc. This distorted self view is so deeply ingrained that it drives them to obsessively work to alter (or “correct”) their appearance, sometimes putting their health at risk.

There is another dimension to the issue that often does not come up in mainstream discussion, and that is race. This heartbreaking—if not eye opening, at the very least—montage popped up on my radar today by way of Twitter thanks to Kwame Zulu Shabazz and his blog, Thoughts of a Ghetto Intellectual, where he brings up yet another often overlooked dimension.

For a great read on the subject of internalized racism, head on over to Alas, a blog to read Karynthia’s post. If you have any personal stories on the subject of internalized racism, please share in the comments below!

Two things all three of these pieces have in common are 1) that emphasis is paid more to the shoddy attention to detail in the creation of the ad (using an Apple MacBook, mediocre Photoshopping) rather than racist implications; and 2) they all missed a very important detail about the black man’s hand.

I’ve already gone over the racism implied by the action of replacing the black man’s head with that of a white man, so I’ll focus on what no one else has: the hand. The same statement keeps coming up all over the place, basically that “they forgot to Photoshop out the black guy’s hand!” But did they? Take a look again…

Look closer.

His hand has been visibly (and may I say, quite obviously) lightened from about the wrist up. There is still a part of the man’s arm sticking out of the sleeve that indicates his true complexion. The hand has been lightened in both versions.

Don't let the MacBook, wrong lighting and mediocre compositing job distract you. The real story is still the racist implication.

Thanks to Bill from Attention 101 for the YouTube link.

One of these things is not like the other...

What is the thinking behind the substitution? Why does Microsoft feel that they can’t have a black person on the front of the Polish edition of their Business Productivity Infrastructure site? And make no mistake about it, it is specifically the black man with whome they appear to have an issue. You don’t see them superimposing some white guy’s head over the asian gentleman!

Granted, Poland isn’t known for being a very ethnically diverse country. Out of Polands population of 38,230,080 (2002 Census), over 96% were reported of Polish nationality while 1.2% were reported as being of nationalities other than Polish—those being of mostly white, eastern European nations including German, Ukrainian, Russia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria. There are also a tiny pockets (less than 2,000 people) of French, American and Vietnamese living there, as well as small ethnic communities of Africans, Palestinians and Arabs. So Poland is a country that is quite predominantly white, so it is understandable why one might be tempted to brush the substitution off with the thought of Microsoft simply marketing to the populace. At first that makes a bit of sense, until you stop and ask why they would replace the black guy but not the asian guy?

Are they playing on the stereotype of asians and technology? Do they think Polish people are uncomfortable with black people? In the end, it doesn’t matter what the reasoning behind the switch. They specifically singled out the black person for no other possible reason than that he was a black person. That is racist. Marketing demographic strategy excuses be damned—it’s racist.

It gets even dumber. Upon closer inspection you will also notice how the black man’s hand has been lightened… in both photos! Again, I have to ask: what is their thinking behind this? Is it intentional? Yes. Is it racist? Yes. Is it a bit bewildering that a corporation the size of Microsoft would be so obvious about it? Yeah, a bit.

Oh, come on. Really?

Logic and rationality are never traits found in racism or racist attitudes. Irony, however, freaquently is. Few people are aware of this fact—admittedly I wasn’t until just recently—but the architect of the modern-day personal computer, a man known as America’s “High Tech Invisible Man” is an African-American named Dr. Mark Dean. His contribution to the evolution of the PC is by no means minor, yet he remains a footnote in the history of information technology. As Tyrone D. Taborn put it, “Dr. Dean helped start a Digital Revolution that created people like Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Dell Computer’s Michael Dell. Millions of jobs in information technology can be traced back directly to Dr. Dean.” A black man can be a leader in the evolution of a technology that has had far reaching effects on our everyday lives, but don’t put one on the front of our website!

Microsoft, we’re calling you out.