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 timing of my reading Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic Slave Trade by Dr. Raymond A. Winbush (2009) coinciding with Black History Month was completely random, but obviously fitting. Back in December 2009, I shot an interview with Dr. Winbush for my documentary film. Winbush, who is the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore Maryland, was very kind to give me a copy of his books; I immediately bumped to the top of my “To Read” list—which is a very long list!

Only 65 pages in length, Belinda’s Petition is exactly what it describes itself to be: a concise overview of the long history of struggle to repair the damage wrought by the transatlantic slave trade, making it a perfect primer on the subject of reparations. Winbush begins with the story of the first formal record of a petition for reparations made in the US, which was made in Massachusetts in 1783 by an ex-slave known only as “Belinda”. Belinda, who was about 70 years old at this time and had been kidnapped from her home in Ghana before her 12^th birthday, petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for the years of unpaid labour for her former slave master. Belinda argued that Isaac Royall—who had since escaped to Nova Scotia—profited from her labour, which entitled her to lay claim to his estate. She won and was granted £15,12 shillings per year payable from the Royall family estate.

From there, Belinda’s Petition moves through the different epochs of the reparations movement from the early 15^th Century to the present. By correcting misconceptions and exposing myths about the reparations movement, Winbush shines a light on what is arguably the greatest crime against humanity to date.

This history is related without hyperbole and does not attempt to put a soft edge on it. Belinda’s Petition is also a crash course on the stories of the revolt aboard the Amistad, the liberation of Haiti, Callie House, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Queen Mother Audley Moore, James Foreman, The Black Manifesto, and still much more.

I wanted to make a point about my reading this history through a particularly White lens; I think there is still some unpacking for me to do before I am able to consciously express what that point would be. I was a supporter of reparations before I read the book. Now, I’m an even better informed supporter. Suffice it to say, this is an important book for everyone should read, including White people. Or perhaps I should say, especially White people. Particularly those who lack a basic understanding of the transatlantic slave trade, its practice and legacies, and what the fight for reparations is really about. As Winbush clearly puts it, the reparations movement isn’t about victimization, it’s about restorative justice.

The book ends with an appendix titled Ten Practical Things You Can Do for the Reparations Struggle, which I will simplify here:

1. Read about the history of the reparations struggle
2. Join an organization that supports reparations
3. Ask all politicians running for office if they support reparations for the transatlantic slave trade
4. Organize a study group in your community on reparation
5. Keep up with current developments in the reparations struggle
6. Lobby for local “slavery disclosure resolutions” that will aid in the development of lawsuits against governments and corporations that profited from the transatlantic slave trade
7. Understand the international dimensions of the reparations struggle (which is not confined to the USA)
8. Have viewing parties of films that document the current exploitation of Africans in the world (films such as Life and Debt and Darwin’s Nightmare)
9. Immediately write a rebutal to any article that opposes reparations
10. Tell others about those nine

For my part regarding the tenth, I submit to you this article and review. To continue with the first step, I am already following-up Belinda’s Petition with the book Should America Pay?: Slavery and the raging Debate on Slavery (2003) to which Winbush contributed and edited. And although I am still early into it, I can confidently tell you now that Should America Pay? is also one to be considered required reading for those interested in social and racial justice.

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.

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.”