Semowo: It’s Black History Month. Let’s Move Inclusion Beyond Visibility

2025/02/10 Leave a comment

Nice to see academics interested in citizenship and the various study guides over the year that overall indicate progress. However, policy makers have to decide how much to include in a guide, how much detail on particular groups and history, keeping in mind the need for simple language, the audience of new Canadians and related needs of being concise.

As well as the balance between portraying a positive image of Canada to those becoming citizens while acknowledging less positive historical and current issues.

Suspect that many groups could make similar critiques without acknowledging the need for balance and perspective.

Unclear that the revised guide, under preparation under at least four IRCC Liberal ministers would equally meet Semowo’s criteria for inclusion. And of course, there is no formal citizenship education under the settlement program, an ongoing gap:

A Canada where Blackness was overlooked

Since 1947, the federal government has published citizenship study guides to help new immigrants prepare for citizenship tests.

These guides are more than bureaucratic texts; they frame Canada’s shared identity and values for newcomers. Yet for much of the 20th century, they presented a Canada relatively devoid of Blackness.

Canada’s first citizenship study guide failed to mention Black Canadians at all. Instead, the guide celebrated British and French heritage while paying scant attention to Indigenous Peoples and other racialized communities.

Subsequent guides beginning in 1963 included either an image, text or both describing people of African descent. However, their inclusion was sparse and narrowly focused, signalling that Blackness is peripheral to Canadian identity.

The 1995 study guide entitled A Look at Canada briefly acknowledged Black Loyalists but overlooked their struggles in Nova Scotia, where many were denied the land they were promised.

Africville, a Black community razed in the 1960s, was notably absent. Indeed, many Canadians remain unaware of Africville or the civil rights activist Viola Desmond, whose defiance against segregation in 1946 is often overshadowed by more well-known American figures, such as Rosa Parks.

This lack of visibility in official narratives not only disconnects Black Canadians from their own history but also perpetuates the myth that systemic anti-Black racism is solely a U.S. problem.

A recent study guide from 2009 titled Discover Canada presented a few notable figures, such as the athlete Marjorie Turner-Bailey, abolitionist publisher Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Victoria Cross recipient able seaman William Hall.

These provide valuable recognition of Black Canadians’ historical presence and struggles.

However, their inclusion follows a pattern of narrow representation, where Black history is framed primarily through individual achievements rather than part of a broader discussion on systemic barriers.

While the guide, a version of which is still in use today, acknowledged slavery, abolition and Black migration, it does not deeply engage with ongoing racial inequities in Canada, such as economic disparities and segregation. This tokenization mirrors patterns in real life.

Black Canadians are often called upon to represent diversity in workplaces or public events, but these gestures rarely challenge the structures that perpetuate inequality.

Similarly, the citizenship study guides’ brief mentions of Black Canadians create the impression that inclusion has been achieved, leaving deeper systemic issues unacknowledged and unaddressed. 2009’s Discover Canada praised the bravery of Black soldiers in both World Wars yet omitted the fact that many were initially denied the opportunity to serve in the military.

Minimalization also occurs when Blackness is reduced to narratives of struggle. While it is vital to honour the fight against slavery and segregation, the guides rarely highlight Black joy and innovation.

This framing not only flattens the complexity of Black experiences but also risks perpetuating stereotypes that limit how Black Canadians are perceived.

‘Selective inclusion’

One of the most revealing insights from the citizenship guides is how they reflect selective inclusion. In 2009’s Discover Canada, for instance, Canadian multiculturalism is celebrated as a cornerstone of national identity.

Yet the guide devotes far more space to Canadians of European descent, reinforcing a hierarchy of who is most celebrated in the national story.

This reflects a broader reality: Black Canadians are often welcomed in limited contexts, such as sports and entertainment, while facing systemic exclusion in areas like politics, corporate leadership and academia. For example, while Canada has celebrated athletes like Donovan Bailey and acclaimed writers like Esi Edugyan, Black representation in federal politics remains disproportionately low.

These issues — of selective inclusion and systemic exclusion — are especially important to highlight now because the dismantling of DEI policies in the U.S. can have a chilling effect across North America: conversations about systemic racism can be labelled as divisive, and efforts to address historical exclusions may be dismissed as unnecessary.

If Canada is to uphold its commitment to diversity, it must critically examine how its own narratives have shaped belonging.

Here in Canada, the federal Conservative Party leaders have been attacking diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Within progressive circles, our DEI efforts often face criticism — that is, more about optics than meaningful change.

‘Inclusion must go beyond visibility’

As we reflect on Black History Month, our citizenship study guides offer an important lesson: inclusion must go beyond visibility.

It is not enough to name a few figures or reference historic injustices without addressing the reality of anti-Black racism in Canada today — a fact newcomers to Canada not only deserve, but need, to know.

A meaningful way forward would be to integrate Black history more fully into the newcomer education curriculum, ensuring that stories like Africville and Viola Desmond’s trial are seen as essential parts of Canadian history, not as footnotes.

Black History Month is also a reminder that diversity is not just about celebrating achievements but about creating systems that allow all Canadians to thrive.

Citizenship, in its fullest sense, means belonging—not just in the abstract but in the lived experience of equity, recognition and opportunity.

The evolution of the citizenship guides shows progress but also highlights how much work remains.

As we move forward, we must commit to telling the whole story of Canada — a story where Blackness is not erased, tokenized or selectively included, but embraced as integral to the fabric of this nation

Source: It’s Black History Month. Let’s Move Inclusion Beyond Visibility

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Why Canada needs a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage

2020/02/17 Leave a comment

Not convinced by the rationale for a separate strategy for Black arts, culture and heritage rather than the current strategy of increasing diversity in existing arts and culture programming in institutions like Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada and others.

The return of the Multiculturalism Program to Canadian Heritage reflected the intent to ensure the program, both directly and through the Canadian Heritage portfolio agencies, recognized the importance of arts and culture.

The commentary would benefit from an analysis of the effectiveness of existing government and agency programs in advancing diversity for the Black and other communities.

And if the government does for the Black community, one can expect pressures from other communities to do the same (as we have seen with history and heritage months:

Like the ones before it, this Black History Month is blessed with a cascade of creative programming that will uncover and convey Black Canada’s complex and compelling stories through an array of artistic mediums. This includes varied and powerful artistic performances of theatre, music and dance; photography and other visual arts exhibitions; book talks; community tours; film screenings, and so much more.

However, the troubling truth is that, outside of February, consistent and prominent displays of Black creative talent and artistic direction are exceedingly rare in Canada. Beyond Black History Month, Canada’s Black creatives and creative industry professionals experience what one of Canada’s leading Black professors, Katherine McKittrick, might refer to as an “absented presence.” This absenting of Canada’s Black creatives is especially revealed in the leadership and programming of Canada’s dominant cultural institutions, including major galleries, museums, art, film and performance spaces. This is why Canada needs a national policy on Black arts, culture and heritage.

Towards a national arts policy for Black Canadians

A national arts policy for Black Canadians would enable Canadian governments to fulfill the legislated promise of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. This Act recognizes multiculturalism as a “fundamental characteristic of Canadian society.” A proposed Black national arts policy, then, would leverage the diverse and dynamic profiles of Canada’s Black communities to support our country’s commitment to “a policy of multiculturalism designed to preserve and enhance the multicultural heritage of Canadians while working to achieve the equality of all Canadians in the economic, social, cultural and political life of Canada.”

A Black Canadian national arts policy would also substantially enhance the principle of multiculturalism as a human rights instrument enshrined in Canada’s Constitution in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Given the typical absence and erasure of Black arts, culture and heritage in Canada, protecting the “preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians” of African descent, through a national Black arts, culture and heritage policy is prudent policy intervention with significant value that transcends party lines.

Because of the aforementioned legal and constitutional provisions, Canadians and parties of all political stripes have a vested national interest in ensuring due respect and presence is afforded to Canada’s Black communities through arts, culture and heritage place-making. More specifically, the current government also has an interest in adopting a national Black arts policy because it would markedly enhance Canada’s commitment to implement the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent.

Black Canada’s got tremendous talent

For decades, and particularly in the last year couple of years, the artistic excellence of Canada’s Black creative talents has abundantly demonstrated that now is the time for Canada’s adoption of a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage.

Consider, for instance, some of the most recent Black Canadian successes in the literary arts alone:

  1. The 2019 winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama: “Other Side of the Game” by Amanda Parris;
  2. The 2019 winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize for debut novel, Reproduction by Ian Williams;
  3. A 2019 winner of the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Fiction, Brother, by David Chariandy

This is to say nothing of Canada’s longtime literary treasures Dionne Brand, Andre Alexis, Esi Edugyan, Lawrence Hill, Dany Laferrière, M. NourbeSe Phillip, George Elliott Clarke, the late Austin Clarke, and many more. There’s also a coming tide of gifted breakout writers who are poised to soon follow in these writers’ footsteps, including Eternity Martis, Zalika Reid-Benta, Kagiso Lesego Molope, Chelene Knight, Desmond Cole, Téa Mutonji, Rebecca Fisseha, Nadia Hohn, Evan Winter, Whitney French, Djamila Ibrahim and Canisia Lubrin.

In music, Black Canada’s creative genius is also gaining increasing traction beyond the superstars Drake (including his OVO Sound mega artists and producers) and The Weeknd. For instance, in 2019, the Polaris Music Prize went to rapper Haviah Mighty for her album 13th Floor. Karena Evans is also making her mark as one of the hottest new award-winning video directors. There’s also the increasing embrace by the global hip-hop community of Juno award-winning artist Shad as a trusted and true hip-hop historian thanks to the ballooning success of the Canadian music documentary series Hip-Hop Evolution on Netflix.

In Hollywood, actor Stephan James and his brother, Shamier Anderson, are doing bigger and bigger things in front of the camera while breakout film director and screenwriter Stella Meghie’s filmmaking career has taken off in the US and Canada; her highly anticipated film The Photograph arrives in theatres this month. Also, actress Vinessa Antoine recently came to national attention as the lead character in Diggstown, the first Canadian drama series to feature a Black Canadian woman as its lead, also produced by fellow Black Canadian Floyd Kane. Finally, there is the growing fame of Winnie Harlow, who continues to change the game as a global fashion model and a public spokesperson with lived experience having the skin condition vitiligo.

These are some of the most prominent Black Canadian creatives recently achieving great successes. They’re doing so in a way that is defining and refining what it means to be not just be Black, but Black and Canadian.

Valuing Black arts is valuing Black people

Without a national policy or infrastructure and a strategy to support, sustain and/or nurture the creative and professional growth of the hundreds of thousands of young Black Canadians inspired by the above-mentioned successes, they are left without much needed support to pursue their own creative dreams. This policy gap contributes to the erasure of Black people from Canada’s collective consciousness.

This experience of Black Canadian erasure is captured by Black Canadian historian Cecil Foster, who has said: “In Canada, the norm has always been to either place blackness on the periphery of society by strategically and selectively celebrating Blacks only as a sign of how tolerant and non-racist white Canadians are (as is seen in the recurrence of the Underground Railroad as a positive achievement in a Canadian mythology of racial tolerance) or to erase blackness as an enduring way of life from the national imaginary.”

Canadian policymakers must realize that how Canada treats its Black creatives is an extension of how Canada’s Black communities are treated by Canadian society writ large. This connection is captured by a poignant comment made by Toronto hip-hop intellectual Ian Kamau, who has said, “Black music and Black art, like Black people, are undervalued in Canada”

This undervaluing of Black Canadian voices brings a sense of perpetual social and civic disposability to the Black experience in Canada that can feel suffocating. This undervaluing tends to make being Black in Canada feel like Blackness is only something to be put on display for temporary and specific purposes. It’s important that Canada boldly demonstrate that our country finds worth, value and meaning in Black Canadian life well beyond the short and cold days of February. We need to build on the good that comes out of Black History Month.

Black arts, well-being and belonging

Without a long-term, robustly resourced, multi-sectoral and intergovernmental national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage, Canada risks turning celebration into exploitation of Canada’s Black creative class (and by extension, of Canada’s Black communities). Not having a national framework for birthing, incubating and nurturing Canada’s Black talents is a lost opportunity for all Canadians. This is because such a policy would only advance the currency of Canada’s global cultural capital.

Finally, while many Black communities love Black History Month, it is also true that for many Black Canadians, it perpetuates a sense of Black disposability. It is a stark contrast to the almost complete loss of positive time and attention that Canada’s Black communities are given by governments and mainstream institutions the rest of the year.

A national Black arts, culture and heritage policy would help Black History Month to enhance its commemoration of Canada’s Black histories while also serving as a vehicle for an annual launch and exhibition of a year-long display of Black Canada’s diverse established and emerging talents. This would go a long way to not only fostering a deeper sense of belonging for Black Canadians (new and old) but also materially advancing the economic well-being of the Black creatives and administrators who too often struggle to support themselves and their art the rest of the year.

The Swahili word for creativity is kuumba, which has become a principle of Kwanzaa, the African diaspora’s cultural celebration. It’s time for an African Canadian Arts Council, and we could call it Kuumba Canada. Because our #BlackArtsMatter.

Source: Why Canada needs a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage

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Retired MP overcame hurdles to secure Black History Month designation

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

A number of other federal heritage months have been added, e.g., Asian Heritage in May, Islamic History in October):

Jean Augustine’s efforts in the House of Commons 25 years ago to build support for a motion calling on the federal government to designate February as Black History Month in Canada succeeded in the end, but there were some hurdles along the way.

“I had colleagues who would say, ‘If you want February, who would come for March? If you have Black History month, when are we going to have white history month?'” the retired Liberal MP told The House on Friday.

“Those were kind of provocative statements that were made to me as I tried to convince my colleagues.”

The retired Liberal MP’s campaign to designate Black History Month in Canada in 1995 came just two years after the Grenada-born Augustine became the first African-Canadian woman elected to Parliament.

The importance of visibility

Today, there are still only a handful of black MPs in the House of Commons.

To encourage more black Canadians to run, Augustine said, political parties must ramp up their recruitment efforts and ensure candidates with diverse backgrounds are chosen to run in winnable ridings.

Otherwise, she said, “It’s kind of like an exercise.”

Augustine said she knows her presence in Parliament sent a signal to black Canadians everywhere. She said she can remember people telling her that they would gather their children and grandchildren every time they saw her on television in the House of Commons, or descending the stairs behind then-prime minister Jean Chrétien.

“‘Look, look, look, look,’ they would say. ‘If she can do this, you can do this.'”

Source: Retired MP overcame hurdles to secure Black History Month designation

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400 years of African-Canadian history in a Dalhousie minor

2016/11/23 1 Comment

An often neglected part of our history:

The marginalized study of African-Canadian history and culture has taken centre stage at Dalhousie University this fall. A new interdisciplinary minor, black and African diaspora studies, will offer a contemporary and historic view of black history in Canada. It’s an area that program creator Afua Cooper says has long been ignored. “It’s still a submerged area of study,” she says. “Frankly speaking, I would say people in the university system haven’t seen black studies as something worthy of scholarly inquiry.”

Many courses only focus on certain branches of black history, and it often tends to be about the United States. Cooper, who is Dalhousie’s James R. Johnston chair in black Canadian studies, finds many Canadians don’t know about our black history beyond this past century. In fact, the presence of blacks in Canada dates back to 1604 and the Port Royal settlement. It’s this 400-year legacy, along with arts, culture and other topics, that Cooper wants to focus on. “Students will learn about the long-lasting black communities all over this country and the struggles and triumphs of black Canadians,” she says. “They faced a lot of discrimination throughout these centuries: social exclusion, segregation, segregated schools.”

Having this branch of study is even more important today, in the wake of Black Lives Matter. “Students may say, ‘Why do we have to learn about Viola Desmond, because it was 1946 and she was protesting racial segregation,’ ” says Cooper. “That’s gone, but here we are with Black Lives Matter . . . there’s a thread from Viola Desmond and events before her that connects to this.”

While she has been successful with her endeavour, Cooper isn’t the only one who saw an education gap and pushed for change at Dalhousie. In 1970, the late Halifax lawyer and activist Rocky Jones and James Walker, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s department of history, helped establish Dalhousie’s Transition Year Program (TYP), which helps Aboriginal and black students prepare for university. “Our intention was to break a syndrome of discrimination and disadvantages that were affecting black kids’ educational opportunities,” says Walker.

In doing so, they set the stage for something much bigger—even though it took more than 40 years to establish. Walker says he and Jones thought about a black studies program and brought it to the attention of Dalhousie’s then-president Henry Hicks and Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan when setting up the TYP. However, it didn’t go past the idea stage. “We didn’t draw up a plan, and it wasn’t as advanced as what is happening now,” says Walker. “There wasn’t someone who studies that area, like there is with the black studies chair.”

Now that the new program is established—as a minor with three required courses and electives totalling 12 credit hours—Cooper is looking forward to seeing what it can bring to the Dalhousie community. “We will see what the interest is from students and the community and take it from there, with the intention of turning it into a major,” she says.

Source: 400 years of African-Canadian history in a Dalhousie minor – Macleans.ca

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Nova Scotia celebrates 100th anniversary of all-black unit: ‘Fighting to fight’

2016/03/09 Leave a comment

Anthony Sherwood continues to tell needed stories:

Despite making an award-winning docudrama on Canada’s only all-black military unit in 2001, director Anthony Sherwood says he’s still amazed how little is known nationally about the No. 2 Construction Battalion.

Sherwood will present a special screening of his film Honour Before Glory, at the new Halifax Central Library on Tuesday as part of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the formation of the battalion in 1916.

“Nova Scotia is one of the provinces where the story has flourished and has been told several times,” said Sherwood. “But I’m amazed that there is still a lot of people who don’t know this story.”

The military unit formed during the First World War was the only predominantly African-Canadian battalion since Confederation. The segregated battalion allowed black men who had previously been turned away by recruiters to enlist in the military.

Sherwood said the unique story of the battalion is an important piece of Canadian history because it shows that there were black Canadians who served their country during the first great global conflict.

“I think that participation and that service should be recognized,” said Sherwood.

Sherwood, a Halifax native, said he came to be interested in the battalion through the diary of his great uncle, Reverend William White, who served as the unit’s chaplain. That diary became the basis for the film, which won a Gemini Award in 2002.

“I strongly believe he wanted somebody to read this (diary) and tell this story,” said Sherwood.

Source: Nova Scotia celebrates 100th anniversary of all-black unit: ‘Fighting to fight’ – Macleans.ca

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How Harper Lee helped Canadians ignore racism in our own backyard – Hill

2016/02/22 Leave a comment

Lawrence Hill makes valid points regarding the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird in Canadian schools:

However, the rote and ongoing use of To Kill a Mockingbird in the classroom points to our very Canadian-ness, and to our collective disinclination in Canada to examine racism and black history in our own backyard. How utterly convenient it is for Canadian children and adults from Dawson City to St. John’s to read about racism in the Deep South of the United States in the Great Depression, and to avoid discussions about slavery, segregation, other forms of racial injustice as well as the civil-rights movement in Canada itself.

In my experience, one of the unfortunate offshoots of the success of To Kill a Mockingbird and its hold on our psyche has nothing to do with the author or the book, but rather, how we have allowed it to dominate our meditations – especially in school – about racial injustice in Canada.

Harper Lee cannot be blamed for her own success. She is not at fault for our own collective disinclination to look beyond her novel and acknowledge the existence and eventual rooting out of slavery in the Maritimes and present-day Quebec and Ontario.

We have only ourselves and our own reticence to confront history to blame for the fact that many Canadians to this day are more familiar with the American Civil War and with the life of Martin Luther King Jr. than they are with the struggle to eradicate racial segregation in Southwest Ontario and in Nova Scotia; the movement of the black Loyalists from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783 and then, for many, back to Africa a decade later; the movement of 600 blacks from California onto Vancouver and Salt Spring Island in the mid-19th century; the settlement of blacks from Oklahoma and Texas in the Canadian prairies at the outset of the 20th century; the waves of immigrants coming to Canada from Caribbean nations starting in the late 1960s, and the simultaneous bulldozing of Africville in the north end of Halifax.

Black history in Canada is as complex and varied as the history of any racial or ethnic group, but we have lost sight of that, partly as a result of our obsession with evil in another era and another country.

Although it richly written and wonderfully drawn, To Kill a Mockingbirdemploys a narrative approach that has been used time and time again to address racism in North America. Racism and injustice is perceived through the eyes of benevolent whites, and the stories feature white characters over black. Indeed, in To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as in Harper Lee’s follow-up novel Go Set a Watchman, published in the last year of her life, black characters are minimally sketched. With the exception of Calpurnia, a black woman who works in the house of Atticus Finch, Harper Lee presents to her readers racism and evil, minus dimensional black characters.

Source: How Harper Lee helped Canadians ignore racism in our own backyard – The Globe and Mail

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Toronto’s black history unearthed in excavation of landmark church

2016/02/17 2 Comments

Part of our history:

It has been called “one of the most important blocks of black history in Toronto,” a place where African Americans, fleeing slavery, found refuge to live, work and worship.

On this tract of land, just north of Osgoode Hall, a handful of African Methodists built a small wood frame church in 1845. It served as the spiritual and political centre of the city’s growing black community, which was asserting its voice in the abolitionist movement and welcoming an influx of families seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Eventually, the congregation outgrew the tiny church and replaced it with a handsome brick temple. But after more than a century, membership dwindled, the congregation moved and the temple was sold off. In the late 1980s, the building was demolished to make way for a parking lot and, until last fall, the church was largely forgotten.

Now, with that same lot being prepared for the development of a new state-of-the-art provincial courthouse, the rich history of Chestnut St.’s British Methodist Episcopal Church has resurfaced, along with that of the 19th-century neighbourhood surrounding it.

The British Methodist Episcopal church on Chestnut St. as seen in 1953, around the time the dwindling congregation moved to Shaw St.

J.V. SALMON

The British Methodist Episcopal church on Chestnut St. as seen in 1953, around the time the dwindling congregation moved to Shaw St.

Hundreds of thousands of artifacts have been discovered at the 0.65-hectare site — larger than a football field — near University Ave. and Dundas St. Infrastructure Ontario, the government agency overseeing construction, provided the Toronto Star with unique access to the five-month dig, considered one of the most extensive urban archeological projects in North America.

Unearthed ceramics, tools, toys and remnants of clothing are helping to compose a fascinating and largely untold story of the distant origins of Toronto’s diversity.

“Archeology often becomes the voice for the people without history,” says Holly Martelle, the consulting archeologist for the dig.

Rosemary Sadlier, past president of the Ontario Black History Society, visited the site before the excavation wrapped up in December. “It was an incredibly powerful experience,” recalls Sadlier, whose late relative, Rev. Thomas Jackson, served as a preacher at the church in the 1950s. “I was literally walking on ground that had been walked on by my ancestors.”

Karolyn Smardz Frost, a historian who has written extensively about black settlement in Toronto, describes the location as “one of the most important blocks of black history in Toronto.”

Infrastructure Ontario officials say they fully recognize the importance of the church site and its surroundings. Given the uniqueness of the archeological discoveries, the question now facing the provincial government is how will this history be commemorated, and what sort of stewardship will the artifacts require?

Source: Toronto’s black history unearthed in excavation of landmark church | Toronto Star

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