Get informed, students told
Black Canadians need to learn their history if change is to happen, activist says
A Jamaican-Canadian law student and civil rights activist articling in Ottawa says it’s up to black Canadians to learn their own history in order to change the black experience in Canada.
Anthony Morgan, 27, who studied law at McGill and is now articling in Ottawa, spoke to a group of grade 11 and 12 students at Immaculata Catholic High School Friday as part of the Dominica Institute’s Passages to Canada speaker’s series for Black History Month.
He began the presentation by asking a few students to join him on stage, and then played what has become the Internet meme-of-the-moment: The Harlem Shake. The students started dancing and soon the entire auditorium joined in.
But, when the music cut and Morgan asked the crowd where Harlem is and what it’s known for, there were few answers coming from the teenagers.
“There’s a large number of black people who feel that they’re not being properly represented,” Morgan said of people in Harlem who were interviewed by the New York Times after the video craze went viral. By recognizing where the dance comes from, Morgan told the students they can draw connections, ask questions and learn.
He widened the lesson to challenge students to learn about black history in Canada.
“It’s up to us to learn our own history … we can only contribute to a contemporary debate if we do the groundwork ourselves and learn our own stories.”
He said a lot of black people “think we just got here in 1950 or 1960 and they’ll say ‘ because we just got here, we don’t have the right to ask for anything’.”
“But, that’s just simply not true,” said Morgan. “Black people have been contributing to this country since before there was a Canada.”
Immaculata’s Black History Month event also included an African dance and a drumming circle. The all-girl presentation was a hit, with the crowd whistling and clapping, but Morgan said it highlighted a major issue in contemporary Canada: “A serious gender achievement gap.”
“In terms of education, nowadays you’ll find that it’s a lot of young women who are doing very well for themselves.”
But for black boys, Morgan said more needs to be done for men to support each other without getting sidetracked by media images of “black masculinity,” which he said can be negative and destructive.
He pointed to social disparities that leave black Canadians near the bottom in almost every category — education, housing, pay, access to resources and health outcomes — but was careful to say that, in order to change direction, the steering must come from within the community.
“We have to do a lot more work to show that we respect ourselves and I think that will be the catalyst for change,” he said.
In his own life, Morgan speaks publicly and comments on current events in the Huffington Post. He hopes to set an example for other black Canadians to feel comfortable critiquing Canada, “not in a trashing way but from a place of love for this country.”
He pointed to the indigenous Idle No More movement, which has been sweeping the nation since early December, raising awareness about treaty rights, water and land rights and the government’s duty to consult and accommodate First Nations before changing laws that affect them.
Acknowledging that there have always been aboriginal activists pushing for change, Morgan said “as a collective that expands from one end of the country to the other, this is something that we haven’t seen yet.”
He said this is the kind of movement the black community needs. “Historically we’ve had great advocates, but now we need our collective consciousness to grow, for many blacks to say ‘things need to be different’.”