SHOCKING STORIES
Racism in Canada? Black CFLers may feel safer here, but we’ve got our own problems
If you think racism is just a U.S. thing, listen to some Canadian Football League players talk about their experiences.
In 2002, Khari Jones, then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback, received death threats — because he was black.
Nate Behar, a Canadian who was selected by the Edmonton Eskimos in the first round of the 2017 CFL draft (he played two seasons there before joining the Ottawa Redblacks in 2019), was called the n-word when he was eight years old — in London, Ont. Then he was beat up and knocked out on a Queen’s University Homecoming weekend a few years ago.
While he was an offensive lineman with the Redblacks, SirVincent Rogers had the n-word thrown his way.
Former Redblacks quarterback Henry Burris has heard the n-word in Ottawa, so have his kids.
The time is right for conversation in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an American black man who died two weeks ago in Minneapolis — four police officers have been charged. Since then, the talk of systemic racism and inequality has heated up with marches and protests throughout the U.S. and into Canada.
“The first time I was called a n—-r was on a football field. I’ll never forget it, it was a night game, minor football,” said Behar whose father is from Jamaica and grew up in south Florida while his mother is Jewish, from Israel. “I was a running back, I got tackled. When I got up, there were like four kids around me, one of them yelled ‘n—-r’ at me, I couldn’t tell who it was. I remember being so filled with anger. I wanted to hit somebody. I’ll never forget taking my helmet off and starting to cry. My dad knew something was wrong, he asked me what happened. He yelled at the ref, yelled at my coach and took me home.
Nate Behar, while with the Carleton Ravens, had a scary experience in Kingston during Homecoming weekend.
“I was embarrassed. It was almost like I had failed (my father) by not being able to figure out which of the four said it to me. Should I have just fought everybody? There have been so many occurrences. Fourth-year university (with the Carleton Ravens), we had a bye week and Queen’s (in Kingston) had its Homecoming. I remember walking by a house and a couple of words were shared — everybody’s out drinking beer. All of a sudden, 15 guys had me pinned against the car, yelling, ‘n—-r’ at me. One guy starts it by throwing a sucker punch.
“Six hours later, we had to walk past the house again because we were in a cul-desac where we were staying. A guy who didn’t get a chance to punch me the first time comes out with a big stick. He yells from across the street, ‘There’s that n—-r again.’ He comes over and cracks the stick over my head, he knocks me the hell out. There were four or five of us — football players (from Carleton) — we were in the middle of the season, we had agreed we wouldn’t go in there and fight. We didn’t want to break our hands in Week 6.”
Rogers, who’s now in Edmonton and played with the Redblacks from 2015-18, enjoyed his time in Ottawa. But there was an incident that got under his skin.
“I’ve never talked about this publicly,” he said. “It had to be 2016 or ’17. I was out at an establishment with a white American teammate —
I’m not going to drop anybody’s name. There was an incident at the end of the night where a female said to me, ‘You have n—r lips.
That’s what she said to me. I think she was drunk. It was one of those things where I think my teammate wasn’t interested in her friend. It escalated to her being frustrated and I was trying to mediate. The drunkenness turned her into her lashing out.
“I was so taken aback. If it had been a man, there would have been a physical altercation. It rubbed me wrong in the moment. Until that point, I’d looked at Canada as a safe haven, I had never had the experiences I’d had in the U.S. when it comes to racism. In that moment, I wrestled with whether that was a deeper issue in
Canada. But it’s not necessarily something I’ve felt in my time in Canada.”
Timothy J. Stanley, professor emeritus, Faculty of Education and Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies at the University of Ottawa, studies these things. The question for him is not so much is racism worse in the U.S. than Canada, but how is it different?
“In Canada, we don’t have the history of plantation slavery that has shaped a lot of racism toward black African Americans in the U.S.,” he said. “But we do have a history of AfricanCanadian slavery. Jarvis Street in Toronto is named after the largest slave owner in Toronto of that time. What we remember in Canadian
nationalist mythology is the Underground Railroad. Until slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833, black slaves from Canada were escaping to the U.S. — that’s not remembered.
“Racism against Indigenous people in Canada by virtually every measure is worse than racism directed against African Americans in the U.S. — things like rates of incarceration, poverty, etc. There’s a widespread perception that people of African and Asian origin in Canada are newcomers, people who don’t really belong here. People of European origins are often seen as people who naturally and unproblematically belong here. That is the product of a whole history of racist exclusion directed at people of Asian and African origin, also against Indigenous people.”
Khari Jones received death threats while he was a quarterback with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Jones, the Montreal Alouettes head coach, talked this week about death threats he got when he was the Bombers quarterback . It began with a call to the office of Lyle Bauer, then the Bombers president/CEO who was told he was a “n-lover’ and would be killed for it. Jones got a series of letters suggesting he and his wife Justine, who is white, deserved to die. One of the letters said, “Bang, I hope someone shoots you.”
We want to hold ourselves to a different standard. But ignorance about the use of derogatory words is still very much in our schoolyards, on our streets and in our homes. The good news, American football players agree they feel safer and are more at ease in Canada. But how safe do you think many Indigenous people, whose mistreatment dates way back, feel in this country?
“I’m not ignorant to the fact that racism exists in Canada, I’m sure it does,” said CFL Players Association president and Saskatchewan Roughriders linebacker Solomon Elimimian. “But I do feel different in Canada, that’s why I live here (in Vancouver). I’ve been pulled over by the police (in Canada), but there hasn’t been one time where I felt I could lose my life — I’ve never felt my life was at risk. When I go back to the States and I get pulled over, my anxiety is through the roof. I’m scared, I’m fearful. Is Canada perfect? No. But the conversation is a lot more open here than it is in the States. And I think that’s where we’re trying to get to.”
“There’s still racism (in Canada), but it’s nowhere near what it is in the US of A,” said Ike Charlton, defensive backs coach with the Toronto Argonauts, who has also played and worked in Winnipeg, Montreal and
Ottawa.
When he was the defensive backs coach for the Redblacks (from 2014-17), Charlton had one incident when he asked a woman a question.
Former Redblacks defensive backs coach Ike Charlton says racism exists in Canada, but it is not even close to what it is in the United States.
“She looked at me and said, ‘I’m not helping you. I don’t talk to you people.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, in Canada? That doesn’t happen here.’ I like the outdoor restaurants, the patios in Canada. You sit and you watch, you see things go on. The cops don’t harass you, sometimes they even speak to you. You come home to the U.S., they go by slow — it’s intimidating, it’s like, ‘I’m superior to you, boy.’ You’re on pins and needles. We come up to Canada and we get to breathe for 51/2 months.”
Burris and his family love Ottawa. They’ve made it their home since he signed as a free agent with the Redblacks in early 2014. He led the team to a Grey Cup victory in 2016. So, yeah, he’s a local hero. That doesn’t necessarily give him, his wife and kids special status.
“The N-word,” Burris said. “(My kids) have heard it at school, kids are called the N-word in online chats or in the playground, even in hockey the N-word got dropped. Younger kids use it maliciously, not really knowing what it means. The problem lies with they’re not taught why you shouldn’t say it. It starts at home — educate yourself, educate your family.”
Burris also took exception with being pulled aside at the Ottawa International Airport after the family returned from a trip to the Dominican
Republic in early 2017, a couple of months after winning the Grey Cup.
“I asked why they were doing it,” said Burris. “They said to me, ‘Mr. Burris, you and your family are only here by privilege, not by right.’ They said they were checking for drugs. Drugs. Everybody that got pulled in was pretty much the same complexion. My wife had a drink and she was throwing it away. They took it out of the trash. A guy grabbed my wife’s ticket. That’s what ignited me. They escorted us to the backroom where they could check everything we had. We know the pressure cooker is heating up down south, but it’s hot up here, too.”
Asked if he was angry with being treated different, Behar said: “I hate quoting people, but (American novelist) Toni Morrison said it best — there was never a day in her life when she felt upset or sad over who she was. It’s just a deep sense of pity. People who practise any form of racism, whether implicit or not, people who keep telling themselves they’re something and somebody else is not, they’re just morally bankrupt and genuinely horrible. There’s no sugar coating that.
“I go to sleep every night knowing I’m a good person with a beautiful culture on both sides. I have a beautiful Middle Eastern culture. And there’s nothing I love more in the world than black culture. There’s no reason to feel anything but pride. To feel incessant hatred burning down on us, we just don’t break or give in. It’s really the people that are racist that are weak.”
Sounds like it’s time for a lot of us to listen and learn.