Why Canada needs Black Lives Matter

The rallying cry of Black Lives Matter is gaining an increasingly Canadian accent. Over the past couple of weeks, in the cities of Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Toronto, thousands have gathered for marches and vigils under the banner of Black Lives Matter, and/or to publicly express sadness and opposition to anti-black police brutality and the impunity that too often follows.

This activity has been largely precipitated by the police killings of Alton Sterling in New Orleans, Philando Castile in Minnesota and the police shooting of Charles Kinsley in Florida.

But why are Canadians getting so bothered by anti-black police violence in America?

What most Canadians do not appreciate is that we too have a tragic trend of black men who have been killed by police with impunity, and thus who could be just as easily memorialized with their own haunting hashtags. Think, #AndrewLoku, #JermaineCarby, #AlexWettlaufer, #KwasiSkene-Peters, #Jean-PierreBony, #IanPryce, #Frank Anthony Berry ,# Michael Eli g on ,# Eric Os a we, #Rey al Jar dine-Douglas ,# Junior Alexander Man on, just to name a few names since 2010.

Despite this, as gatherings to protest state violence against black people in the U.S. have happened across Canada, what has emerged in media and public discourse has been disturbing. The typical response has been: “Hey, at least being black in Canada is far better than being black in the U.S.”

What needs to be understood is that by defensively diminishing black Canadian experiences of police violence by arguing that it is worse in the States, that person is repeating the same violence as those who use the retort, All Lives Matter.

Both responses, All Lives Matter and “at least blacks in Canada have it better than blacks in the U.S.,” dehumanize and help to justify the molestation, maiming and murder of black bodies by police. Both expressions callously discard the sacred humanity, extreme pain and torturous trauma of not only the individual victims, but also of their families, friends and personal connections. This is also extremely insensitive to the black families, communities and their allies whose connection to common human decency causes them to feel the pain of others.

Any compassionate Canadian who has been following the solidarity gatherings in Canadian cities will have heard some form of the same statement: Anti-blackness knows no borders. It is here and always has been. Just as Canada cannot deny its black population, it cannot deny its own record of anti-blackness.

Canada’s record may not look as extreme as the American stack of black bodies bloodied, battered and buried by police violence with impunity, but ours is a deplorable record on its own terms. For instance, in Toronto, since at least 1978 no police officer has ever served time in prison for killing a black person, despite the fact that black people are extraordinarily overrepresented in instances of police use of lethal force.

The Special Investigations Unit was in large part created to close the police accountability gap that existed and still persists when a black person is killed by an officer. Instead the SIU has primarily served to rubber-stamp black death at the hands of police with a horrifying nonchalance that is too typically consistent with the polite and passive-aggressive character of the ways anti-black racism plays out in Canada.

Indeed, the absence of police accountability for the taking of black life is a sordid and shameful tradition that Canada shares closely with America.

But let’s not forget that lethal force is only the most extreme expression of police violence.

Long before the blast of a police bullet burns through a black body, far too many blacks in Canada have been subjected to disproportionately high police scrutiny and surveillance, racial profiling, carding and other invasive intrusions that ultimately impale their life prospects, tear away at their humanity and compromise their sense of belonging in Canada.

To dismiss Canadian gatherings sparked by anti-black police violence in the U.S. only delays the inevitability of the racial justice reckoning that is already underway in Canada. The force behind this reckoning is primarily young, it is growing, it is Canadian.

This reckoning calls for a new generation of fairer and transparent state-accountability mechanisms that will fully and finally replace the inaction and cowardice of police, public policy-makers and politicians who refuse to honestly and ethically respond to the ways that anti-black racism penetrates the 49th parallel.