No more time for slow and steady
This week a global conversation has erupted calling for a true reckoning with the excessive use of police force that continues to take the lives of Black and Indigenous people in North America and around the world.
In response, Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of demanding that mayors and governors across the U.S. establish an “overwhelming law enforcement presence” as people in all 50 states took to the streets protesting the death of George Floyd.
Some Canadians, believing themselves to be fair-minded, attempted to sweep our own issues with systemic anti-Black racism and police violence under the rug, lest our neighbours see, but it’s time to address them head on.
Over the past few years I’ve been convinced that getting Canadian federal and provincial governments to sign on to the UN International Decade for People of African Descent would help spark a national conversation and funding reallocation toward recognition, justice and development.
I believed it would take years to educate government leaders and build up the political will and resources to see the necessary reforms take place. Always too concerned about maintaining positive working relationships for what I considered a long game or, as Nelson Mandela described it, a “long walk to freedom.”
For years I allowed myself to decelerate the work in the name of slow, steady, and sustainable progress.
Calling for an incremental change here and an adjustment there, celebrating small wins and then being stunned to see them reversed by the pendulum swing of partisan politics.
Organizing alongside leaders to find creative ways to engage more institutions and businesses, and preaching about how we simply needed spaces to share regional stories and promising practices to combat anti-Black racism in Canada.
I worried that during one of the deadliest pandemics in world history, the international context and urgency around this focus on people of African descent, including those living in Canada, would be eclipsed.
This week I learned that I was wrong. The Black Lives Matter movement rightfully surpassed the limitations I naively set. The will (and the way) lies with the people.
In this uneasy partnership between Canadian institutions and Black and Indigenous communities we are not where we should be — but when has that ever stopped us from trying?
For many, it’s easier to dismiss the voices calling for change than to do the real work of making that change a reality.
We are all in the same boat, but some of us have been drowning in our cabins for years while others sit comfortably on deck, woefully unaware of the crisis taking place below, fascinated by the one or two stories they might hear but dismissing them as one-off experiences.
I built a career on not rocking the boat too much, but the boat is flipped over and on fire. Now is the perfect time to initiate the radical institutional changes that Black and Indigenous women, men and nonbinary Canadians have strived toward for generations.
We need less repackaged and woefully inadequate advisory councils presented as solutions and more transformative justice, especially for those communities that have long faced excessive police force and surveillance, which the current COVID-19 realities have only intensified.
We don’t need another listening tour for the sake of truth sharing that rarely results in any reconciliation.
We need a complete reformation of our police and prisons, economic justice, vast changes to mental health supports and education reforms. And we absolutely must be collecting racebased data during this global health crisis.
Like every Canadian leader, former and current, who found themselves backtracking on statements denying the realities of anti-Black racism learned this week, we are far past the question as to whether or not it exists.
We need actions aimed not at quieting the noise for our own comfort, but instead with the aim of benefiting future generations who will read about this moment — and what we did with it — in history books.
No — slow and steady doesn’t always win the race.
I saw someone pose the question of where in the world is it good to be Black, asserting that no country is truly getting it right. And, well, is that not the point?