Module 4: Anti-Black Racism (Part 1)

• Most importantly, anti-Black racism is rooted in the negative ideology – the negative belief – of what it means to be ‘Black.’
• To be ‘Black’ was created deliberated to justify the brutality of enslavement; Black people had to be (and continue to be) dehumanized to justify the horrors committed against them.
• ‘Black’ signified an imagined history; a Black person was a social construct.  They were as real as ‘race’ was biological. They were created through ignorance, prejudice, and a means for class and socio-economic exploitation, justified through the hegemonic ideology of ‘White’ ‘racial’ superiority.  A Black person, was not someone who happened to be black in colour, but ‘Black’ in existence.

- Dr. Christopher Stuart Taylor

• Black and Indigenous (Panis) enslavement existed in Canada until 1834.
• The importation of enslaved people was abolished in Upper Canada in 1793 by Lord Simcoe (i.e. Simcoe Day in August).
• Contrary to popular belief, Canada was not the actual ‘Promised Land’ of racial equality during the Underground Railroad; White Canadians tolerated Black Freedom Seekers to punish American slave (property) owners.

1906 and 1910 Immigration Acts

• Openly stated that Canada could exclude those based on race.

Climate Discrimination

• Section 38 of the 1910 Immigration Act:
• “empowered the Governor in Council to prohibit entry of immigrants belonging to ‘any race deemed unsuited to the climate requirements of Canada’.”

Canada’s racist immigration policies officially abolished in 1962.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the ‘father’ of Western Art History, 1764:

• “A beautiful body will be all the more beautiful the whiter it is.”

During enslavement: “A body will be all the more superior the Whiter it is – an enslaved body will be closer to the slaveholder the Whiter it is.” – Kendi, 2019.