Module 4: Anti-Black Racism (Part 1)

Duration: Approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes 

Jump to: Intro | Readings | Definitions & Important Terms/Themes | Reflections

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 Intro

Remote video URL
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Readings

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Chapter Page Number
My Racist Introduction p. 3 - 13
Definitions p. 14 - 24
Dueling Consciousness p. 25 - 35
Power p. 36 - 44
Biology p. 45 - 56
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Definitions and Important Terms/Themes 

Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives

“To be Black in Canada is to live slavery’s ‘afterlife’…”

Barrington Walker, “Finding Jim Crow in Canada”

“[Anti-Black racial  discrimination] is embedded in history, and historical understanding is essential to unlocking solutions with any promise of success.”

Defining Anti-Black Racism – City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit

“Anti-Black Racism is policies and practices that are embedded in Canadian institutions that reflect and reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination that are directed at people of African descent and are rooted in their unique history and experience of enslavement and colonization here in Canada.”

Historical Roots of Anti-Black Racism in Ontario and Canada

Term Definition
Ideology of Blackness
  • 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

Enslavement in Canada
  • 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.
The Liberal Racial Order The idea that “Blacks are to blame” runs rampant within a liberal democracy that has a formal commitment to equality (i.e. a Human Rights Code and Multiculturalism Act).
Anti-Black Immigration Policies

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.

Colourism (Pigmentocracies)

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.

How does history impact our lives today and contribute to contemporary instances of anti-Black racism?

It influences the stereotypes (pathologies) we have of Black people today. Stereotypes that were created during enslavement and colonialism.

Black man = Criminal

  • Blackness and criminality has roots back to fugitive slave advertisements, where it was seen to be ‘breaking the law’ if a Black person tried to seek freedom.
  • Enslavement and immediately following Emancipation in the 19th century, Black men depicted as ‘Black-male-as-rapist’ as an anti-immigration measure to stir public opinion to keep Black people out of the country.

Black woman = Sexualized Body

  • The ‘Jezebel’ stereotype, justified the profitable rape of Black women during slavery.

Black Mental Health = Drapetomania

  • "In 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana surgeon and psychologist, filed a report in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal on diseases prevalent among the South's [B]lack population. Among the various maladies Dr. Cartwright described was 'drapetomania' or 'the disease causing slaves to run away" - Bigotry as Mental Illness or Just Another Norm by Emily Eakin, New York Times.
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 Reflections

Now that you have completed the module, take some time to reflect on what you have learned. Use the reflection template to document your response to the following:

What was your first experience confronting/experiencing/challenging/understanding anti-Black racism?