Less than a year ago, I had my first conversation about race in my school with my principal. Because of the lack of representation at our school, my friends and I had been talking about what it would be like to have a Black vice-principal. The word ‘nigga’ was used at some point. A teacher down the hall in her classroom overheard our conversation and came out to talk to us. Her main concern was not that we had used that word but that we had been talking about having a Black vice-principal. We told her we had nothing against our current VP and we were just reflecting, and her response was something like, “So? What difference would it make? You shouldn’t be talking about him like that.” My friends and I stood there in shock wondering what we had said to trigger such a reaction. Why did this white woman in a position of power feel threatened by these four Black girls having a profound and important conversation about race in their school? Had she really been listening, she would have known that we just wanted to feel a little less alone in this school where there were only six Black staff members to match the huge Black student population. This teacher was so ‘disturbed’ by our conversation that she reported it to our principal and my friend was suspended.
The reaction to this private conversation between friends had shown me the true colours of the staff at my school and it did not sit well with me. So with this incident in mind, and with the knowledge that my music teacher also treated children of colour strangely, I spoke up. I spoke with my parents and they both agreed that I should go speak to my principal not only because what happened was wrong but because it had a lasting psychological effect on me and my friends. We no longer felt we could speak freely between each other; we felt stripped of our right to privacy and felt silenced. We still had three years left at that school, and since we had no intention of leaving, we were determined to make some changes. I asked my mother to schedule an appointment with the principal and if she could be present during the meeting to support me morally and as a witness. I told all my friends this news and they were ecstatic! They could not wait for me to “put the principal in her place.” I felt safer and stronger knowing that everyone had my back and was rooting for me. I walked into my principal’s office nervous but sure of myself. I was not ready for the conversation that followed.
I did not expect my principal to be happy with a fourteen-year-old student coming in her office and telling her that there was a race problem at her school. I expected her to dismiss the idea — she did. She focused solely on the girl element of my story and dismissed the role of race in the incident. Her idea was to do a ‘girl power’ related workshop or assembly of some sort; all this so she didn’t have to do anything about race matters. Her ‘I don’t see colour’ response was so typically Canadian I almost laughed. Her refusal to acknowledge the role race played in this situation demonstrated to me just how much work needs to be put into the education system regarding race matters. By then I had completely shut down and was tearing up because I was frustrated with my inability to speak my thoughts. My body had gone into a kind of shock mode as a result of being dismissed in such an obvious way, and by then I was just nodding my head in agreement with everything she said so I could get out of her office. My mom was not letting that happen. My principal asked my mom if she had any suggestions, and she had plenty. My mother made her pay attention to what was taking place in the present moment.
My mother informed the principal that I wasn’t listening to her, I had clammed up mentally and had removed myself from the situation. She told her that her refusal to acknowledge my Blackness was a refusal to acknowledge me because I was speaking to her of my experiences in relation to my Blackness. Blackness is an essential part of me and it is part of what shapes me. Had I not been Black, I would not have gone through all these experiences that have taught me to identify racism even when others don’t think that’s what it is. My mom then asked me if I had anything to say. I replied yes. I had a lot to say.
Uninterrupted, I detailed my experience as a Black girl in this school. I told my principal about the stereotypes the teachers had about Black students, the lack of patience and tolerance for us, and the feeling that we were expected to fail. As I spoke I felt my strength coming back, along with a sense of empowerment. When I stopped speaking I realized just how quiet the room had become.
I was born in Montreal to two immigrant parents: an Ethiopian mother and a Jamaican father. My parents were aware that my school environments would not nurture my need for Black role models so they made sure I was exposed to that outside of school. I was fortunate enough to have access to conferences, meetings, important figures, and books that helped shape my understanding of why and how Black is beautiful. However, they also understood the importance of recognizing the land we are on. My paternal ancestors were ripped away from their land, enslaved, and shipped off to the Caribbean. I do not know my origins, I can only make educated guesses. Every day I pray that my ancestors’ land is being respected and their experiences are being valued and respected. With these thoughts in mind, it makes it very hard for me to be comfortable living on Indigenous land that was also ripped away from its first inhabitants. It is difficult to see the misrepresentation and lack of Indigenous perspectives when learning about Indigenous people. In my opinion, the racism experienced by Black folks is similar to the racism experienced by Indigenous people. Religion and violence have been used as systems of oppression against both groups. Through religion and violence our communities were taught to hate their cultures and were made to feel inferior. Women were devalued and treated with indifference instead of being respected for carrying our future. Racism in Canada has had a direct impact on Indigenous bodies and the cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls and Women is a prime example. This type of violence, which disproportionately affects Indigenous women, was unrecognized for decades simply because it was affecting them and not white women. A system was created specifically targeting the bodies and minds of Indigenous people, and a similar measure continues to be used to oppress Black people. A major difference between Blacks in Canada and its Indigenous population is that Indigenous people are still living on the land that was forcefully taken away from them.
I think that in order for any real change to happen in Canada, people need to acknowledge that racism exists here. Racism is an institutional problem; in order for it to disappear, the system in which we operate needs to change or disappear. There are many people who say that our system has failed us, but I disagree because it was never meant for us. Therefore, we cannot rebuild this system because that would mean tearing it down and completely rebuilding it from the start. If that is going to happen, then we may as well just create a new system. We need a system that recognizes that race is fictional. We need a system that will repair the damage done to minority groups and that creates an environment with equal opportunities so that Canada can truly be the land of the free.
Progress Report
— Christina Brobby —
Dear Sir,
Almost forty years ago, I sat in your office with my (now ex) husband as you told us that our immigration application for Canada had been approved. We’d qualified based on points earned by finding my husband a job as an auto mechanic from the notice board at Canada House. I remember completing applications for him for jobs in places that I’d search for on my son’s toy globe—Regina, Hay River, and finally, Grimsby, Ontario, which he accepted. I wonder what you thought of the Black couple sitting opposite you, she only twenty-one, and already parents to a preschooler? We were living in public housing and couldn’t imagine owning our own home even though we both worked full-time. I wanted more from life, articulated by my vague complaints of a British class system that limited opportunities for young people unless they came from the right background. At the end of our meeting you shook our hands, wished us luck, and said, “If you get a chance, let us know how you’re getting on. People do from time to time.” So, here it is, my interim report on life in Canada, albeit rather late.
When we left London on a cool, cloudy, mid-summer day, it was my first experience on a plane; the furthest I’d ever traveled from England was on a high school day trip to Calais, France. I was exhausted from days of emotional farewells with the family and friends we were leaving behind and my young son’s endless questions about our upcoming adventure that I couldn’t answer.
In my corduroy pants and heavy wool sweater-coat, I was unprepared for the wall of heat and humidity that hit me when we emerged from Toronto’s international airport. I knew about my new home; I’d envisioned a cold, dark, forbidding land and wasn’t prepared for a place where you could wear open-toed sandals and sleeveless dresses for weeks without needing a cardigan.
We stayed for a while with friends of friends, an upwardly mobile Jamaican couple living in North York, who was the epitome of what hard work could get you in Canada. They each owned a car, were saving for a home, had well-paid jobs, and could afford trips back to England and Jamaica.
How naive we were! Grimsby was close to a three-hour return trip in heavy traffic from North York. For the first couple of weeks, Mike stayed in a motel during the week and returned home on the weekends. I visited him once, and left with impressions of long rows of cars parked outside boxy, low buildings beside a busy road. We never gave it a chance and made the arbitrary decision not to raise our son in small-town Ontario. Mike found work in Toronto, and I found temporary office jobs—typing up gold and silver certificates for those wealthy enough to invest in commodities. For the first few years, I spent a lot of time convincing my husband that we’d made the right decision and hoping that his threats to return to England were hollow (as an aside, Sir, I saw my ex-husband in Toronto a couple of years ago. He’s still planning on returning to Britain).
In my legal secretarial course, I met a woman who changed my life when she offered me employment in the Bay Street law firm where she worked. My decision to become a legal secretary was, I confess, spurred by my interest in being paid as much as possible for the hours my fingers pounded a keyboard. Medico-legal, wills, estates, corporate, commercial, personal injury litigation: I worked in many areas before the naivety resurfaced—I saw no reason why I couldn’t be sitting behind the desk in an office with a view of Lake Ontario instead of the cubicle I shared with another secretary.
My decision to go to law school reminds me now of my emigration experience—I was unprepared, but somehow it worked out. By then, Mike and I were separated and my son was in high school. The new man in my life, Clive, bore the brunt of my insecurities and fed me on weekends while I studied.
At the end of my second year as a law student, I gave in to my interest in northern Canada and found a summer job in Whitehorse, Yukon—by then I could easily locate it on a map. I worked for a lawyer who practiced criminal defense and family law. Between errands, I’d watch her in court, conducting a vigorous cross-examination of a Crown witness or delivering impassioned submissions to the judge. I knew then what kind of law I would practice.
I’m pleased to report that I survived law school. I went on to secure an articling position in Canada’s largest criminal defense firm. Sir, the sad reality was that most of the firm’s clients were young Black men not much older than my own teen. I spent my days rushing to courthouses speaking to their matters for my supervisors, evenings visiting clients at “my” correction centre (each student was assigned a jail in the Toronto area), before returning to the office to prepare for the next day. Finally, I’d lie in bed unable to sleep, fearing that my son might become a client of the firm due to my neglect. Was the cost of ‘getting ahead’ and making a good life in Canada being made at the expense of my son? There’d been years of overtime, studying at night, on weekends, and the crazy seventy-plus hours a week of articling needed to secure a job. That was my life as a single, Black mother. Perhaps I could have worked less, like other students at the firm, but they were white and confident of their abilities and intelligence. I was none of those and needed to compensate. For which of those, you ask? Most certainly the latter, but I believed that I needed to work harder and be a better citizen than my white counterparts. Of course, that was impossible—and exhausting. Still, I continued because it was a proven formula for at least some success.
After articling, I decided to move from Toronto. My son was heading south, to the United States, on a scholarship, while Clive and I would head west and eventually north in his aging, rusted-out Volkswagen car laden with our essential possessions in Rubbermaid containers. With cross-country skis strapped to the roof we started our journey across Canada, through those provinces my finger had traced on my son’s globe years earlier in England.
Everyone should experience the horizontal snow of prairie blizzards powered by winds so strong that you wonder whether the car will be caught up in a vortex and dropped in a farmer’s field miles away. We moved on from Regina, after the blizzard had left tractor trailers lying in the ditch like stranded turtles. I was in awe of Mother Nature then and again when the mirage suspended above the horizon morphed into the Rocky Mountains. It seemed an age before they swallowed us up. We almost ended our search for a new home in Canmore, but the North kept whispering in my ear, “You promised you’d spend at least a winter in the Yukon.”
It was -42˚C when we arrived in Whitehorse in January, making a mockery of my Gore-Tex jacket and every layer of clothing I’d squeezed beneath it. I lay on the bed that night staring at the electrical plates and the motel door trimmed, like tinsel, with hoarfrost. The next day, my hair and eyelashes froze as we walked three blocks to Main Street to find arctic gear. I clomped out of the store in heavy Sorel boots and fur-trimmed, down-filled parka, hood covering my face so that my gender and race were a mystery to others dressed in similar fashion.
My only preparation before leaving Toronto had been to write to my former boss in Whitehorse; I figured she’d allow me to rent space in her offices and set up my own practice. Her lack of response before we left Toronto didn’t concern me.
By April, we were desperate. I dreamt of debt collectors with machetes chasing me for my student loans.
My former boss had moved from the Yukon shortly before we arrived. Though Clive and I had delivered résumés and followed up with calls, we had no job prospects and funds were dwindling rapidly. We talked about moving on to Yellowknife, undeterred by the fact that neither of us had visited the place or knew anyone who lived there. Days later, I was offered a position with two lawyers in Whitehorse. The following week Clive was employed.
Sir, you’d have laughed if you were a spectator in the courtroom watching my first appearance as a lawyer. It had been at least two years since I’d been in court as an articling student. In Toronto, I was just one of hundreds of students and lawyers speaking in court; in Whitehorse, I could not lose myself in numbers. It was important that I make a good impression on the judge and other lawyers. My voice wobbled as I spoke to the judge and I gripped the podium to conceal my shaking hands. It wasn’t my best performance, but my client emerged victorious. I still recall the judge’s quiet patience and the congratulatory words from the lawyers who would become my colleagues. It’s been my experience in the Yukon that as a lawyer you’re judged not by the colour of your skin but by your abilities and your behaviour—towards your peers, clients, the judge, and the Court’s staff. I wish that, as part of this progress report, I could state that this has always been the case, but that wouldn’t be accurate.
Sir, my legal background compels me to offer evidence that racism still exists in Canada, despite people assuring me that it doesn’t, or if it does, it’s rare. Only a couple of weeks ago, a friend on Facebook shared her young son’s first experience of racism in Toronto. He was told by one of his friends that he couldn’t join in a game because his skin was too dark. How did that child’s peers come to judge him in that manner? Is there any parent of colour who hasn’t braced themselves for that experience? My son’s first experience—or
the first he shared with me—happened when we still lived in Toronto. He was a gangly tween sitting on a park bench staring vacantly (gormlessly is the English expression, as I recall) into space. A police car pulled up and the two officers questioned him—What are you doing here? What’s your name? What’s in your bag? Where do you live? They followed him in their car as he walked home. I wanted to weep as he said, “I felt like a criminal, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong, Mom.” Son, it was me who did you wrong by not preparing you for that first time.
I was mistaken for an accused person more than once while I was an articling student. Not even my smart Jones New York pastel outfit with complementing shoes and jacket and my butter-soft leather Columbian briefcase could protect me from the Court clerk’s belief that I was an accused, waiting for my case to be heard. “Stay behind the gate until your case is called. Only your lawyer is allowed up here.” I was too embarrassed and humiliated to defend myself. My boss rushed to my defense, berating the woman for her error. She glared at me sitting beside him at the counsel table, as if she still doubted my innocence despite his harsh recriminations. The next time, in a different courtroom, the clerk was so mortified by her mistake that I found myself comforting her and reassuring that I took no offence. Too often, I’ve reacted as if I was responsible for another’s stereotypical assumptions.
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