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CORNIES: Sharp turn needed on London's racism

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Every so often, the national spotlight on racism, constantly rotating high in the watchtower of public awareness, catches London, Ontario, squarely in its beam.

There was the ugly incident involving NHLer Wayne Simmonds during an exhibition game here in 2011, in which a 26-year-old was charged and fined.

There was a very public apology by then-mayor Matt Brown during a weekend forum on racism in 2016, which was sparked by several high-profile incidents and the continuing stream of “microaggressions” experienced by racialized members of the community.

There have been highly publicized, xenophobic confrontations at London grocery stores and shopping centres, involving community members from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

Then, last spring, Eternity Martis published a memoir titled They Said This Would be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up. It’s a book about Black womanhood, racial identity and the many forms of racism she had experienced as an undergraduate at Western University. She and others also experienced “verbal attacks in the city” that took a “physical and emotional toll,” Martis wrote.

Yet another commentary, this one less accusatory, hit newsstands last month in the form of a piece in Chatelaine by Toronto-area writer and speaker Bee Quammie. The article traced the author’s orientation to her “Blackness” straight through white-bread London.

“My parents found pockets of Blackness for us to inhabit,” she wrote, though her understandings of her race and culture, she said, were shaped more by “regular visits to Toronto’s Little Jamaica enclave, to summer trips shopping down Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit.”

In her childhood classrooms, references to Black culture or immigration were usually relegated to Black History Month — and then often to African-American figures.

“Morning announcements ended with the booming cadence of a powerful orator speaking about his dream. In class, we were taught the story of a tired seamstress who didn’t move to the back of the bus.”

And while everyone agreed that slavery had been terrible and unfair, “luckily, Canada had lain at the end of the Underground Railroad, beckoning to runaways who sought freedom. My teachers and fellow students seemed content with this sickeningly saccharine narrative of Canada as a welcome home for those fleeing slavery. The end.”

That “saccharine narrative” was partly the focus of a speech by actor E.B. Smith this week to the Canadian Club of London. (Smith himself had been the target of two incidents involving racial slurs in January 2016, while he was in London for the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Grand Theatre’s production of The Mountaintop.)

“Canada is just as racist as the United States. Yes, I said it,” Smith said. “Same brand name. Different flavour of chip. But the nutrition facts on the back of the package are the same daily count of racism calories. That’s right. You’re the ketchup to the U.S.’s barbecue. . . .

“We must begin approaching our practices, both individually (person to person) and organizationally (business to business, business to stakeholder) from an anti-racist framework,” Smith said, mounting a powerful plea for the eradication of the invisible assumptions of white supremacy in our personal and business relationships.

Earlier in the week, during an online discussion hosted by Ryerson University, freelance journalist Ahmar Khan decried the tokenism that prevails in some businesses and workplaces around the hiring of people from racialized backgrounds.

What Black, Indigenous and other people of colour need instead, Khan said, is investment by businesses and organizations within their communities. They need mentorship and, as simple as it sounds, they need to be befriended. Just “be supportive,” he told the online gathering.

Allies of racialized groups have tried numerous approaches to promote a message of equality to other Londoners. London Public Library chose David Chariandy’s novel Brother as its One Book One London selection in 2017-18. Politicians at city hall have placed part of its former diversity and inclusion strategy into the hands of a diversity, inclusion and anti-oppression advisory committee. London police have changed both their operations and corporate structure to deal with concerns about racism.

As a progressive kind of conservative, Mayor Ed Holder has made progress, with the help of council, on problems such as homelessness and addiction. But in the wake of Black Lives Matter — and amid a rising tide of awareness about the white culture that pervades nearly every institution and business in the community — civic leadership now demands a sharp turn, even amid a crippling pandemic.

So here’s a hope: that next week’s state of the city address by Holder to the business community and beyond, include more than the perfunctory recitation of facts, successes and challenges. It’s the hope that, to the business community — job creators, economic drivers and generators of wealth — Holder would issue a forceful plea that every business, large or small, should begin the process of anti-oppression in some formal sense. And that they move beyond tokenism and performative gestures toward equity and inclusivity.

It won’t happen in the community without that sector’s active participation — and the time to recognize it is now.

Larry Cornies is a London-based journalist. cornies@gmail.com

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