Do Black Lives Matter in Canada? #BlackLivesMatter By Harsha Walia @HarshaWalia ---> I have not adequately prioritized allying with Black/Afrikan people or struggles. As a non-Black person of colour, I have to do more to hold my own communities accountable since we cannot fight a white supremacist society without fighting structural anti-Blackness. Social movements, including No One Is Illegal, have been named for perpetuating anti-Black racism With most Canadian historical accounts selectively highlighting the Underground Railroad, we overlook the history of enslaved Black people within Canada, de facto prohibition on Black immigration from 1896-1915, displacement of communities from Africville and Hogans Alley, made-in-Canada segregation laws, foreign policy from Haiti to Somalia, and pervasive institutional and interpersonal anti-Black racism. In September of 2014, 33-year-old Jermaine Carby was shot and killed by police at a traffic stop. Eyewitnesses saw Carby walking with his arms stretched out when police fired several fatal shots. Ajamu Nangwaya has compiled an overwhelming list of over 50 police killings in the African community. Year after year -- for example in the shootings of Albert Moses and Tommy Anthony Barnett and Andrew Bramwell and Hugh Dawson -- police officers have been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. In 2002, the Toronto Star uncovered a troubling trend on racial profiling by Toronto Police Services. Over a period of five years, statistics showed that for minor drug possession charges, Blacks were more likely to charged than whites. And of those who were arrested, Blacks were twice as likely to be held in jail than whites. Ten years later the Toronto Star followed up with a story that revealed that little had changed. While blacks make up 8.3 per cent of Torontos population, they accounted for 25 per cent of the [police] cards filled out between 2008 and mid-2011, they reported. Based on freedom of information requests, the Toronto Star has also revealed that Black males aged 15-24 are stopped and documented 2.5 times more than white males the same age. And when it comes to hate crimes, Black people are one of the primary targets. Last year, those who identified as Black reported 42 per cent of all race-based hate crimes. Paralleling the explosion of Indigenous women and immigrant detainees behind bars, Black people are one of the fastest-growing prison populations. Canadas federal correctional investigator Howard Sapers even launched an investigation into the 80 per cent increase (52 per cent increase proportionally) of Black prisoners in federal jails over the past decade. Sapers found that while representing 2.5 per cent of Canadas population, 10 per cent of those in federal prisons are Black. He also found that Black prisoners are more likely to do time in maximum security and solitary confinement. In a study on Canadas racialized labour force, researchers Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi found that those who identified as Black faced the second-highest unemployment rate of all racial categories and the third-lowest earnings. Statistics by the Canadian Association of Social Workers reveals how the racialization of poverty is compounded by the feminization of poverty. The average wage of Black women is 79 per cent of what Black men earn. And finally, according to a recent report, over 40 per cent of apprehended youth placed into the Childrens Aid Society of Toronto system are Black youth, in particular those of Jamaican background. In one blatantly racist example, Childrens Aid was called because a teacher believed that a child eating roti was not healthy. This criminalization of Black mothering and Black families exists alongside the annihilation of Indigenous families through the child welfare system, our modern-day residential schools. rabble.ca/columnists/2014/12/do-black-lives-matter-canada
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:00:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015