Racism in Ottawa
 

Hey guys. Here's an article I wrote yesterday about my experience in Canada/Ottawa as a black man in light of the George Floyd situation in the United States. I was on CBC Radio yesterday and didn't get a chance to share everything I wanted to share do I decided to get my thoughts out. If you're looking for a little bit more understanding on how it feels to be a black man in this city and country, check it out.

https://shiftermagazine.com/kevin-bo...-racist-canada

And here's something else I wrote during Black History Month on a similar topic.

https://shiftermagazine.com/kevin-bo...-month-opinion

Wow. This was very thought provoking and enlightening. Thank you for sharing.

What will it take for people in Canada to finally pay attention to, for example, racial profiling? It happens everywhere, from Windsor, ON (ask Jagmeet Singh) to Montréal, QC (Radio Canada even reported on the latter).

I have a friend in Montreal who want to go to English school, and his parents also want her to go to English school, but it is absolutely forbidden by law.
(those friends are unilingual French, fresh from France)
Meanwhile, Premier Trudeau (and others) are gloating about Canada's freedom, Canada's human rights, Canada's bilingualism, Canada's multiculturalism.
Even in Canada, human rights do not apply equally to all.

good article...

I have many thoughts about this subject. My brother in law is of haitian descent and my nephews are mixed race. Of course none of us ever think about it-the extended families get along so great. I also had an adopted cousin who was mixed race and our family in general is quite multicultural as many are these days.

I would have to say, i had never put too much thought into racism in canada other than to note, it was less overt, more sublime, or for many non existant. But the things you describe in your article are very real and when you are partial to the experience, its a completely different experience. I don't get a look when I walk into a store for example but I am sure it happens.

Anyways, I wanted to mention that it was about a year ago, I was out with some friends and a member of the police force was there. He used a term for people of colour referencing them as a day of the week and when I figured out what he meant, I was completely flabbergasted. He was drunk but he holds a position on the police force and what he was saying was nothing short of obscene, and the reference he used was "code". It was a huge eye opener for me and while I think the individual in question is in a the minority, even police would have been equally offended, but it exists, and it was a bit ugly to be honest.

Thanks for sharing the article...

Excellent article. The line that impacted me the most was that being black is a 24/7 job.

While I am Hispanic with brownish skin, I can pass for white in Canada. In the US, however, I have experienced situations in which "whiter" people looked down on me because, in their mind, I was merely a Latino.

The first time this happened I was a teenager and it confused me, for in my mind I was a normal kid from Nepean. But after a while (I have visited the US many, many times) I learned a terrible lesson: Racism makes minority groups hyper aware, 24/7, of how they are seen as different by the majority. As a human being this is exhausting.

Fortunately for me I can escape this constant glare in Canada (though not the States) but I know this is not true for those in Canada who are black, browner than me, or from Indigenous communities.

Reading your article was a wonderful reminder of the need for empathy and inclusion of all groups. Thank you for sharing.

Anti-black racism is definitely a local issue in Ottawa; perhaps more so than elsewhere in Canada. Black-Canadians are actually the largest visible minority in the city (outnumbering both South Asians and East Asians). They're very disproportionately represented in the city's poorer population, in contrast to other minorities who tend to have comparable (or better) economic outcomes to whites. The amount of sheer hostility you see among supposedly liberal Ottawans to the Somali community for example is absurdly high.

A local, Ottawa-specific, conversation about this issue needs to happen.

Like in Quebec, Haitians are welcomed as essential workers, but not welcomed as citizens.
Quebec wants French immigration, but not so much if they happen to be black.
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/...-ab098fe80d02/

You and others may object to these rules, but they are not in any way related to "race".

Yeah and they are the majority making rules limiting the rights of the majority so comparison is way off.

If we make assumptions about life paths, Kevin Bourne who is black and is the author of the articles above, probably went to English school in Ontario, so in Quebec he could send his kids to English or French schools.

François Legault, who is Québécois French Canadian and the Premier of the province, probably went to French school all his life, as did his wife. So his kids could only go to French schools in Quebec as a result.

So the black anglo guy from Ontario actually has *more* legal freedoms and choices than the white Québécois francophone multi-millionaire politician.

The 24/7 comment is profound. Likewise, society requires 24/7 vigilance to fight against racism and make our society better.

The violent response in the USA by all parties involved unfortunately is so counterproductive.

Although I am in no way promoting the violent, destructive protests in the U.S, I understand the reaction. It's absolutely inexplicable how Colin Kaepernick was attacked by millions of Americans for his peaceful demonstration and was essentially banned from the NFL, while those same Americans are now calling for peaceful protests.

We must remember that the actions of those four police officers is what triggered this crisis. Firing the police officers and subsequently only charging one AFTER the protests started, with third degree murder to boot, is an insult.

Lots of sympathy or copy-cat protests going on in other countries, including Canada.

I don't wish for it to happen but if it does get ugly, I wonder if people will still apply the "you can't make an omelette without breaking any eggs" logic?

"Rioters trash downtown St. John's Newfoundland to protest police racism"

Thanks for posting this Kevin. Your article reminds me of a comment made by a good friend in Toronto that she was regularly followed by security in stores. And this from a professional woman with a PhD. That shocked me, and if that’s her experience I can only imagine how it is for people who don’t fit her profile.

I’m probably guilty of being a bit oblivious to the day to day reality that black people live in this city and country, so I always appreciate a good calling out in this subject. Progress on the issue is not guaranteed unless we keep it top of mind and speak up when we need to.

It is very explicable. They are racists. Black football players are there to entertain them. So that's what they are supposed to do.

"Shut up and dribble."

Martin Luther King talked a lot about his disappointment with moderate whites who were silent and complicit. I get the sense that quite a few Americans feel that the election of Obama absolves them of any responsibility to address racial inequalities in America. Ironically, Obama lost the white vote. Twice.

On a more local level, I sincerely hope nothing ever gets as bad as this in our country. Our closest parallel is the treatment of aboriginals and how we discuss aboriginal issues and concerns in Canada. And I would love for us to actually start discussing those honestly, so they don't ever escalate to the level of frustration we see south of us.

Wow. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. It took me a while to come back to see if there was feedback. I wasn't sure if the comments would've been positive. I've seen a lot of hateful comments the past few days.

Surprisingly, I actually experienced more racism living on the Ottawa side than the Gatineau side. I lived near the hospital in Gatineau and regularly had older people smile and say hi to me. It always threw me off. I'd look around to see if they were talking to me.

That is reassuring though I am sure as you know it exists on this side of the river too.

I’m so sorry that you have to deal with that garbage. It seems like in the current environment, particularly south of the border, those types are emboldened. You see them peddling their despicable views more openly than in the past. All the more reason to speak up and make it clear those “opinions” have no place in our country.

Canadians really overestimate their understanding of the US. For many Americans the flag and anthem are sacred. It was the same when largely whites were protesting wars by burning or stepping on flags. Another group supports the police and rightly point out on further investigation many of the killings end up being justified and they have zero sympathy for criminals whatever happens to them. An interesting example is a white man was killed in almost the same manner as Floyd last year in Dallas and it barely got covered at all. And of course sure there are lots of racists who wanted Kaepernick fired as well. I thought it would have been great if the CFL brought him in. I guess he has transcended football at this point.

I think he pretty spectacularly failed to grasp the connection between "Trudeau gloating about (the long-term survival of) bilingualism in Canada" and "Montréalais aren't all allowed to send their kids to unilingual public English schools even though that's what they'd like to do", even as he posted about both concepts together.

From New York, not Ottawa, but relevant to kevinbottawa post
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/o...tral-park.html

I got to write a piece for OBJ today about my experience being a black entrepreneur in Ottawa.

https://obj.ca/article/op-ed-what-it...preneur-ottawa

Also gonna be on 1310 News tomorrow at 1:47pm for those who are interested.

^ Thanks for sharing! Nice article.

Really thoughtful article. Thanks for sharing.

I thought that your suggestions were particularly good. If Ottawa doesn't have someone playing the role that you are suggesting in developing their marketing, they definitely should.

Kevin, thank you for bringing this discussion to the forum. I find it very enlightening to hear a local perspective, especially at a time when there's a lot of soul searching to be done (which shouldn't have taken this long), and when many people consider this to be a USA-specific issue, which it isn't. For all the time we spend here discussing city building, I think this is an important step for us to move towards discussions on community building as well. There's an opportunity for Ottawa to do much more and be so much better and there's no reason that can't start right here.

Good article. Practical reasonable suggestions. Like with aboriginal issues in Canada we often have a superficial discussion. The vast majority are against racism but a lot of the effects are structural issues which are mostly about poverty and not purely racial issues though the legacy is certainly a factor.

Your previous article said POC were under-represented in a range of occupations and even the ranks of Canada's billionaires. I notice you didn't have as concrete advice there. I don't see any solution there that can even get a majority of the progressive 60% to support it. Canadians might support some soft Affirmative Action but look at South Africa. It is has fairly draconian and basically racist laws that try to overturn the legacy of Apartheid. Still the income gap has actually grown since Apartheid ended. (everyone is better off but Whites have benefited more from the internationalization of the economy).

It is the same with aboriginal issues. Easy to say I am on unceded land but unless you are willing to start paying rent on the house you bought you are just talking about sending "other people's money" and we always run out of that.

Great pieces, Kevin. I remember reading at least one of them on Facebook when it first dropped after the Floyd protests erupted. Your pieces really spoke to me and my dad. I come from an Afro-Latino family with some Jamaican roots (hence part of my name), so I have seen my father, uncles, aunts, and grandmother all struggle with anti-Black racism in Canada ever since the first of them touched down here in the 60s.

Thanks for taking the time to read it. The feedback has been great. I've been on every platform lately talking about this. 1310 News, CFRA, CTV, CBC News Network. I haven't shared much here because it's such a touchy subject and like a lot of people, I don't always love self-promoting but there are clips out there if you're interested.

I'm actually going to be a regular writer for the OBJ now so I'll be writing a lot more on this topic, especially when it comes to Ottawa's business community. It's a big turning for Ottawa I think.

I'm curious where you rank racism in issues and challenges for black entrepreneurs in Ottawa?

Anything specific we should be fighting to get changed? US style rules preventing discrimination in credit or do we need stronger measures to equalize results something like quotas for black owned businesses in government procurement?

I heard you on CFRA the other day and the most thought-provoking comment to me was about the band-aids. I understand that J&J is planning to roll out band-aids in several different tones, which is nice to hear.

Many small changes like these will eventually lead to better understanding and acceptance of each other, and make people realise that even though we are all different on the outside, we are still one big team with everyone making a contribution in their own way.

And then there’s today’s report of DND investigating a 2016 (!) incident in which a supervisor put up a poster on an office fridge featuring the “n-word”.

I can’t even ...

I don't see an issue facing black entrepreneurs in Ottawa that's bigger than racism; if not overt racism, it's prejudice, whether conscious or subsconscious. A lot of people still aren't comfortable around black people. But that's not just Ottawa, it's across Canada. Even in Toronto. You look at the boards of directors and management teams of major companies. They're mostly white. In some cases, it may not be racism. With certain opportunities, people hire from within their networks, so if people's networks are full of people that look like themselves they'll just hire or appoint the people they know. In other cases it's racism.

Here's an article that Donnovan Bennett from Sportsnet wrote about the challenges he faces as a black sports journalist in Canada.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/more/facing...ack-diversity/

Another issue for Black entrepreneurs is lack of capital within our community. We often have to go outside of our community to get the capital to invest in our businesses and that's tough. Most of the black entrepreneurs I know bootstrap because they don't believe they'll funding or they tried for years and couldn't get funded.

Another issue is when organizations, including the city, set aside money for diversity funding, that includes women, Indigenous, and other people of colour so the amount that ends up going to the black community is apparently small.

When I worked at a big firm in Toronto before moving to Ottawa 15 years ago, the guy that hired me told me that his goal was to hire people like himself. He called it human nature. I don't think that he was thinking race, or had nefarious intent, as he was more referring to background, personality, world view etc. I remember not liking the comment at the time (it stuck with me), but I don't think I consciously connected it to race when he said it.

As you can imagine, the result was a firm full of upper middle class white guys (they were slumming it with me). Also, that guy and his cohort of similar minded individuals controlled hiring in the firm for probably two decades, so it's pretty clear why progress is slow.

Say hi to Barrhaven Karen:

https://twitter.com/IceFresh2/status...516574725?s=20

We also have a School Trustee who called bylaw on a black teen who was playing basketball ALONE at the beginning of the lockdown.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUT5-5AX...pg&name=medium

Both the education Minister and the School Board are calling for her resignation, but of course, she won't do it.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/education-...sign-1.5015819
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/school-boa...20board%20said.

Well she kicked out a bunch of white kids l, who all agreed to leave, before that so explain how this is racism? An example of crazy Covid over-reaction as are most of these cases so I don’t mind her getting knocked down a peg but imho we should focus on the crazy structural racism the whole school board enables rather this kind of thing.

I did not hear about that. Source?

‪https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...23ee0dacbc/‬

It also mentions the park was completely closed so she was in the right to kick him out. Assuming we think a school board trustee has any authority. His parents claim he was alone and I tend to agree this makes it very low risk except if another person comes afterward using the bench or fountain. But the rules are the rules. Meanwhile Americans were fined $1000 for hiking alone in Banff.

I am pretty sure school board trustees are not law enforcement officers in Ontario. If she thought it was a problem she should have called bylaw, although others were apparently also using the park and she did not bother them.

I think the issue here is less the park closure and more the ridiculous threats she made, including threatening to get him kicked off the school basketball team.

It begs the question why school trustees still exist. All substantive decisions are made at Queen’s park anyway.

Well agreed she is not law enforcement but she didn't she do what Black Lives Matters says to do. Rather than call the police who might kill him talk to him. Adults talk to kids breaking the rules all the time. He told her off so she got mad at her powerlessness and went off on a power trip so maybe she shouldn't be a trustee. Read the article though it doesn't seem to be motivated by racism. She in fact had told others to leave the park.

Maybe her talk of kids like him ending up in jail were racist. Kids who don't listen to adults when they are breaking the rules are the type who get in trouble and go to jail, of course they are also the type who have determination and become high achievers. Not knowing anything about the kid maybe he is the latter and she made an assumption that was at least partially racially based.

As for trustees they now have the power to decide if schools are open or closed. Maybe this is province passing the back but nevertheless public pressure led them to shift from 2 days to 5 days a week of in school learning for this fall as their preference.

the OCDSB trustee in question is a bit of a nutbar and should go. She has been in the news for years bickering with just about everyone. And she does seem to have a fixation with race:

From 2016:

https://ottawasun.com/2016/12/21/ott...a-d5367aff768f

she just doesn't seem very stable to me and while I don't know her work as a trustee, she's been in the news too many times for weird and negative stuff.

She has a hell of a track record for sure, but on that one isn't she on the right side of (contemporary) history by calling out someone's white privilege?

(BTW Blackburn's own daughter is black. Not sure if people care or even if that is relevant though.)

A total piece of work. She is the type of person who would get in an argument if she was the only person in the room.

Time for her to call it a day. She appears to not to be able to build any consensus etc with her fellow trustees.

Not that it's a free pass for everything, but if you read her bio she's been through a lot in her life.

It's very interesting context. It does explain why the professional investigator said it didn't appear to be racist but the other Trustees overruled and decided to censure her. They are hoping to see the back of her.

Somehow it's always the most "woke" people who get this kind of blowback. The real racists know better and keep their mouths shut.

I think you may be on to something (witness how much of the activist set is starting to "eat their own") but our era does not seem to have the "probity" to recognize it.

Yeah I read an unrelated article that suggested that the more successful response to these cancel culture incidents is to not apologize and go on the attack. So in this case track down the others she kicked out and pointing out the kid has been in trouble before. (assuming he has but what 17 year old hasn't done stupid stuff) This is also how an actual racist will respond ironically.

So she was hanging out in the park all day to tattle-tale on other people in the park. Doesn't that in itself "break the rules"? Seems like she's a self-righteous person on a power trip.

Whether or not some of her actions over the years were racially motivated (and in this case at least, suggesting the black teen will end up in jail because he's playing basketball the day the park was closed), she's unfit for her position and should step down.

Sorry, couldn’t resist

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcZlGdMW...g&name=900x900