Canada and Britain’s colonial history of dehumanizing black lives & the BLM movement which resists this racist system
Photo Credit: (Canadian Art / Google Images)
Written by: Ruhi Rizvi
Just as a wounded animal or human is triggered by a lived tragedy, for most black people, every time injustice occurs to a black person by a white person, it’s a stark reminder of their deep and grim past. George Floyd’s murder at the hands of American police officers, Derek Chauvin and three fellow officers, has opened up protests across the world. After the suffering of many victims, a movement has erupted against police brutality. Additionally against the historic and systemic racism and discrimination within society which has continued for not just for decades but centuries.
The history of slavery and how it remains significant as systemic racism in modern times
Prior to European colonisation, Canada was inhabited by indigenous peoples. In the 15th century, New France was claimed and permanent settlements began in 1608. France was defeated in a seven-year long war and ceded nearly all its North American possessions to the United Kingdom. In the late 17th century formerly known as Quebec Province became divided into upper and Lower Canada. Further colonies were also added, namely New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and in whole thus becoming Canada in the mid 18th century until 1931. Britain continued to use its’ foreign and defence policies, until 1982. The Canadian constitution was ratified, permitting Canada’s independence with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
During this era, the Black slave trade was ongoing. Multiple ships were being sent out to capture black people from Africa, and the Portuguese and Spanish colonies. Between 1698 and 1713, British merchants involved in the Africa trade had to pay 10% tax on goods exported to Africa. This tax was levied to maintain the African Company’s forts etc.
Goods imported to and exported from Africa can be found in the duty ledgers, accounts and correspondence of the African companies, especially among records of their forts, factories and settlements on the West Coast of Africa. Slave labour was integral to early settlement of the colonies, which needed more people for labour and other work. Also, slave labour produced the major consumer goods that were the basis of world trade during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries such as; coffee, cotton, rum, sugar and tobacco.The slave trade was facilitated on the European end by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British. Slaves went to the New World, mostly to Brazil and the Caribbean.
Ports that exported these slaves from Africa include Ouidah, Lagos, Aného (Little Popo), Grand-Popo, Agoué, Jakin, Porto-Novo, and Badagry.Europeans began to exploit Africans as slaves; racist ideas emerged to justify what they were doing. Africans were now cast as Negroes.Thomas Browne wrote in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica (Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors) that he couldn’t see black people as cursed, since that was not their own perception and they were instead very happy with how they looked and lived:
Lastly, Whereas men affirm this colour was a Curse, I cannot make out the propriety of that name, it neither seeming so to them, nor reasonably unto us; for they take so much content therein, that they esteem deformity by other colours, describing the Devil, and terrible objects, White.
In 1661 the planters passed the Barbados Slave Codes: racist laws that legalised slavery described the Africans as ‘a dangerous kind of people’ and allowed the most violent punishments for even the slightest deviance or any offence they committed. The white indentured servants, in contrast, came under the protection of English law, but the new laws took any such rights away from enslaved Africans.
Jamaica became the largest of Britain’s Caribbean colonies when it was captured from the Spanish in 1655. The slave codes were promoted across transatlantic with harsh dealings for the Black enslaved prisoners. Those (approximately 600 in number) who were able to run away from slavery; were defiant and dubbed, ’The Maroons’. They landed in Halifax.
Due to Bristol's position on the River Avon in England; it was an important location for marine trade for centuries. The city's involvement with the slave trade peaked between 1730 and 1745, when it became the leading slaving port. Bristol used its position on the Avon to trade all types of goods.Most modern historians generally agree that slavery continued in Britain into the late 18th century, finally disappearing around mid 1800. Slavery elsewhere in the British Empire was not affected--indeed it grew rapidly especially in the Caribbean colonies.
Africville, the stolen home of the Black community in Nova Scotia, Canada
The destruction of Africville, a town which housed hundreds of Black people (for over 150 years) was an anti-black racism sentiment, combined with a drive for urban renewal. These residents dated back to the late 17th century after fleeing from enslavement. Some 700 people also left Nova Scotia for Sierra Leone. Residents in 1960 were threatened of eviction unless they voluntarily sold their properties and moved out.
Despite resistance, their land was seized, by forcing them out whilst labelling them as squatters, just as we see today with Palestine. Canada’s black people lost their homes, their cultural heritage and their community. In 2010, Africville residents received an apology from the Canadian government. This apology meant mostly nothing as the damage had been done. One of the many descendants who remember and live to tell the tale, stated in an interview, “Great loss wasn’t the brick and mortar, it was the loss of the community… Community cohesion is what kept us in peace”.
Many former colonial countries, within the last few decades have received public apologies and some given independence, including Jamaica. However apologies cannot do justice to millions of Black descendents who have to live with the grim historical past, nor the discrimination they continue to face in modern day. Such was the slave trade that thousands of black slaves, servants lost their offspring and loved ones by not only trading themselves but also their heritage. There is so much more to the dreadful lives black people had to endure, which cannot be related in just this article. To this day reparations has been bypassed and stands as a bone of contention.
In October 1971, the Multiculturalism policy was introduced by the Government in Canada which was intended for a more inclusive society, one that may be seen to shape its diversity. This similar equality and diversity policy was brought in by the British government too. When systemic racism reaers its ugly head, none of these policies can prevent discrimination at the top level.
What we are observing today, is the outcome to the seed which was sowed by white supremacists in order to capitalize at the expense of the black peoples livelihood.
Reparations and the Windrush scandal
Governments of the nations who discredited and discriminated against Black people for centuries relinquish their duty to compensate for the injustices meted out to Black and indigenous people. Support for reparations for the victims of genocide of Indigenous people, people of the Caribbean and the inhuman trade of African people, this is a hope that the vast majority people of the Caribbean should be compensated. The 2015 visit to Jamaica by the Former British Prime Minister David Cameron was viewed by many as an absolute farce when he made insulting comments on Jamaican soil.
He offered to build a prison for Jamaicans and avoided the question of reparations. The point is reparations is not about money, it’s a process of liberation from the colonial past; it’s about seeking justice for the injustices done to us then and now. Black and non black people are yet to understand what Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is and its place in our lives. It is a set of behaviours, beliefs and actions associated with or related to multi-generational trauma experienced by slaves and their descendants.
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome existed for centuries in the lives of Blacks in the United States and the Caribbean, following on from systemic and structural racism and oppression, which resulted in multigenerational maladaptive behaviours.
PTSS is not a "disorder" that can simply be treated and remedied clinically but rather must necessarily require a profound social and structural change in western institutions that continue to promote inequalities and injustice in the open society.
To top it all off, Britain decided to pull off another discriminatory policy, going against all odds to deport Black people from the Caribbean who had served in the UK for lengthy periods in 2018, otherwise known as the Windrush scandal. At least 83 people and their families suffered as a result of deportation and exile. The Guardian newspaper has recently named 50 of them and the harsh reality they face.
All of the 50 named in the newspaper had lived a good part of their lives in the UK, working and paying their taxes until they became, ”lambs for slaughter”, as headlined by the Guardian newspaper. Unfortunately, many of the named people died from the maltreatment of the British Home office. Structural racism, institutional racism have all stemmed from systemic racism which has been inherent in the neo-colonial white supremacist state for centuries.
Most people will have now learned about the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international human rights movement, originating from within the African-American community, which campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people. Initially founded following the violent racism cases against black Americans, BLM regularly holds protests speaking out against police brutality and police killings of black people. As well as broader issues such as racial profiling, racial inequality and police abolition in the United States.
Protests up and down the US, UK and Canada and many other countries have set grounds to seek changes within society ridding off racism from wherever it may exist. ‘I can't breathe’ slogans and ‘taking the knee’, all symbolic to George Floyd, who was murdered in cold blood by Derek Chauvin, the police officer and his colleagues.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also took active part in one of these protests in solidarity with the movement agaist discrimination. However, treatment of Black and indigenous people in Canada is much the same. Chantele Moore was killed recently in Madawaska Maliseet by a police officer, to which Minister Marc Miller stated in an official address, that he was “disgusted at this dehumanising and violent act”. He said it was “a pattern that kept on repeating itself” and he would work closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). There have been at least 6 individual cases reported in Nunavut alone.
Justin Trudeau and his cabinet ministers know only too well following the Civil rights movement in the US, that BLM needs to be nipped in the bud to stop decolonising people’s mindsets. As with most movements in this century, there is always a controlling element in place to tame the crowds or merely working from the inside to dismantle a movement. Rest assured there are measures in place to prevent widespread damage of its cities from angry protesters, although there are many reports and videos circulating on social media of infiltration by masked white cops and gangs. They have been placed to shame the movement and its protests by actually vandalising shops and businesses.
There is some reluctance and affront by some communities to use the #BlackLivesMatter and associates themselves with the organisation. However, there are also millions of people from all denominations who support the movement, as for them it represents justice for Black people. The global movement voices the sentiment of hundreds of families who have suffered at the hands not only from police officers but also by the judiciary system.
Thousands of Black people are detained in prison for committing offences, but within this number there are many of whom are serving sentences which, when compared to the nature of the same offence committed by a white person, is harsher and longer. Needless to say, that justice also sees colour when miscarriage of justice occurs. News reports are filled with cases of miscarriage of injustice to Black people over many decades. A white person’s witness is much regarded over a black person pleading not guilty.
Moreover, police officers across transatlantic and some European countries have gained their training by IDF soldiers in Israel. Their harsh restraining methods have seen figures of black people being killed. The death of George Floyd has triggered rallies, not only to voice injustice for him, but hundreds of others who have succumbed to injuries or have died mercilessly while uttering their last words, “I can’t breathe”.
Statues and wiping away a history which discriminated against the black race.
Bristol BLM activists pulled down the Colston statue 72 hours ago. Now Christopher Columbus is in a lake in the US, Milligan has come down in London, King Leopold II is down in Belgium, Manchester, and Leeds & London are set to review all statues and memorials planned for Windrush.
Statues around the world and specifically in places of slave trade served as constant reminder to Black people of their dire history of enslavement by the white man. Some people argue that there is a danger in what they describe as a “reactionary” attempt to suddenly take down all statues of British slave traders. There are voices of opposition who believe these actions may just be doing the neo-colonialists a favour. In recent days movies and programmes have also been pulled from viewing platforms.
The British government ordered a review of all statues in the country. They said, “statues need to reflect British value and diversity and not be controversial.”
A social media activist in his words has posted,
“One aspect which must be a constant reminding factor, is people from all walks of life including the millions of descendents of enslaved black people, wouldn't even be in America, enjoying all of its benefits, if it wasn't for the African American community, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
It was the African American civil rights struggle for equality during the 40s, 50s and 60's that pressured the government to change America’s race based immigration laws. Prior to that people of colour were not allowed to immigrate to the U.S. The immigration of Africans was tightly restricted, and it completely banned Arabs, Asians and Indians. Their ability to be here was secured by the blood, sweat and tears of African Americans”.
To the future
One of the great African revolutionary figures was Amilcar Cabral, who led Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde toward independence from the Portuguese colonial rule. He himself was assassinated in 1973, months before the liberation struggle he was a key central figure of, eventually led to independence. During the period of struggle he would say:
"We are from the part of Africa which the imperialists call Black Africa. Yes, we are Black. But we are men like all other men. Our countries are economically backward. Our people are at a specific historical stage characterised by this backward condition of our economy. We must be conscious of this.
We are African peoples, we have not invented many things, we do not possess today the special weapons which others possess, we have no big factories, we don’t even have for our children the toys which other children have, but we do have our own hearts, our own heads, our own history. It is this history the colonialists have taken from us.
The colonialists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave our history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history. Today, in taking up arms to liberate ourselves, in following the examples of other peoples to liberate themselves, we want to return to our history, on our own feet, by our own means and through our own sacrifices."
These words are as prescient as they were when spoken in the 20th century.
So the question arises, will the protests achieve their objective? Is it even possible to end systemic, systematic and structural racism which has seen generations upon generations suffer at the hands of white supremacy? We will see.
Ruhi Rizvi is a human rights activist, independent writer and editor. She is also the founder of Project Zainab, an organisation in the UK actively working to support families in her community. She is a former specialist community public health nursing practitioner.
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