Mental Slavery

Tag: Race

  • Racist graffiti at York University

    CityNews: York University Students March After Racist Graffiti Attack:

    Hundreds of angry students at York University gave their president the boot from a meeting to talk about racist graffiti found on school grounds.

    The “N” word, along with “Go Back To Africa”, were scrawled on the door of the Black Student’s Alliance (BSA) on Tuesday.

    Even more upsetting for the students was the University’s lack of response. E-mails and calls to York Administration went unanswered, and when the school’s president showed up to the rally, he was asked to leave.

    And this at my alma mater. sigh. The conversations written on the washroom walls and cubicles around York has been dredging this territory for a few years now, so I’m not surprised. (Yes, I do read that stuff) However, for someone to write it on the Black Student Association’s (BSA) front door after Martin Luther King day is, as they say, taking it to a whole ‘nother level.

    However, the BSA’s decision to shut out Mr. Mamdouh Shoukri, the new university president, from their awareness event seems shortsighted. First, it wasn’t him who put up the racist graffiti. Second, the man was born in Egypt. Last I heard, that was still in Africa; so the graffiti is as much against him as it is to any of the students in the BSA. Third, the time between the incident and his response was a reasonable 24 hours. Yes, it is a very short response, but the “its too late” rhetoric is way too melodramatic and OTT. Reparations are also ‘too late’, but we’d still take ’em; why not this little olive branch? And fourth, if they were as interested in getting his response as they claim, they would have let him talk at the event. Seems like a lot of unnecessary grandstanding going on. Maybe they thought that he was trying to steal some of their thunder and the publicity that they drummed up. Fair enough. But haven’t we come far enough to be just a little open-minded? Hear another side, maybe?

    What I’m really curious about is a counter-factual. Imagine if the female and white Lorna Marsden, – outgoing York president – was still in office, what would the official York reaction have been? Would she have gotten the statement out sooner than Mr. Shoukri? Would she have even attempted to walk into that gathering? On both counts I’m pretty sure the answer would be NO. And would the BSA members have been so strident in their disrespect had it been her instead of Mr. Shoukri? Again, I think not. Why? I’ll let you think about that one and tell me what you come up with…

    But BSA histrionics aside and back to the main point: Anti-Black Racism is still here in the 21st Century. Even in multi-cultural Canada. Shock of shocks.

  • On the Victory of Barack Obama in Iowa

    Visual diversity means little.

    The white man has convinced us, and some of their own no doubt, that they are a homogenous group. Believe me, if black people did not exist in the world, white people would get on with the far more important work of killing other white people. However, since we do exist and enter their space, we suffice as target practice.

    You could have a perfectly mixed and ‘diversified’ sample, and have no actual diversity. Or put another way, a room full of white people can be incredibly diverse. In that room you may have some Jewish people, some from Russia, an Irish descendant from New York, English nobility and members of the Canadian working class and they would in all likelihood, disagree on everything. The myth of racial solidarity is exactly that: A Myth. It was created out of necessity in and around the Caribbean sugar plantations, and has persisted until today. I say this in the hope that Black people will stop talking about “white people” as if they were some monolithic political party, but also in the hope that I can remember to stop talking about “black people”.

    If there were no white people in the world, Blackness would not matter, and we would then get to the more important work of remembering why we hate each other. Similarity of color means nothing. Two black people may have nothing to talk about and nothing else in common. The sooner this truth hits us, the sooner we can move on to more profitable stereotyping.

    The smokescreen of visual diversity and the political cushion it provides should not be underestimated. People generally assume that color of skin comes along with an ideology. To be Black is to be liberal, and if one lives in the US, a democrat. Black people have rhythm, are athletic and listen to rap music. Right. We also assume that because a certain government administration has x amount of Blacks in high positions, x amount of Latinos, z amount of “non-white” people, it is diverse. You can hire as much of these people as you want and engineer complete visual diversity with every shade of skin under the sun and it could, I emphasize could, mean nothing. All of these visually diverse people who look nothing alike may be intellectual clones.

    What does “multi-cultural” even mean? Again, a room full of white people can be multi-cultural. But multi-culturalism is the hot word of the day. The buzz word. Another useless plaything of a word that goes down smooth but has no nutritional value. It’s a politically-correct junk-food tortilla-chip of a word. Multi-culturalism, as far as I can see, only means visual diversity, which is only a useful gauge of telling how many black people are in a room, and as I am arguing, this doesn’t mean much.

    I am not saying that we should throw away the quotas and the affirmative action policies; most bureaucrats in their more lucid moments will say that these programs encourage diversity, and perhaps they do. Since we live in a visual society and crave visual stimulation, I guess we will have to settle for visual diversity. Just don’t be surprised when everyone says the same things.

    …

    I offer you these observations only because they have occurred to me, not because I offer an alternative or even a point. Do you expect me to come up with everything? I am only a writer. I have no credentials other than what you have just read. If I had a PhD would it matter? Or would it take you that much longer to realize that I am full of shit?

    If I have a point, it is this: there are forces that exist out there, forces that are shaping our minds, our opinions, our outlook, and the majority – regardless of color – are plugging in and zoning out. To be awake and alert takes effort, RADICAL effort. We need to forget what people say, forget what color they are and watch and remember what they do. The important thing is the degree of correlation between words and deeds. This process takes a lot longer. It takes a lot more work. Your mileage may vary. But maybe, just maybe, you will go a day longer without being duped.

    Another one is born every day and I’d hate for it to be you.

  • What an empty seat told me

    I’m on a public transit bus in Ottawa that’s full to and beyond capacity. People are standing, the bus driver is making announcements that people should move further back. Oddly enough there are two vacant seats that the standing crowd must not see.

    I ask myself, ‘is it a coincidence that these two seats are next to black men?’ I happen to be one of those black men.

    Of course I could be reading too much into this, and the crowd of standing white people around me and the empty seat next to the other black man, maybe they just want to stretch their legs. Thing is, I bet if I were to ask them if they had even the slightest tinge of racism in them, I bet they would say ‘no, of course not.’

    Am I the racist for seeing it? Feeling it?

    The empty seat next to me says otherwise.