Learning to Listen #6 - Long Way Down

 This week I read "Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds. This is not a book about racism or privilege, in the traditional sense that we see this day. It is fictional, poetic telling of a teen holding the cold handle of a gun as he contemplates "the rules" of retribution for his brother's murder. He is descending into darkness as he descends in an elevator.

This is a book by a Black author. I am trying to move past reading books by white men and white women about white stories. This is my journey as I unlearn and relearn things I don't know anything about. This is coming to terms with realities that exist beyond my scope of understanding.

Instead of including an excerpt from the book, I have included the author's acknowledgement. In reading the acknowledgment I was moved to see there is truth there. Reading it feels like reading a language that is not English, that I do not speak, a secret code in a culture removed.

The author does not have a sad past like you might assume: a Black author writing about hate and crime and tragedy because he has lived a life of hate and crime and tragedy (oh the pain of white privilege, that scalding spotlight on my skin); but he accesses the real emotion behind it all. He shines a light on something real that I can never really know but I need to.

Learning to Listen #5 - The Color of Law

 This week I read excerpts from "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein. (Please note that this author is white). It's a dense read with lots of legal references, but chunked into pieces that make it easy to read shorter excerpts and still understand the concepts.

The subtitle of the book is "A forgotten history of how our government segregated America", and certainly my eyes were opened to how legals systems have been unjustly used and even abused in order to prevent Black and people of colour from advancing economically in America.

A few examples:

- the Fair Labor Standards Act established minimum wages, but excluded industries in which African Americans predominated (like agriculture).

- Cities created laws forbidding white people and black people from living in the same neighbourhoods

- the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages for African Americans in designated white (wealthier) neighbourhoods

- As a response to the Supreme court striking down laws of racial segregation in neighbourhoods, cities tried to bypass it by creating zoning laws based on racial habits, which reinforced racial segregation under the table

I was also struck by the amount of regression these laws created. There are many examples around the turn of the century where desegregation was beginning to finally happen naturally. In fact, when zoning laws were brought in, it created more havoc in some areas that were integrated and now suddenly trying to figure out if they were allowed to live in their house any more (white and Blacks). Phrases like "the progress came to an end when..." and "approved the implementation of..." and "it's time to start..." I started to understand how local and federal governments with personal agendas used their power within the legal system to implement new forms of oppression once slavery was outlawed.

This is a good place to learn about how deeply systemic racism runs. It discusses why the failures of most civil rights laws are not in concept, but in implementations and enforcement. It lays bare the realities of generational economic class, and why we don't generally rise above that which our parents had. And it uncovers dark stories of personal oppression and struggles, of both Black Americans and their white friends and neighbours who tried to stand up for them. (Like the Bradens, who bought their Black friends', the Wades, a house in a middle income White neighbourhood because no one would sell their house to a Black family. But then Carl Braden was sentenced to 15 years in prison for "related" charges.)

We have a lot of history to undo, and sometimes it seems that one person fighting against government power can be exhausting. But it's important to know the beast with which you are fighting, so we can learn how to finally slay it.

Learning to Listen #4 - Broken Promises

 This week I watched the Documentary Broken Promises: The High Arctic Relocation. It’s a short NFB film available to watch online for free. It concerns an alarming part of Canadian history in which Inuit families were “selected” to go inhabit the far northern reaches of Canada to help maintain sovereignty of the north against the US and Russia, in the 1950s.

They were promised a way to return to living off the land. They were promised it was a land of plenty. They were promised they could return if they did not like it.

Instead, they were dropped in a frozen wasteland, purposely far from military bases so as not to encourage dependence or handouts. They had nothing with which to build and food was scarce. And when they asked to come home, they were told they had to pay their own way, but they had no money. Government reports of success were falsified. It took 30 years before they were offered passage home.

The interviews with the survivors are heartbreaking. This is the kind of Canadian history we don’t teach in school. There were all sorts of political and economic motivations and none of the decisions involved those who were made to go.

As I struggle to define for myself what Canada is, these stories are necessary to gather and understand. My grandfather spent his career offering health services in our northern lands and often had stories of the Inuit people he met. His home was filled with works of art, gifts from the Inuit people for his work. I feel drawn to know more about this land which called to him. Northern Canada is a great mystery to me, and unlocking its beauty, history and stories is something which calls to me.

This is just one story about 15 Inuit families - just a small pocket of people, but it signifies a larger untold story that must be uncovered.

Learning to Listen #3 - When We Were Alone

 This week I read the picture book "When We Were Alone" by David A Robertson. It tells the story of a young girl asking her grandmother about seemingly innocuous personal traits: her long braided hair, colourful clothing, speaking another language, and spending so much time with family. What emerges is the grandmother's history in residential schools, a time when these "innocuous" things were taken from her. As a result, she feels especially guarded about these freedoms.

Acknowledging the systemic racism in Canada's past has been hard for those of us who have come to define ourselves by our tolerance and acceptance of all. The last residential school closed in 1996. I was 16. It's hard to swallow that this isn't even really history for me - it was part of my present. Reading the goals of the residential schools is horrifying: they range from "assimilation" to "education" to "conversion" to "civilize" to "Christianize" to "killing the indian in them."

I struggled for the first time ever this past week with Canada Day. How do I celebrate the place where I live, and show gratitude for the freedoms I enjoy, knowing that it was built on systemic racist practices? That calling Canada 153 years old feels like a celebration of colonial thievery. I read many people's posts on the topic and was grateful for the thoughtful critique of our past.

"When We Were Alone" made me think of the small freedoms I enjoy and cherish. It also made me curious to hear more about the cultural traditions of others. The way the grandmother speaks is so full of love and admiration I wished I could hear her voice directly.

From the book:

"Nókom (grandmother), why do you wear your hair so long?" I asked.

"When I was your age, at home in my community, my friends and I grew our hair long, just like our people have always done. It made us feel strong and proud. But at the school I went to, far away from home, they cut off all our hair. Our strands of hair mixed together on the ground like blades of grass.

But sometimes in the spring, when we were alone, and the grass had grown so long and thick in the field, we would pick the blades from the ground. We would braid them into the short hair they had given us, and we would have long hair again. And this made us happy. Now, I always wear my hair very long."