Canada’s black history is very different from America’s
By Atta Almasi
Photos by Enokson/Flickr
EDMONTON (CUP) — Eighteen years after the House of Commons officially recognized the creation of Black History Month in Canada, the debate still continues among educators, students, parents and the general public about the effectiveness and relevance of the continued February celebration.
Two recently-opened Africentric schools, which are publicly funded, profess to integrate “the diverse perspectives, experiences and histories of people of African descent into the provincial-mandated curriculum.” Some see them as a reasonable attempt to teach children of cultural contributions year-round, but there are better alternatives to accomplish these goals.
First off, the initiative doesn’t come from within Canada. It’s adopted from America, where the reality is that there are more young, black men in prison than enrolled in post-secondary education. The problem with adopting this educational approach from the United States is the failure of the Toronto District School Board administrators to recognize and acknowledge the relative differences between the black population in Canada and the black population in the States.
African-Americans are a relatively homogenous group as the vast majority descended from slaves brought to America hundreds of years ago, while black Canadians are a diverse group that, apart from long-standing established black communities in places such as Nova Scotia, are relatively recent immigrants. They arrive here from places such as Barbados and Botswana.
And unlike African-Americans, black Canadians make up a much smaller portion of the wider populace of the country. Furthermore, African culture and history are so diverse that it is difficult to teach them. Inferring that there is a singular “Africentric” perspective is both ignorant and ludicrous: there are the Arabs living in Egypt and Sudan; the Chinese, South Asian and Portuguese diasporas residing in countries such as Mauritius, Tanzania and Angola; the many different linguistic and cultural groups that make up the majority of sub-Saharan Africa — too many to categorize in one paragraph, let alone one perspective.
Instead of promoting Africentric schools, we should encourage the contributions of African Canadians to Canadian history, arts and culture, politics, business and other respective fields through a non-Africentric curriculum. The goal of increasing “high self-pride” and better integration into Canadian society can be better and more effectively achieved if we shift away from the dominant African-American history and civil rights during Black History Month.
