MARCH 21 IS THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Murphy Browne © March 15-2018

March 21 is the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” because on that day, in 1960, White police in Sharpeville, South Africa killed 69 African men, women and children during a peaceful demonstration. The Africans had gathered to protest the steady loss of their human rights, as White interlopers/settlers stole their land. The pass laws of the White supremacist settler group who had seized the African country from Africans, had become an unbearable burden for the Africans. African men and women were forced to carry the passbook, an identifying document that restricted their movement in urban areas where White people had settled and occupied exclusively.

The unarmed African men, women and children were shot in the back as they fled. Members of the press later gave eyewitness accounts of the carnage. A White reporter, Humphrey Tyler, assistant editor of “Drum Magazine” witnessed: “Hundreds of kids were running, too. One little boy had on an old blanket coat, which he held up behind his head, thinking, perhaps, that it might save him from the bullets. Some of the children, hardly as tall as the grass, were leaping like rabbits. Some were shot, too. Still the shooting went on. One of the policemen was standing on top of a Saracen, and it looked as though he was firing his gun into the crowd. He was swinging it around in a wide arc from his hip as though he were panning a movie camera.” The shooting finally stopped when there were no moving protestors in sight. http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/eyewitness-accounts-sharpeville-massacre-1960 Together with the 69 killed, upwards of 300 African men, women and children were wounded. 

 

The Sharpeville Massacre prompted worldwide condemnation of the minority White supremacist, illegitimate regime of South Africa. This led to international protests and calls for disinvesting in the White supremacist apartheid structure of South Africa. In spite of the brutality of the “Sharpeville Massacre,” disinvestment did not happen on a large scale until the 1980s. In 1966 the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution recognizing March 21 as the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.”

Many people believe that racism is the very blatant apartheid system to which the White settler group of South Africa subjected the Africans, or the Ku Klux Klan riding through African American neighbourhoods in white sheets and burning crosses on an African American homeowner’s lawn. The institutionalized/systemic racism that is better described as White supremacist culture/White skin privilege is prevalent in every area of the lived reality of racialized people including the education system, housing, the prison industrial complex and policing. 

 

Although Canada has an official policy of multiculturalism, a White supremacist culture prevails. The so called Canadian culture is a White Eurocentric culture that has been imposed on the indigenous peoples and other racialized people. A White supremacist culture (institutionalized/systemic racism) continues to negatively affect racialized people in Canada. On September 13, 2007, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of four nations (including the USA, Australia and New Zealand) that voted against the Declaration; 143 other nations voted in favour of the Declaration. This decision by the Canadian government was made in spite of the October 2004 Amnesty International report “Stolen Sisters” which condemned "the terror and suffering that has been inflicted on Indigenous or Aboriginal women and their families across Canada" and urged the Canadian government to address the issue. The report cited the disproportionate number of Aboriginal women who go missing or are killed every year with little public outcry or action. Professors Carrie Bourassa and Wendee Kubik indict the long legacy of assimilation and colonization (“Stolen Sisters and the Legacy of Colonization” published in 2006) as crucial contributing factors to Aboriginal women being particularly targeted by these acts of violence committed largely with impunity. Following myriad criticisms and condemnation of their refusal to do so Canada did eventually support the Declaration on November 12, 2010.

Even though there has been an African Presence in Canada since the 1600s with the arrival of Mathieu DaCosta (explorer, interpreter) in 1603 and six year old enslaved African child Olivier Le Jeune in 1628, African Canadian history remains marginalized. Even during February there is reluctance by some educators and educational institutions to acknowledge the history of Africans in Canada. African Canadians have contributed to every area of Canadian life; beginning with the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans helping to enrich White enslavers to today where African Canadians are mostly subjected to precarious employment. Last hired, first fired and contract positions; many relegated to low paying jobs regardless of their education. Men and women who are descendants of those who settled in the long standing African Canadian communities throughout Canada from the time of the American Revolution (1775 to 1783) as United Empire Loyalists; and throughout the 1800s do not fare better than those of us who immigrated from Africa, the Caribbean or elsewhere. 

 

Institutionalized/systemic racism especially in the police forces has been in the news recently with the Ontario wide public consultations on carding regulations. Carding which allows police to randomly stop anyone and gather their information has been a practice abused, with African Canadians especially victimized. Although the Canadian Prime Minister acknowledged the existence of anti-Black racism in Canada last month not much has been done to rectify this scourge that affects many African Canadian children from the time they enter the education system.

In spite of the much touted five year “Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism” (which acknowledged that “Black Torontonians remain significantly more likely to be expelled from school, unemployed, incarcerated, or victimized in hate crimes”) by City Council, not much has been done since the “unveiling” of the plan last year. On March 21, 2018 Canadian government institutions may as usual pay lip service to the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” and not much else.

Murphy Browne © March 15-2018