As racialized people in Toronto we seem to be doing some kind of macabre dance with White supremacy: “one step forward, two steps backwards!” While we are doing this dance any “progress” that we think was made is eliminated or White supremacists have found a way to sidestep and begin the dance again with them in the lead. This has been likened to a hydra where heads that were chopped off grow many more heads.
On Thursday night May 4, 2017 a documentary entitled “It Takes A Riot: Race, Rebellion, Reform” was screened in the theatre at Ryerson University library building. There was a lively audience in the packed space in spite of non-stop rain. The documentary was made in remembrance of the May 4, 1992 Yonge Street Uprising; a protest against police killing of African Canadians and in solidarity with African Americans who were grieving and protesting the acquittal of police who had brutalized Rodney King. The fact that the brutal beating of King had been caught on video and police were not held accountable caused anger and anxiety in African North American communities.
On May 2, 1992 just two days before the Yonge Street Uprising a White police officer had killed 22-year-old African Canadian Raymond Lawrence claiming that Lawrence faced him while holding a knife. Police did produce a knife but Lawrence’s fingerprints were not found on the knife. On April 7, 1992 a month before the Yonge Street Uprising two White police officers had been acquitted of killing unarmed 17-year-old Michael Wade Lawson. They claimed that they killed Lawson because he was trying to run them over (December 8, 1988) but Lawson was shot in the back of his head.
On May 4, 1992 mostly members of the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC) took to Yonge Street for a peaceful protest at 4:00 p.m. The number of protesters grew to an unwieldy number as people of various races joined the BADC protesters. The protest quickly became out of order and no longer a BADC protest. In the documentary of the May 4, 1992 Yonge Street Uprising screened on May 4, 2017 there were images of police provoking then brutalizing protesters. Protesters were surrounded by police on horses terrorizing men and women who were trying to leave; many peaceful protesters were caught up in police barricades.
In the aftermath of May 4, 1992 the NDP provincial government appointed Stephen Lewis to report on the state of race relations in the province. Lewis reported that he had found that there was “anti-Black racism” during his investigation. “What we are dealing with, at root, and fundamentally, is anti-Black racism. It is Blacks who are being shot, it is Black youth that are unemployed in excessive numbers, it is Black students who are being inappropriately streamed in schools, it is Black kids who are disproportionately dropping-out, it is housing communities with large concentrations of Black residents where the sense of vulnerability and disadvantage is most acute, it is Black employees, professional and non-professional, on whom the doors of upward equity slam shut. Just as the soothing balm of ‘multiculturalism` cannot mask racism, so racism cannot mask its primary target.” The report galvanized the provincial government to enact several anti-racist and equity policy initiatives. In October 1992, the “Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System” was given the mandate to “report and make recommendations on systemic racism in the criminal justice system.” There were studies and reports and a few programs put in place in an effort to remedy the situation (anti-Black racism) and then the Conservative government (1995) was elected. The dance was on again “one step forward three steps backwards.”
In May 2017, 25 years after the Yonge Street Uprising the community is dealing with “carding” and the mistreatment of activists who stand up against this scourge. The fact that African Canadians continue to be the “primary target” of a White supremacist system should not be a surprise given our history in this country. We are the only group of people who were brought to these shores in shackles, enslaved for centuries, worked to death, stripped of our names, had our children sold, prevented from speaking our languages, prevented from practicing our culture, “had no rights which the White man was bound to respect” and were treated as mere property during the system of chattel slavery.
The enslavement of Africans in Canada began in 1628 (until August 1, 1834) with the sale of a six year old child who was kidnapped from the African continent and sold in Quebec by English pirate David Kirke. The enslaved African child was given the French name Olivier LeJeune and sold more than once before his short life ended (buried May 10, 1654) 26 years after he was sold in Quebec. Studies have shown that we are seen by White people in authority (police, doctors, teachers, supervisors etc.,) as less competent, troublemakers, our children older than they are, feeling less pain when we are hurt etcetera. When we speak out/speak up we are targeted for punishment. African American author James Baldwin said: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.” The late Dudley Laws and members of BADC were considered a threat and were always within the sights of the Toronto police. In 2017 the members of Black Lives Matter are seen as the threat and recently African Canadian journalist Desmond Cole was targeted for speaking out against the egregious practice of carding. We need to support those who put their lives and livelihood on the line as we battle the many headed hydra of White supremacy.
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