BLACK AUGUST 2020
Murphy Browne © August 20-2020
“A Disparate Impact,” the second interim report in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black persons by the Toronto Police Service (TPS), confirms that Black people are more likely than others to be arrested, charged, over-charged, struck, shot or killed by Toronto police.
August 10, 2020, Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC)
August is a month with significant events and historic anniversaries for our community, including Black August, Emancipation Day, Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s birthday, the beginning of the Haitian Revolution and the unveiling of the Red, Black and Green Pan-African flag. Black August is a month and a time to celebrate, commemorate and remember our freedom fighters and revolutionaries past and present. We have had freedom fighters and revolutionaries in every generation and in every African community from the first kidnapping of Africans by Europeans, throughout their enslavement and colonization into the 21st century of August 2020.
The tradition of commemorating Black August began in 1971 during a prison uprising when African American activist and member of the Black Panther Party, George Jackson, was killed on August 21, 1971. Black August is an annual remembrance of resistance and righteous rebellion. Events and anniversaries remembered during Black August include the kidnapping, torture and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till on August 28-1955 and the “I Have a Dream” speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 8 years later, on August 28-1963. Reaction to the lynching of Emmett Till is considered the spark that lit the Civil Rights Movement. A month after Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, Dr. King stated that it “might be considered one of the most brutal and inhuman crimes of the twentieth century.” Dr. King frequently used the lynching of Emmett Till as an example of “the evil of racial injustice,” and he spoke about “the crying voice of a little Emmett Till, screaming from the rushing waters in [Mississippi].” When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat as she sat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery, Alabama bus, to a White man who could not find a seat in the crowded “White” seating section of the segregated bus, she was thinking about 14 year old Emmett Till who had been lynched three months before. Years later when Rosa Parks was asked why she did not move from her seat on December 1, 1955, she replied: “I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.”
In August 2020, it was the sight of a White police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, kneeling for almost nine minutes on the neck of an African American man, George Floyd, as the life slowly drained out of his body on May 25, 2020, that brought many people into the streets during a pandemic, to protest the killing of yet another “Black man” by a White man. While this scenario was recorded in the USA and shared internationally, the racial profiling, brutalization, maiming and killing of African Canadians by White police also happens in Canada. The USA and Canada share a similar history of the enslavement of Africans, segregation and White supremacy. Black August is commemorated in Canada because of that shared history and common experience. The enslavement of Africans in Canada was abolished 186 years ago, on August 1, 1834 yet the legacy of that enslavement persists into the 21st century. During the enslavement of Africans in Canada, White slaveholders exerted control over the bodies of the enslaved Africans. In the 21st century that control manifests itself in policing, racial profiling, the justice system and incarceration rate of “Black bodies.”
The Executive summary of “A Disparate Impact,” the second interim report which was released by the OHRC, acknowledges that: “Black people are more likely to be arrested by the Toronto police. Black people are more likely to be charged and over-charged by the Toronto Police. Black people are more likely to be struck, shot or killed by the Toronto police.” The OHRC used Toronto Police Service data as part of its inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of “Black persons” by the Toronto Police Service (TPS.) The OHRC acknowledged that its findings “confirms what Black communities have told us – that they are subjected to a disproportionate burden of law enforcement in a way that is consistent with systemic racism and anti-Black racial bias.”
The result of this latest study comes from TPS data ranging from 2013 to 2017, but this information “collected and analyzed by a team of experts,” which “reflects the many ways Black communities are over-charged and over-policed, ranging from laying low-quality discretionary charges to police use of force,” is nothing new. The concept of “Black August” has been embraced in Canada for many years and especially in 2020 with the uprising to address anti-Black racism, including the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by two White men, one of who was found guilty of assault and the other found not guilty even though they knocked Miller’s left eye out of its socket. Black August should be more widely recognized in Canada as we grapple with anti-Black racism in this Great White North.
Murphy Browne © August 20-2020
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