Emancipation, then and now!

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Civil Rights Movement, anti-black racism has become an important topic for organizations, public institutions, and society at large. While there is widespread recognitionof the distinctiveness between anti-black racism and racism in general, there are still debates being waged in the media about whether anti-black racism, and systemic racism exists. Many of the arguments denying the existence of systemic and anti-black racism hinge on the legacy of Canada as the great free north, a place where slaves ran to, not from. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are some facts, and, because the African Canadian Scholars Reading List is dedicated to changing the narrative when it comes to black history, here are some resources to go with those facts.

• McGill University is named after slave owner James McGill

• Slavery existed in Canada for over 200 years (as far back as the 1600s (see Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Centuries of Bondage by Marcel Trudel, 2013).

• Slaves escaped Canada for the United States. In fact, it was one such incident involving a slave named Chloe Cooley that prompted the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada. (see this brilliant well resourced Canadian Encyclopedia article by Natasha Henry.

• Police brutality and over-policing in the black community is a longstanding issue in Canada that goes all the way back to slavery (see Robyn Maynard's 2017 Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present).