Introduction: Setting the Stage for Black Epistemologies

Introduction – Setting the Stage for Black Epistemologies 

The way one sees the world is dependent on various factors. For example, I was born to an Akuapem father and a Fante mother who decided to send off their eldest child to Canada in 2001 for school. When I arrived, I saw Canada through the prism of a young man born, raised, and schooled in Ghana. Was I Black? My response back then was, “hell no.” I am Ghanaian, West African, and a proud member of the Akan people. Fast forward to this exact moment in 2024, the question of whether I am Black or not hinges on various factors. It is complex due to the multi-layered understanding of how our world has constructed “Blackness” and how Black people have forged a culture and understanding of what it means to be Black.

Living in a settler state such as Canada opens one’s eyes to how race is weaponized to advance certain groups of people based on the colour of one’s skin. Indigenous scholars such as Shirley Williams/Migizi ow-kwe, Qwul’sih’yah’maht/Robina Thomas, and others have detailed these acts in ways that expose the epistemologies of White supremacy and its technological creations, such as residential schools (MacDonald, 2017). Other Canadian policies and laws informed by White supremacy have led to Chinese head tax policy, trans-Atlantic slave trade, and internment camps (Maynard, 2017). The creation of race identity and the term “Africa” can be traced to scientific racists such as Carl Linnaeus and others (Poten, 2021). These ignorant assertions of so-called “racial” categories announced and peddled as universal knowledge have created realities for exploitation, domination, exclusion, marginalization, and denigration among people of African descent. Whether or not I am Black, Akan, Akuapem, Fante, or African, in Canada, I can’t escape the realities of being Black. These realities have ontological ramifications that are explored in this textbook. Whether we talk about Blackness as identity formation, cultural understanding, radical tradition, or culture – there is much to learn – in an effort to create a world where Black people and people of African descent are not subjugated to the banal aspirations of Eurocentrism.

This textbook discusses Black epistemologies, understandings, ontologies, relationalities, and liberations in a settler state like Canada. It is a small contribution to the emerging and growing field of Black Studies in Canada. By reading works from Black community organizers, activists, students, community health leaders, journalists, and scholars – students and Black communities will learn about the diverse experiences and realities of Black populations across this country. Many Canadian Black scholars such as Austin Clarke, Robyn Maynard, Rinaldo Wilcot, Afua Cooper, Katherine McKittrick, George Dei and others have set the foundation to allow for emergent ways of how Black/African Canadians respond to local, provincial, and federal misgivings like police brutality and unparalleled anti-Black/African racism in education, healthcare, immigration, law, social, and public policy.

Abolitionists from the transatlantic era, like Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, refuted the slave trade in its ideology and practice. On 6th March 1684, Mendonça began a court case against the Vatican, Italy, Spain, and Portugal for initiating, participating and depending on the transatlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity (Lingna Nafafe, 2022, p. 40). In this exemplary action to fight for freedom, Lingna Nafafe concludes that the prime campaigners for the abolition of African enslavement in the seventeenth century lie at the feet of Mendonça, who also called for reparations (Lingna Nafafe, 2022, p. 27).

Post-colonial leaders like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Amilacar Cabral, Walter Rodney and others gave us an understanding of how to speak to the neocolonial machinations of imperialism through Marx’s analysis and socialist governing policies. Many of these leaders were assassinated and exiled and could not see their visions carried out. Their legacy and analysis of imperialism rings through African and Black Studies as vital texts and understandings of the Pan-African movement (Martin, 2012).

Black feminists like Patrica Hill-Collins, the Combahee River Collective and others spoke succinctly to the racial, gendered, and sexual machinations of settler colonialism for people of African descent in the diaspora (Hill-Collins, 2000; Combahee River Collective, 1977). Their contributions to community organizing, teaching, and understanding of misogynoir and patriarchy can not be omitted.

The Black Lives Matter Movement of the 2000’s spoke to dismissiveness of Blackness in the diaspora and on the continent. In “Until We Are Free,” Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, and Syrus Marcus Ware collide Black activism, community organizing,disability justice, and social media to not only unsettle Canada’s settler colonial logic but penetrate it by centering abolition as imagined by the likes of Lourenço da Silva Mendonça.

The through-thread from these periods and movements seeks to offer a world free of violence for people of African descent. In the words of Cedric Robinson, a testament to the Black Radical Tradition, Black revolt against racial capitalism, Black revolt to theorize and strategize Black freedom and sovereignty (Robinson, 1983). Whether it is 1684, 2020, 2024, or 2042, Walcott accurately sums up the plight of people of African descent as being at risk of Black social death in light of a global anti-Black condition preventing Black people from espousing their dignity and self-determination (Walcott, 2014). To be free is to understand and carry forward the traditions of the Black revolt(s). These stories of Black revolt(s) are known, unknown, shared orally, written down in personal journals, in the minds of elders, buried in books in libraries, or erased from the archive. Recovering, unearthing, and sharing these stories of Black Revolts are vital to what Molefi Kete Asante calls Afrocentric awareness. An awareness propelling people of African descent into a conscious level of involvement in the struggle for their mind liberation beyond acts of Black tokenism (Asante, 2003). Mind liberation requires copious amounts of construction, deconstruction, imagination, and reimagination across time and space, all in the name of relational solidarity.

The traditions of Black Revolt(s) in Canada are not to be dismissed or forgotten in the grand scheme of Black liberation, Black internationalism, and Canadian Black Studies. Hudson & Kamugisha (2014) remind us of the many germinations of the Black Revolt(s) tradition in Canada, beginning with Marie Joseph Angelique’s actions in Montreal in 1734, the African Canadian support for John Brown’s raid on Harper Ferry in 1859, the underground railroad with stops in Hamilton (Stewart Memorial Church), and other activities and movements across Turtleland that cement the testament of working to end racial capitalism. For Black Canada(s), as Walcott calls it, the Black Radical Tradition is preoccupied with the relationship between the Canadian state and Black people and its diaspora (the various manifestations of language, immigration, citizenship and other identifiers) – with an analysis traced to the global condition of anti-Blackness/Africanness (Huson & Kamugisha, 2014; Walcott, 2014). This analysis is critical because it pays homage to the different experiences of people of African descent – Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Black Canada, and Black America- seeking to end racial capitalism. As Charlene Carruthers reminds us, “eradicating oppression requires us to identify connections, not sameness” (Carruthers, 2018).

The connections between time and space are the sites of knowledge, work, understanding, and action that not only make Black lives liveable but create a world free of oppression. When we situate ourselves in these sites of knowledge, work, understanding, and action, we expand and learn from Black epistemologies, which enhance our understanding of the global condition of anti-Blackness/Africanness. So, in essence, the question is not “Am I Black?” The question is, “Are people of African descent liberated where they are located?”

If the answer to the second question is “no,” then it is incumbent on people of African descent to create spaces to understand Black epistemologies, ontologies, axiologies, and philosophies to ensure the collective task of liberation is a success. This textbook is one of the many ways to chart a path toward collective liberation through Black imagination and action. The first chapter seeks to build on the work of the Combahee River Collective and introduce a theory and praxis I call the “Scaffold Theory of Experience” to describe how Black communities in Hamilton, Ontario, are challenging white supremacy in politics, education, health care, and social and public policy. In chapter two, Sabreina Dahab shares her journey from Black liberalism to Black radicalism in her efforts to end police surveillance in Hamilton schools, address anti-Palestine racism in schools and unpack how her electoral position as a Trustee with the Hamilton Wentworth School Board acts as praxis for liberation for not only Black and Arab students but for any student within the public education system.

We turn our attention to health in chapter three; where Terri Bedminster shares her experiences working in public and community health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and thereafter, this chapter outlines how Black health epistemologies have changed public health policy and improved the health outcomes of Black, Racialized, other marginalized populations, and the larger population in Hamilton. Chapter four draws on Koubra Haggar’s work with the Hamilton Encampment Support Network (HESN). Koubra shares her understanding of interlocking solidarities, global solidarity and the Black/African experience while working with HESN to support encampment residents. The work of HESN, while seen as radical at the time, is the continuation of the tradition of subverting state violence and control and organized abandonment through community care in ways described as harm reduction.

In chapter five, McMaster student Cassandra Garcia shares a reflexive writing of what it means to be a teacher and student in a society that treats teaching as a one way flow of information from teacher to student. Cassandra goes on to explore how learning from the community be it online and through community focused research projects open up opportunities for transformational change and learning outside the classroom.

One of the main goals of this textbook is to focus on how Black/African Canadians from different perspectives engage in their work or how they came to their understanding of how they should engage in their work. Canadian journalist, activist, author and broadcaster Desmond Cole reflects on social and political disruption after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May of 2020, and the death only two days later of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto.

The concluding chapter focuses on how visioning of decolonial futures can be realized. Dr. Ruth Rodney and I offer these reflections with love, humility, gratitude, and a frankness about the realities of doing this community work as Black people and people of African descent.

In an effort to find different ways to share the essence of this book Ahona Mehdi and I have included our conversations with Sabreina Dahab and Koubra Haggar in a podcast style video and audio. There is a study playlist for your listening pleasure curated by Dr. Ruth Rodney, Cassandra Garcia, Koubra Haggar and I.

References

Asante, M.K. (2003). Afrocentricity. Chicago: African American Images.

Carruthers, C. (2018). unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Boston. Beacon Press.

Hill-Collin, P. (2000). Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.

Hudson, P.J., & Kamugisha, A. (2014). On Black Canadian Thought. The CLR James Journal 20:1-2. doi: 10.5840/clrjames201492216

Lingna Nafafé, J. (2022). Lourenço Da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press.

MacDonald, M. (2017). Six Indigenous Scholars share their views of Canada at 150. https://universityaffairs.ca/features/six-indigenous-scholars-share-views-canada-150/

Martin, G. (2012). African Political Thought. Palgrave Macmillan.

Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Halix: Fernwood Publishing.

Poten, A.W. (2021). Summary and Reflections on the “Carl Linnaeus debate” in Sweden 2020/2021. https://new.eludamos.org/index.php/1700/article/download/5909/6288

Walcott, R. (2014). The problem of the human: Black ontologies and the coloniality of our being. Postcoloniality-Decoloniality-Black Critique: Joints and fissures, 93–105.