Black Canadians Challenge Country’s Long-Held Image of Racial Tolerance

In the spirituals once sung by fugitive American slaves, “Heaven” stood for Canada. When black Canadians contend that modern-day race relations are less than heavenly, they unnerve a society that craves to be viewed as tolerant.

Canada has been far less racked by racial turmoil than the United States. But Canada’s racial history is far from tranquil, and the present is full of challenges.

A recent sampling:

* Black leaders are demanding a federal inquiry into the killings of three blacks by Toronto police this year and 14 other fatal shootings by Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa police since 1979.

* Several racial brawls flared this fall at schools in Nova Scotia, where black freemen founded Canada’s oldest black communities when they fled north after the American Revolution.

* Profanity defaced a black church in Collingwood, Ontario, where black residents proud of their pioneering ancestors opposed a local council’s decision to change the name of Negro Creek Road.

* A government-appointed commission in Ontario released a report detailing pervasive racism in the justice system of Canada’s most populous province.

Even added together, these events may not equal the trauma of an American race riot. But black Canadians argue that they are serious matters treated with insufficient seriousness.

Sheldon Taylor, professor of African-Canadian history at York University near Toronto, says progress is “very, very, very difficult” for blacks because whites cling to the belief that there is no racism in Canada and ignore those who say otherwise.

“The black community has no allies right now,” he said. “When a police officer shoots a young black person, there is no court that will convict him.

“Then there is the embarrassment factor. We do not want to admit even today that there are problems. We do not want our American neighbors to know.”

The embarrassment factor was evident over the summer in the national furor that erupted when Sports Illustrated magazine quoted a black Canadian sprinter, Donovan Bailey, as saying Canada was as racist as the United States. Bailey, who went on to win the 100-meter gold medal, said he was misquoted about the comparison, but stuck by his contention that racism flourishes in Canada.

There is no official figure for the number of blacks in Canada, because until the census being conducted this year the government had never asked its residents about their race. But 500,000 blacks--less than 2% of the population of 30 million--appears to be a reasonable estimate. The vast majority have come from the Caribbean and Africa in the last 30 years.

Black political and social organizations abound, but there is no equal in terms of prestige and clout to that held by major black groups in the United States.

Lacking the electoral and purchasing power of black Americans, blacks in Canada have sought alliances with other communities and organizations. Black leaders are concerned about a conservative trend in several provinces that has slashed spending on social programs and modified affirmative-action hiring.

One worried observer is Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the former American middleweight boxer who spent 19 years in a New Jersey prison wrongly convicted of a triple murder. White Canadians helped wage the campaign that exonerated him, and he has lived in Toronto since 1989.

Carter says ever-closer economic and cultural links between Canada and the United States are exposing his adopted country to American-style “anti-crime hysteria, racism and the burgeoning underclass.”

A prisoners’ rights advocate, Carter had a run-in earlier this year with Toronto police who mistakenly accosted him while in pursuit of a much younger suspect. He believes anti-black bias in Canada is only part of a broader problem, starting with discrimination against Indians and Inuits.

In metropolitan Toronto, where the greatest number of blacks live, there is one poor, predominately black neighborhood, but no urban ghetto. Many areas are racially mixed.

The nation’s biggest minority community, the 1.5 million Asians who are mostly middle-class, has reported few instances of flagrant bigotry.

For most white Canadians, eager to distinguish their society from their neighbor to the south, a defining difference is a sense of moral superiority on race relations.

History lessons focus on Canada as a refuge for American slaves throughout the 1800s and as a country that today celebrates multiculturalism. They tend to overlook early slavery, long-term discrimination and immigration policies that explicitly excluded non-whites.

Lawrence Hill, novelist and author of two young readers’ books on Canadian blacks, says there is “a crying need” for more knowledge of this history.

“We Canadians are so pious. It’s so disheartening,” he said. “On balance, our record on race relations is better than the U.S., but not so good that we can stand on a pedestal.”

Hill says that even sympathetic whites have trouble understanding the discrimination blacks still face in employment, housing and criminal justice. They are “profoundly offended when you suggest racism is systemic,” he said.

Canada’s anti-discrimination laws are as strong as any nation’s, and overt displays of racism are widely condemned. But subtler forms of bias continue to affect many blacks.

For instance, the study of Ontario’s justice system found that half of young black men in Toronto had been stopped at least twice by police over a two-year period. That was twice the rate for young white men.

Discrimination unites blacks across the great range of their own cultural backgrounds, from Jamaican to Ghanaian to eighth-generation Canadian.

“Someone perpetrating an act of racism doesn’t give a damn whether you are Somali or your grandparents were born in Nova Scotia,” Hill said.

Taylor, the York history professor, says Canadian multiculturalism offers the false promise that minorities will be fully included in society. Instead, he says, it plays one group against another so blacks and other minorities find it difficult to gain meaningful political influence.

The teaching of black history mostly focuses on contributions made by exceptional individuals--Mary Ann Shadd, first female newspaper editor in North America, for example. Taylor says the senior academics who control research funds at universities block money for serious scholarship on more provocative black issues.

“They want to ensure that African-Canadian history does not have its pivotal moment,” Taylor said. “People of African origin are stitched into the fabric of the Canadian nation. They are part of the rationalization of what Canada is as opposed to the U.S.

“But there is no recognition of past injustice.”