“It’s not as attractive to reproduce,” says Walcott, “because the people who hold the power to decide what’s attractive to make are also people who don’t understand and are not willing to learn about the facts of slavery of Black lives in Canada for 200 years.” Walcott says the gatekeepers of Canadian media and history have long downplayed the Black experience. They seem to even forget that Canada was a part of the British Empire and therefore would mean that Canada participated in slavery.” “Canada has been skilled at suppressing its own relationship with the enslavement of Black people. “Canadians have been able to write a history of Canada that has rendered Black people very absent,” said Rinaldo Walcott, a black studies professor at the University of Toronto. Two prominent Canadian Black historians say that’s not by accident, but part of an orchestrated coverup and institutional denial by the country that slavery and systemic racism existed by minimizing the Canadian experience and leaving it to be drowned out by a flood of American narratives in media and literature. When discussions about slavery or systemic racism arise, many Canadians, by default, connect their understanding of that sordid legacy to the American experience. Ever wonder why Canada’s Black struggle has played second fiddle to that of the U.S.?
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