The Toronto Star has many outstanding writers and contributors, one of whom is PUBLIC Page Editor, Donovan Vincent, whose responsibility is to oversee submissions to the Star’s Insight section. [Read his full article at Vincent ] He does a marvellous job keeping the tone of submissions professional and in line with community acceptability.
Recently in the Star, Feb. 17 edition, he wrote a commentary about Black journalists enriching discourse and debate in the community. For the most part, Vincent was on point. Our community needs that kind of expansion and broadening of opinion and commentary.
It is particularly gratifying to see how our education system should be and is being involved in developing young minds into becoming more analytical thinkers. As many readers and writers have posed, our society improves in its egalitarianism and liberal views when young people are taught to evaluate, analyze and review what they think before acting on it. Education minister, Stephen Lecce, is to be commended for the expansion of the elementary school curriculum to include mandatory Black history lessons in 2025.
However, before we all jump on the bandwagon of cheering and applauding changes such as the above which Vincent touts and promotes, something is troubling about the issue that demands more consideration.
It is gratifying and laudable that institutions and the corporate world are being prodded into giving Blacks more opportunities and greater consideration for entry into the world of literary and media employment. As Vincent indicates, this has been a growing trend for many years and is justifiable. He highlights various Black writers who have been given entry into the ‘hallowed halls of others’ before. He acknowledges writers such as Royson James and Leslie Papp who ‘broke the barriers’ for others. He overlooked others such as TV personalities like Dwight Drummond of CBC and others.
However, as gratifying and satisfying as Vincent’s views may be, some problematic aspects need consideration.
Making Black as a criterion for acceptability of journalist employment is selective and narrow in scope, bordering on racism. Consider my recent consideration to join an Anti-racist Black Racism Taskforce committee. All the members of that committee are of a minority, most are Black. I am white. I never applied as I anticipated I would be rejected for not being Black. There may be justifiable criticism of me for not applying but it is the feeling I had in considering applying.
That is the problem. We are focussing on skin colour rather than the person. A municipal councillor in Ontario recently posed that we may be subtly racist when we concentrate on Blacks or any other single group such as the LGBTQ+ and in so doing disregard others. Hence racism. Our focus on any one group may be prejudicial against all other groups or one of them.
Employment in the case of journalists as posed by Vincent, should not have skin colour as a consideration, rather skills, experience, past employment credentials should be the primary considerations.
Our society was prejudiced and anti-Black in past decades, but we have been working hard to change that to become more egalitarian and democratic in our dealing with Blacks. Acknowledging and celebrating Blacks and celebrating Black History Month is a positive step forward. However, my ongoing prejudice, hate and anti-social behaviour continue. Even those of us who feel we are close to being fair and non-racist fail in subtle ways. An example is my recent calling out of the use of “coloured’ as being subtly racist. I learned the appropriate address is ‘Black.’ I appreciate the call-out.
We have a long way to go as pointed out by numerous examples of subtle racism: the scavenger game by one of our Southern Ontario municipalities, the racial profiling of young Black drivers with dreads driving expensive cars in the Durham region of southern Ontario.
We not there yet where we look at people as people, FULL STOP. We still have racist and prejudicial views of ‘groups of the moment.’ Today, Blacks, tomorrow Tamils, the next day Muslims, the day after Orientals. Where will it stop? It may never stop but we should be thankful that through open discourse and dialogue, we keep working on making attitudes better.
