Toronto Star article, June 18, 2010
Her death sent shock waves through the city — and across the world — prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether her death was Toronto’s first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence. …. Media in Toronto and around the world immediately reported and continues to report that Aqsa was killed because she refused to wear the hijab. But it was much more complicated than that.
Her death sent shock waves through the city — and across the world — prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether her death was Toronto’s first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence.
….
Media in Toronto and around the world immediately reported and continues to report that Aqsa was killed because she refused to wear the hijab. But it was much more complicated than that.
You know, if one were to never pay attention to feminists, including Muslim feminists, one would be rather perplexed about the horror, fear and isolation that Aqsa had in the last moments of her life, being killed by her father and brother. Nobody in any of the regular state intervention machines (her school, CAS, the police) did much of anything to help her, to listen to her about what she needed.
And since her murder (why the media keeps calling it her “death” is beyond me) the white establishment has been desperately trying to “understand”, from the mealy-center of the Toronto Star to the hard-core right of the Globe and Mail.
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By Slumberjack
Gary Coleman R.I.P.
My interest in the show during the late 70s had little to do with the ‘what you talking bout’ routine, as entertaining as that was, but as a young male teenager in the late 70s, admittedly it had more to do with Dana Plato’s tight jeans.
At any rate, the concept of a white benefactor taking in two black kids from the ‘ghetto’ and raising them in an atmosphere that was portrayed as better and more sophisticated certainly fell through the crevices of youth at the time.
The clichéd notion of a sitcom, whereby proper grounding in the manners and etiquette of whiteness through practice, trial and error of course, [there'd be no lame punch lines without it] could transform two poor black kids into presentable facsimiles of whiteness in harmony with their surroundings didn’t reveal itself for what it was until later in life.
The sadness that comes with the passing of a human being is compounded by the realization that he was discarded by the corporate entertainment industry when he was determined to be of no further use to them.
This is the everyday reality of corporatism, where its cruel ramifications are more often than not first visited upon those who are disadvantaged in this society from the outset, regardless of the station they might achieve in life.
It’s Black History month, dontcha know. The fine white folks of Canada would rather this not be remembered.
Africville, Nova Scotia.
From Daniel Paul’s website. He wrote this in 1997:
From its founding, the community’s residents, like their brothers and sisters in other African Nova Scotia communities, and likewise members of the Mi’kmaq community, were victimized by harsh racial oppression. They were segregated at will. Up until recent times, many of the province’s public and private facilities, including schools, were closed to them and in many instances, people were segregated unto death, by being buried in sections of white cemeteries reserved for “coloureds.” By the early 1960s, after approximately 170 years had passed since Africville had become part of the City of Halifax, the city had not extended water and sewer and many other municipal services to it. Actually, Halifax intensified the trying living conditions that the neglected people of Africville suffered, by locating the city’s dump and other undesirable entities upon their doorstep. One can only assume that the city’s historic mistreatment of Africville’s residents was motivated because of their colour and cultural differences. Therefore, when in the early sixties, the Anglo-dominated city council developed a paternalistic attitude towards the residents of Africville and decided unilaterally that they should be relocated for their own good – the same scenario was used by the Feds to justify relocating the Mi’kmaq – they crossed the boundary of acceptable conduct by a controlling culture towards a weaker one. This is especially so when members of the affected cultural group are not part of the decision-making process.
Today, where Africville once stood, Halifax has located an under-used public park called Seaview. This situation is unacceptable. The time has come for Halifax Regional Council to accept full responsibility for the unthinking actions of its predecessors and institute a process to restore this property to its rightful owners. Then it should provide unfettered assistance to help rebuild the community. Until such time as this occurs, justice will not have been accorded these badly used people!
Flash forward to 2010. And now, the apology:
“We realize words cannot undo what has been done. But we are profoundly sorry and apologize to each and every one of you. The repercussions of what happened to Africville linger to this day. They haunt us in the form of lost opportunities for the young people who never were nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville.” The apology was backed up a total of nearly $5 million from three levels of government for the black community — $3 million from the city, $1.5 million from the province and $250,000 from the federal government.
“We realize words cannot undo what has been done. But we are profoundly sorry and apologize to each and every one of you. The repercussions of what happened to Africville linger to this day. They haunt us in the form of lost opportunities for the young people who never were nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville.”
The apology was backed up a total of nearly $5 million from three levels of government for the black community — $3 million from the city, $1.5 million from the province and $250,000 from the federal government.
Story at cbc.ca
Don’t, under any circumstances, read the comments at the cbc.ca link. And when you do, don’t come crying to me.
Dear god why do I glance at the newspaper headlines, why?
So I’m out and about yesterday, just living my life, happy, and I come upon a Toronto Star newspaper box with the headline above. Full article here.
DO NOT under any circumstances read the comments. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
There’s also a snarky column by Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun (I KNOW), and an equally unhelpful column by Marcus Gee in the Globe and Mail.
A sweeping year-long probe into racism at Ryerson University has found a staggeringly diverse campus where some visible minority students say they feel harassed and excluded, where profs don’t always deal with offensive comments made in class and some non-white staff report a “chill” that shuts them out of the power loop.
A year-long probe, that’s great. Good opportunity to be thorough and non-superficial.
I need to state once again for the record that I HATE the term visible minority. Hate it hate it hate it. Almost as much as I hate the term non-white.
Talk about a chill.
Black Hat Media: The Fine Art of Discrimination
Angry Asian Man: Maybelline’s stupid “Asian” eyes ad
Restructure: White People’s family roots are deeper than those of ethnic minorities
