Strengthening resistance against contemporary Canadian blackface
On Oct. 23,聽Philip S. S. Howard, Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, will give a聽keynote presentation聽on the history of contemporary Canadian blackface and how to challenge it. It鈥檚 part of a four-campus art and speaking tour starting at 91社区, going to Queen鈥檚, Wilfred Laurier and the Ontario College of Arts and Design University.
Professor Howard, in collaboration with curator and visual artist聽Camille Turner, will challenge 鈥渂lackface鈥� in a research knowledge mobilization initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.聽 It is an all day art exhibition with workshops, performances, followed by Professor Howard鈥檚 keynote presentation,聽Hide and See: Engaging the in/visible presence of black face in Canada, at 5:30.
Throughout the day at various locations around 91社区, the work of Turner and four socially-engaged artists commissioned by the project will address blackface and the history of racism in Canada. 鈥淏lackface鈥� is defined as the act of darkening one鈥檚 skin in an attempt to impersonate a black person.
鈥淏lackface minstrelsy was an entertainment form that expressed nostalgia for slavery and attempted to portray slavery as a benevolent institution,鈥� says聽Professor Howard. 鈥淭hough Canadians like to think of minstrelsy as an American phenomenon, Blackface was a very popular form of entertainment among both amateurs and professional entertainers in Canada from shore to shore.
鈥淔ew Canadians know, for example, that the writer of Canada鈥檚 national anthem, Calixa Lavall茅e, was a renowned blackface minstrel.聽 It is difficult to get more Canadian than that,鈥� says Professor Howard. 鈥淭he ignorance or willful forgetting of the history of blackface in Canada lies at the heart of the phenomenon of contemporary Canadian blackface.鈥�
Howard says the discussion of blackface is still very much relevant because it is recurring phenomenon.
He notes that blackface is frequently used by Quebec comedians, and is a regular feature of聽Radio-Canada鈥檚 annual year-end television show, Bye Bye.
In Montreal alone there have been instances of students wearing blackface at HEC Montreal, during the 2012 student protests, and at 91社区.
鈥淏lack communities regularly assert that these instances of blackface are problematic given their racist roots in Canadian minstrelsy, and the poisoned environments they create in the present, but this message often seems to fall on deaf ears,鈥� says Professor Howard.
Howard and other scholars who study racism in Canada use the term 鈥淧ost Racialism鈥� to describe current attitudes.
鈥淧ostracialism refers to the ideological climate that makes it possible to juxtapose racist expression with claims to having transcended racism.聽 Canadian national narratives are post racialist in this sense, allowing Canadians to claim to be non-racists who are 鈥榦ver鈥� race, while the evidence of anti-Black racism abounds,鈥� he says. 鈥淪ystemically and institutionally ingrained anti-black racism is evident with racial profiling, endangerment, and incarceration of black persons that starts in elementary schools; the erasure of Black histories from narratives about Canada and from school curricula; the disproportionately high rate at which black children are removed from their homes to become wards of the State, the disproportionate numbers of black people, particularly black women, who are unemployed, under-employed, and living in poverty, to name a few indicators.鈥�
Howard says Canadians need to listen more carefully to, and take more seriously, the voices of black people.聽 鈥淭he general denial of historical and current anti-Black racism erodes the possibility of truly hearing black peoples鈥� critiques of blackface, and of placing it in its true Canadian historical context.鈥�
Hide and See: Engaging the in/visible presence of blackface in Canada; Monday, Oct. 23, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Jack Cram Auditorium, room 129, Education Building (3700 McTavish).
