By Sheldon Taylor
The May 02, 2011 federal election has brought home to roost the extent to which seemingly fewer black voters than in previous years bothered showing up at the polls. Unlike in the US with its large African-American population and proven methods of measuring specific voter behaviour outcomes, in Canada, this information is harder to determine. But the general consensus supports the idea that in the recent election black voters abandoned the Canadian polls.
Furthermore, the degree to which such participation lacked enthusiasm is also reflected in the frontline involvement of very few black candidates other than the traditional die-hard ones who have been involved in the political process for quite sometime. So glaring is this fact which by now is not a one of, but is fast becoming a pattern of neglect, that Arnold Auguste, publisher and editor of Share, “Canada’s largest ethnic newspaper” was provoked to stoically highlight this worrisome problem in his weekly newspaper’s front page (May 05, 2011).
Auguste wrote mournfully of this situation because it is a dilemma that must be addressed: “…we need to regain that spark we used to have which earned the respect of politicians, brought them into our community and gained their support when it was needed.” As the publisher of Share newspaper since 1978 he has been a keen observer of black community developments. This experience combined with his work at both Spear magazine and before then as a contributing writer to Contrast newspaper, the Ryerson trained Auguste is acutely aware of what the rhythms of political involvements are for Blacks in Canada. No wonder his comments embody the sentiments many others quietly ponder.
It seems likely that a majority of those who turned their backs on the voting booths were younger Blacks. This could be troubling since black voters’ participation in Canada has in the past been based on realpolitiks. It is no secret that progress has often occurred when they energetically engage the political elites by being vociferous and action oriented in their support for the formal political processes. Voting too, is based on familiarity. The more a person votes, the more likely he or she will continue voting.
Younger voters in not going to the polls encourage a less informed and more malleable electorate. When the ballot box is neglected a trend sets in towards lifelong distancing from the political process. This ensures that the system is not held accountable and such neglect allows for a digression to the pre-World War Two period when black voters were mainly sidelined and taken for granted. Politicians as the Nova Scotia native Malcolm Streete and others remembered only came into their Sydney community at election time to buy Blacks a beer or two in exchange for voting a certain way.
But Streete also recollected his father’s generation, though thankful for the ale, did what they knew was right when they entered the booth in Cape Breton. Suds aside, and with so many industrial deaths in the steel mills, accidents in the Glace Bay coal mines along with employer intimidation of union members provided the one opportunity they had to vote their consciences. And they did!
If younger black voters and older ones too chose instead to show apathy for the politics other distinctive groups are embracing, in the future political parties given their what-have you-done-for-me-lately approach will deliberately ignore black people in Canada. So they should not be surprised when having contacted their local Member of Parliament’s constituency office about a particular problem it provokes nothing but a polite empty acknowledgement letter.
That so many Blacks are consciously abandoning the political process speaks to a number of troubling developments occurring in Canada’s black communities within the past generation. Among them is the void in black leadership created by death, growing old or outliving one’s usefulness. But in terms of leaving no stone unturned it must also be said that even with numerically more Blacks schooled in organizational development, political science and possessing MBAs the quality of leadership just isn’t what it used to be.
Canadian black communities have faced various challenges, not in the least being a spate of deaths including ones of leaders who influenced community development and agendae for several generations. Their abilities to get things done were grounded in an understanding that domestic politics is based on the power of personality and veiled threats. They knew enough of the previous despondency and community neglect to construct the type of environment which facilitated an activist model whose goals were race uplift and rising economic expectations.
Issues of the day were specific and could easily be amplified across a communications network that at the core was in sync, at times with the underdog, including themes highlighting: struggling against racism; educational opportunities; police-community interactions; employment diversification; fair immigration policies, domestic workers’ welfare; employment equity, fairer accommodation practices; the fight against housing discrimination; South African apartheid. These causes were relevant in a world that still had some semblance of compassion, and was not only driven by the GOD Almighty Dollar, and Stephen Harper’s neglect of what it means to be a working-class Canadian.
Such issues when effectively presented in the public square had support across community boundaries and summoned interest from people notwithstanding their racial and/or economic status, and were ones that, fuelled collaboration and political interaction. They were also causes célèbre that crystallized black community actions, nurtured a younger budding black leadership, and helped to cement bonds between Canadian-born Blacks and immigrant ones from the Caribbean, South America and the African continent.
All of the above to some degree rested on a particular type of leadership understood mainly to be within the charismatic mould. While such leaders carried the day and the important issues to this or that government official or group of elites, there were dozens of volunteers some of them were university students or graduates who willingly did the soldiering. Therefore, a Joyce Burpee in tandem with others recorded and wrote the minutes of meetings and made important phone calls. Others consulted with sympathetic lawyers in the community or met with community activists like Dudley Laws, and Bromley Armstrong et al to pass on the anxieties of many who wished to have their hopes, hurts and passions realized and issues championed in the downtown mazes of power.
In turn, influential whites in the broader society rallied toward this or that issue brought forward to them. Their genuine involvement was necessary since the inner sanctums where political decisions could be addressed were out of bounds to black folks. Additionally, because of the importance of economic influences on Canadian politics, those whites who were willing to lend an ear had connections based on school or fraternal ties and could make a call to Mister So and So on Bay Street to suggest how important his tacit support was for a particular issue.
The partnerships resulted in greater knowhow and legitimacy for Blacks in Toronto as was the case elsewhere in Canada. Especially so after some members of the young leadership having been exposed to policy makers and the formalities of the bureaucratic culture were themselves invited into the boardrooms to be part of the reflective and decision making processes. Just imagine how it felt to be paid for work by the then Toronto Board of Education for example that a new black employee previously did as an impoverished community volunteer.
Since the same actions were being repeated in cities like Ottawa with a Mairuth Hodge Sarsfield, Dorothy Wills in Quebec or for example Rocky Jones in Nova Scotia, throughout Canada a level of black political sophistication developed that with the passage of time translated not only into inter and intra community dynamics but as well brought forward a black pan political Canadian process facilitating a nexus between community politics and the formal political structures affecting all Canadians. This type of penetration and familiarization allowed blacks through their leaders and broader relationships to better understand the exclusionary nature of Canadian politics, especially in a period when the major concern was not race relations but Quebec sovereignty.
To this point what is being suggested is that black voter participation or the lack there of has deep historic linkages with how Canada’s black communities emerged over the past several generations. This evolution was tied to collaborative forces that nourished an appreciation for the political dialectic and dynamic in Canada, out of which emerged a maturation to entice greater black participation in state activities such as elections. Observably, the death and near retirement of many black leaders coupled with much larger and diversified black Canadian communities and mounting disinterest or fatigue among whites have served to lessen black political collective ambitions and influence. Accordingly, while individually Blacks hold true to the Canadian state in terms of citizenship and identity, they may well face the dilemma of uncertainty in an era when newer immigrant groups are collectively invigorated by their own attraction to political elites and parochial interests.
While black political involvement was galvanized more so in centre to left of centre politics, meaning: having a liberal or socialist angle, even within the framework of what on the surface was right wing politics had more than marginal attraction in Canada’s black communities. Again, all of this was based on issues like the ones mentioned above which summoned the attention of some people in the white community who were part of a group of forward thinking elites embracing quasi Canadian liberalism.
Even in the case of those Canadians who branded themselves as conservatives but were following the conundrum of progressive principles were believed for a while to be advocates of the idea of a civil society whose foundation was egalitarian. So these conservatives with a conscience came to be seen and labeled by many in Canada as Red Tories. Thus, if you were a Hugh Segal, now a senator, back in the day he was a major policy shaper with the conservative movement or a Roy McMurtry who was a member in the Bill Davis cabinet in Ontario, served as Attorney General and supported black political involvement in provincial politics in the 1970s, some blacks knowing their track record had little difficulty in working with them to advance the supposed progressive cause.
That they were conservative in their political persuasion was trumped by the supportive nature of their messages, actions and willingness to side at times with Blacks on human rights and policing matters. These activities were championed by white people who had been affected by certain experiences in their youth. They remembered sitting at a dinner table and hearing their fathers speak of a black person they knew and of how he or she was disrespected when attempting to register as a guest in a hotel.
The counter youth culture of the 1960s and the virulent responses to the Vietnam War played a role too. And for these progressive whites it wasn’t only peace that was to be given a chance but the downtrodden. This is not to say, these liberals wished to share their gains equally with blacks. But they hoped to see a level of tolerance in Canada that removed the eyesores on Toronto’ Spadina Avenue or in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, so that they could feel some positive sense of having helped to make the world a better place for their own children to live in.
The collaborations and new thinking were connected to earlier pioneering actions. Blacks like Bill White drew on his New Democratic Party (NDP) familiarities to become directly involved in the 1950s in party politics. Later on educator Zana Akande benefited from left-of-center and union connections and served in the 1990s in NDP Premier Bob Rae’s cabinet in Ontario. Before then other Blacks like Leonard Braithwaite who was a Liberal member of the Ontario provincial parliament in the 1960s and served in various capacities in Etobicoke municipal politics saw fit to participate in mainstream party politics and parliamentary democracy. Those named here, others too like Kay Livingstone who founded the National Congress of Black Women paved the way for later newcomers to include Toronto city politician Michael Thompson and Ontario cabinet minister Margarett Best who is at present a member of the Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s team.
The predicament many Blacks now face because they continue to neglect the ballot box where it is important to manifest political preferences is that they will be viewed by politicians as useless to the political process and therefore further sidelined. We live in a time when the notion, you are either with us or against us rules as part of preserving the North American way of life. Canada like other euro-dominated societies amidst the emergence of Asian nations and Arab peoples is very much in the throes of trying to protect an existence based on the traditions of racial, ideological and economic hegemony.
Distinctiveness, French or otherwise is at present frowned on. For it is not by accident that significant numbers of Quebeckers rejected their Sovereigntist Party, The Bloc Québécois in favour of the status quo NDP. At present conformity rules the Maple Leaf, and, if Blacks are to thrive they must find ways of connecting their issues within the framework and practices of Canada’s version of participatory democracy.
Community leader Edward (Ed) Clarke said as much several generations ago. “Listen here, if a bunch of white people are trying to preserve their neighbourhood from others wishing to build the Spadina Expressway, black people need to support them. Not only because it’s the right thing to do. But by so doing in the eyes of whites they gain legitimacy.” Put another way; your real politiks is my pragmatic politics.
This brings us back to the starting point and Auguste’s discussion of what is happening to black involvement in the Canadian political process. He pointed out the growing do-nothing nature of many blacks in Canada where political involvement is concerned: “We seem more content to just cruise along while other newer communities are getting noticed and are being respected as major participants in the country’s political process.”
Were they still around many of the old leaders like Donald Moore, Marjorie Lewsey and Harry Gairey would be dismayed that as black Canadians we have lost our collective political voice. Indeed, when our numbers were much smaller we shouted with more authority than now with a much larger black population. Auguste’s point is that newer immigrants have found their voices in Canada through their greater strategic participation in the electoral process by engaging the politicians in the three levels of government and by fielding candidates in all the major parties and, emphatically and dramatically, by turning out to vote in droves.
So telling were the impact and presence of South Asians and Chinese voters in various jurisdictions across the country that political party leaders or their stand-ins prudently and repeatedly showed up in those communities for more than the usual abrupt visit to bring a cheque or attend some scheduled ethnic event.
Indeed as was the case in Brampton, a rapidly growing area in the GTA, more than a handful of political pundits dedicated a significant part of their analyses to potential outcomes. Some of the political party candidates were residents of their local ethnic communities. Sadly, although there is some observable representation of Blacks there, they were hardly seen, heard or acknowledged.
Not far from Brampton, on Dixon Road, The Black Business and Professional Association held its premiere event, the Harry Jerome Scholarship Awards on the night of April 30, 2011. Stephen Harper had been in town that day, yet he didn’t stick around for this event, choosing instead to send his mignon, Jason Kenny, whose remarks was less than audible in a room where a cacophony of voices signaled disinterest in what he was saying.
After the severe trouncing the Harper Tories delivered on election night more so to the Liberal Party of Canada than the New Democratic Party, on TV, Kenny was quick to admit what helped his Conservatives was that they took the time to acknowledge ethnic Canadians beyond the usual handshake and quick in and out visits. In this instance it is possible that his understanding of “ethnic” had little to do with black people in Canada. This speaks badly for the liberals in particular who didn’t build on their past relationship with black voters, but so too, for Toronto’s black community that for many years starting with Pierre Elliott Trudeau was frequently and seriously courted by politicians of the day.
Blacks in Canada should be concerned for as the late Marjorie Lewsey, a onetime keen observer of East York municipal politics said: “Politics is the bread and butter of people’s existence.” That others now fare better in the world of you do for me; I do for you politics is a measure of how far black communities have fallen in the eyes of Canadian political elites. But too signals a disinterest in the political system among black people in Canada.
In discussing the absence of serious black candidates in the recent federal election, and given the existence of “dynamic, young [black] professionals,” Auguste opined that, “[s]ome of them maybe afraid to step up because of our tendency to quickly and unashamedly pull each other down.” It is a sad but true commentary not just on the political side but in terms of the negative sociology affecting black affairs in general.
Five decades ago, Dominion Census Bureau figures indicated Blacks in Canada numbered in the low tens of thousands. Today with Blacks and African peoples from many areas of the Diaspora and the continent of Africa when census figures are adjusted and consolidated, the total population size is nearing one million persons. This is not to suggest they do not have differing concerns, likes and dislikes. For among black people like in other groups homogeneity is more of a myth than a reality. Yet to have absolutely no impact on Canada’s political landscape is not only wasteful, but dangerously neglectful.
Blacks, the misperception goes, have only been associated with the liberal or NDP parties. However, it was not by accident that the Nova Scotia born Don Oliver was appointed to the Canadian Senate on the recommendation of then Prime Minster Brian Mulroney in 1990. He followed Ann Cools who entered Canada’s upper house in 1984 on the recommendation of Prime Minster Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Other Blacks were appointed later on. But it’s to Oliver’s appointment by a conservative prime minister that has historic meaning. Since the 1800s the Oliver family in Nova Scotia was associated with Canadian politics.
Many members of that family had Tory, later on conservative political leanings. In fact, throughout Canada’s history, it has usually been right of center politicians who created a more inviting environment for blacks to find refuge and some semblance of welcome. The myth states that it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau who invited postwar black immigrants to Canada. This ignores all the work John Diefenbaker did in the 1950s when the doors were held ajar so women from the Caribbean could venture in as domestics. What began as a trickle set the stage for larger scale black immigration later on.
Additionally, Black community support for the provincial conservatives in Ontario is well known. In the early 1950s Allan Grossman of the Spadina and College Streets area Tavern with the same last name enjoyed the support of his local constituents. Some of them were black and they supported him when he ran as a Toronto Alderman and later as a candidate for the Ontario provincial legislature. In the mid to late 1950s Prime Minister John Diefenbaker as he travelled across Canada in his railway car was attended to by black sleeping car porters who struck up a relationship with him. No wonder a few of them later thought it was their influence too that caused Diefenbaker by 1960 to have the Canadian Bill of Rights enacted.
All of what is said in this blog shows that black people in Canada have always understood why it is important to vote. Voting for them has been tied to their own special issues, but so too to their personal citizenship responsibilities. As is the case with Don Oliver and others, black politicians have served their country admirably and often they are overseas ambassadors when Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs needs to showoff the speck of black in the Maple Leaf.
That there continues to be a decline in black voter participation especially now when so many sociological problems are plaguing Blacks in Canada does not augur for them. The hope is that in response to the publisher of Share Arnold Auguste’s reflection about wondering if they are willing to “just sit on the sidelines for the next four or five years,” and with the recent election outcome that brought into play a set of political constructs and reelected a prime minister who doesn’t favour black people anyway, that, through their own community and citizenship efforts, they will answer with a resounding: NO!.
Yet corrective action needs to be based on sound research. Now is a good time for the political scientists to begin moving the process along so the perceived trend towards decline in black voter participation can be more clearly identified, measured and accounted for. It is only then solutions could be offered up that will allow for a turn around.
Voter neglect represents one of many problems facing black Canada, which to begin with is diversified and hard to understand when using the old definition based only on racial factors. We are no where near a post-racial world in Canada. Yet, the issue of identity for many black Canadians at least in their own minds has less to do with skin colour and culture and more to do with significant and pressing socioeconomic and educational concerns. So too is the fact that there continues to be a brain drain where younger Blacks are leaving the country not just for the US but other international destinations. It is not uncommon to hear of them heading to China or Indonesia and elsewhere. In many ways this is a measure of how well they’ve done in Canada. But this success needs to be placed in context. For without the toil, struggle, and sweat of Harry Gairey, Kay Livingstone, Bill White, Marjorie Lewsey, Bev Salmon, Al Mercury, Leonard Braithwaite, Don Oliver, Bev Folkes, Stephnie Payne and countless others such successes may have been much harder to achieve.
The crux of the matter seems now as back in the day to be one of leadership and of how those Blacks, who continue to speak in terms of community (which is in fact a misnomer, since there have always been a number of distinctive black Canadian and immigrant based communities), will meet the challenges they face. Owning up to these responsibilities means not casting heads askance to just glare at the successes and validation other groups now enjoy. We must do the heavy lifting like the old-timers who are no longer around or are just tired of pushing the same rock uphill for it to roll to the bottom again. We’ve stood on their shoulders and many of us have not even said “thank you.”
Instead, we should be willing to carry our own weight, no matter how burdensome the task is. This includes going into the voting booth, picking up the pencil and deliberately marking our choices for elected office. Otherwise like in so many cases, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
© Sheldon Taylor May 2011
