rfmcdonald | [URBAN NOTE] "This Is What Sets Toronto's Black Lives Matter Movement Apart from America's" (Reply)

Vice's Tamara Khandaker has a long-form article looking at the critical differences between the Black Lives Matters movement in Toronto and in the United States. Among other things, Canadian racism differs from the American sort, and the African Canadian community is generally speaking much younger and much more fragmented.

Canada's form of racism is harder to identify, according to Toronto chapter co-founder Rodney Diverlus, "because it's done with a smile on your face."

"It's under the surface and so covert that often, we brush it off as reality, but really it ends up taking the form of micro-aggressions and more subtle forms of oppression," said Diverlus, who emigrated from Haiti to the US, and eventually settled with his family in Canada.

[. . .]

Unlike its counterparts in the United States, BLM Toronto's focus isn't on black nationalism, members said.

"The black American identity has been shaped for over 300 years," said Diverlus. "It really is an identity that's rooted in nationalism, in being black American."

"We don't have a narrative that's encapsulated in 'African American,'" Khan agreed. "People don't identify as African-Canadian or black Canadian here. We're very deeply connected to our diasporic and African roots even if we're five generations [removed.]"

So when you ask a black person in Toronto where they're from, Khan said, they will tell you they're from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Trinidad, Nigeria, Haiti, Jamaica, and the list goes on.