Representing Race in the Public Sphere – Contrasting the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with research presented via
Edmonton Public Library Theatre
Jennifer Kelly, University of Alberta
Bruce Spencer, Athabasca University
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which “race” or ethnicity has been,
and can be, represented in Canada and to make a number of other observations that
challenge the “Central/Eastern” representation of the formation of “two-nations” Canada.
Therefore this is not just a critique of how the CBC ignored ethnicity in a major piece of
“public pedagogy” but a lament for a missed opportunity to present the multi-ethnic,
multicultural origins of Canadian experience – a missed opportunity which is sadly
repeated almost daily. Finally, we will discuss how community engagement as “public
pedagogy” can be a major component of university research.
The paper discusses the failure of the CBC to use a black actor to portray Sir James
Douglas (known as a “Scotch-West Indian”) and sets this failure within the history of
racialization in Canada. The paper also discusses “race” theory, identity, and culture
together with the social, civil and educational intersections that can be explored through
research and public representation – all of which can help illuminate issues of hybridity
and complexity when considering community and nation-building.
The latter section of the paper explores how educators can engage community in
developing a play about their experience in coming to Canada, forming a community, and
becoming Canadians of Caribbean descent (African Canadians). It also records the
success of the 3 performances of the play before a total audience of 400 – a local example
of an alternative public pedagogy portraying race and representation.
Introduction
In Canada, as in many white settler societies (Razack, 2002), public education such as
that undertaken in the CBC series (discussed below) has traditionally been concerned
with transmitting ideas and symbols integral to nation-building. Such forms of public
pedagogy becomes a principal vehicle for “one of the most significant discourses through
which white privilege and difference are normalized” (Schick & St Denis, 2005). Whiteskin subjectivity is an identifying characteristic in Canadian national identity: so nonwhite bodies are always at odds with the constructed white subject. As well, racism is
able to operate through the belief that one’s country is humane, benevolent, hospitable
and modern—all qualities that can be held up as proof against the possibility of
intolerance, exclusion, and discrimination. Public pedagogy has the potential to highlight
where these tensions and contradiction exist. As Giroux argues,
The time has come for educators to develop more systemic political projects in
which power, history, and social movements can play an active role in
constructing the multiple and shifting political relations and cultural practices
necessary for connecting the construction of diverse political constituencies to the
revitalization of democratic public life. (2003:12).
As part of looking at public issues we, as educators, have to respond to questions and
issues raised by public life and the ways in which inequities are reproduced within the
material contexts of our life-world. Issues of power surrounding erasure of those
constituted in national discourses as “other than white” or those whose immigration
experiences and contributions to building Canada are regarded as not worthy of
memorializing because they are not white males. How do we work as adult educators
within such a public sphere to develop a counter narrative based on pedagogical
engagement? It's a position akin to C. W. Wright Mill’s reference to the “sociological
imagination” or as Giroux puts it, “how to translate private troubles into public actions,
arouse public interest in pressing social problems, and use collective means to
democratize more fully the commanding institutional economic, cultural, and social
structures” (2003:12). In this paper we highlight two examples of what can be identified
as public pedagogy in that they are dealing with how the nation, Canada, has been
constituted and memorialized. The first example relates to the TV series (and videos)
Canada: A People's History (2001) and its portrayal of Sir James Douglas first governor
of British Columbia (BC). The second relates to the constitution of African Canadian
immigrants as always taking from Canadian society rather than contributing their skills to
its development.
Background (Bruce)
First, although the official “Canadian story” likes to promote a view of tolerant
Canadians welcoming runaway slaves with open arms at the end of the Underground
Railway a truer representation would be far more complex. Blacks were discriminated
against in a number of Provinces – for example, the treatment of Africville in Nova
Scotia; the legislation segregating Blacks into their own schools in Ontario; and
discriminatory immigration practices that preferred immigrants from northern Europe
over others including African-American families fleeing discrimination.
Not many in Canada will know about the Black pioneer families who came to the
Canadian prairies in order to escape the extension of Jim Crow laws in the USA in the
early 1900s, or about the racist immigration practices that prevented other Black families
from joining the migration north and entering Canada (see Kelly & Wossen-Taffesse,
2012, for a discussion of the stereotypical treatment of race and gender in Maclean’s at
that time). Canada paints itself as a kinder, gentler society than the US with a more
harmonious race history but Canadians have struggled to talk about past racialization or
even acknowledge key events in Canada’s racialized past. (For example, Mission and
Industrial Schools for First Nations; the war internment and confiscation of property of
Ukrainians (1914-1920), Japanese (WWII); Chinese head-tax and immigration
restrictions; treatment of East Indians (the Komagata Maru carried 340 Sikhs, 24
Muslims, and 12 Hindus and was refused permission to dock and off-load in Vancouver
in 1914); and discrimination in the armed forces – the Black construction Brigade in
WWI or the treatment of First nations/Métis fighters.)
The CBC Canada: A People's History could be seen as within the tradition of public
adult education – following in the examples of the Farm Forum radio, National Film
Board, the traveling film shows of early University Extension (see Welton, 2013, chapter
4, for more details). We think the program producers thought of themselves in this light
by the way they promoted the history series as unifying Canadians through knowledge of
a common history, a history that included examples of how “ordinary” Canadians lived.
However when the English language episode on British Columbia was aired it was clear
the research on, and representation of, the multicultural history of BC was poor. After
watching the episode we fired off an email to the producers pointing out that the “African
Rifles” (Victoria Volunteer Rifle Corps) formed to help with law enforcement in Victoria
in the early 1860s was not populated by “runaway slaves” as claimed by the CBC but by
free African-Americans who had moved North at the invitation of the Governor of
Vancouver Island, James Douglas, to escape “Jim Crow” laws coming into California.
The producers acknowledged their error and changed the commentary in time for the
French version to air and then changed the tapes of the already aired English language
version.
But when we also pointed out that the mother of the “Father of British Columbia,” Sir
James Douglas, was Black they refused to re-shoot the clip of Douglas using a Black
actor. The producers of the program claimed the photographs show him as light-skinned
but research using Canadian sources would have revealed he was known as the “ScotchWest Indian” (Ormsby, 1972) when he was in the fur trade, and many in what was to
become BC knew him as of mixed heritage – and so the CBC missed a chance to show a
part of Canada historically as “multicultural” (not only was Douglas of mixed heritage
but his wife, Amelia, was Cree-Métis). It’s disappointing enough to find the scriptwriters
and producers for the award winning series reverted to the Central Canada narrative of
African-Canadians as “runaway slaves” or their descendants, but to argue:
After careful consideration, we decided not to change the actor for the re-run of
Episode 6.
Our producers were aware that Douglas was of mixed race as you pointed out, but
the photograph of him which we used in the program, and which was used to cast
the character, was an original photo from the Hudson Bay Archives. They still
have its negative and assure us it has not been "touched up". Similar photos of
Douglas exist in other archives.
Kelly Crichton, Senior Producer, "Canada: A People's History"
(Email response to author, Oct 1, 2001).
…is of course pathetic. They claim they knew, but did nothing with that knowledge. In
addition it should also be acknowledged that length of exposure time was all that was
needed to make the light-skinned Douglas pass as “white” – no “touch up” required.
This is not our only complaint about the part of Canada; A People’s History on BC – we
think they underplayed the significance of James Douglas’ leadership in securing BC
against US interests, and his defense of citizenship rights for all ethnicities in the newly
founded settlement of Victoria. Some of the resources the CBC used relied on US
archives which fail to represent a rounded picture of Douglas’ relations with First Nations
in BC and even misrepresented his policy of negotiation, compromise and assimilation of
First Nations and minority groups that marked his years as Governor – in the face of
some hostility from British and American settlers’ racialized attitudes. For example the
“African Rifles” brigade that he established to help keep the peace in Victoria was
actively opposed by these racist settlers.
It could be argued that without the “multicultural” citizenry of BC (First Nations, Métis,
French, Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, etc.) including the hundreds of
Black families that emigrated to BC from racist California on the invitation of James
Douglas the new colony would have been overrun by American gold miners. The astute
policies of Douglas and colleagues combined with his acceptance of different ethnicities
and identities (which may be criticized by today’s standards but was in fact exceptional in
his time) secured Canada’s Western coastline from the USA. Margaret Ormsby in the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1972) sums him up as:
A practical man, but yet a visionary, Sir James Douglas was also humanitarian.
He treated individuals, including Negro slaves [and free Blacks] and Indians, with
a respect that few of his contemporaries showed. The majesty of his bearing
aroused criticism, but that same bearing made him the symbol, in the motley
crowd attracted to the two British seaboard colonies, of the fact that the British
presence was firmly established on the northwest coast.
On reflection we think that Canada: A People’s History was too focused on the central
Canadian story, the conflict and accommodations between Anglo and Franco Canadians,
to see what happened in BC was as equally if not more important to the geography and
social composition of modern Canada as the 1812 war. And it was a story with a Black
man (a Scots-West Indian) and his wife, Amelia (Cree-Métis) as the key figures
supported by a multi-ethnic citizenry and yet the CBC knowingly chose to represent Sir
James Douglas with a white actor and downplay BC’s multicultural past. In our view this
section of a Peoples History is a failed example of public pedagogy in a multi-ethnic
Canada.
Questions Arising (Jennifer)
So what pedagogical moments would emerge if CBC had portrayed Sir James Douglas as
dark skinned?
What conversations might such a portrayal allow to occur in a public space that
presently is impossible?
What might it mean to view Sir James’ identity as Diasporic?
For example, if we were to examine Douglas’ identity as diasporic we may well be able
to take up issues of hybridity. Exploring a public pedagogy that highlights the diasporic
is a starting point towards understanding a collectivity that spans geographic boundaries
and makes it possible to place black identity in relation to other national and ethnic
identities. Douglas’ identity is transnational and offers a way to imagine a more complex
“ecologically sophisticated and organic concept of identity than offered by the
contending options of genealogy” (Gilroy, 1997: 339). Drawing on an understanding of
pedagogy as a process through which to analyze and understand the world (Freire, 1970),
we are able to re-think this example of Sir James Douglas in a way that offers
possibilities for working with adult communities to generate knowledge of and about
African Canadians as well as other racialized communities.
The idea of thinking through public pedagogy carefully offers the opportunity to
reinterpret the relationship not just between identity and location, but also between
nationality and geographic origin. It allows for a shift in “attention from notions of
geographically-bound contexts that develop in chronological sequences to notions of
regions bound by a discursive ‘field’” (Gillespie, 1995). What were the implications of
Douglas being born in Demerara (in present-day Guyana)? Further, such an
understanding of public pedagogy allows us to analyse the political and the social aspects
of identity and to see how representation of sameness and difference become part of
meaning making and everyday culture. So how did Douglas’ experiences of being
identified as a “mullato” affect his interaction with others whose identities were not
perceived as “pure” or white, for example with other early settler groups in Victoria such
as First Nations, African Americans and Chinese. Conceptually, this use of Douglas’
experiences as a form of pedagogy helps us understand the intersections of ethnicity,
class, religion, and gender in identity formation in mid-19th century BC. So it can be
argued that public pedagogy offers the opportunity to re-theorize and articulate ideas of
nation, nationalism, and pluralism within the field of community education.
Thus we are encouraged to ask: In a pluralistic and historically multicultural society such
as Canada, how can we develop within our community organizations a complex and
heterogeneous understanding of cultural and racialized identity formation that we can renarrate a sense of social belonging (although not always easy or straightforward) among
those traditionally marginalized as other than white? Such a retelling of Canadian history
would also highlight an obvious present-day tension between the universalistic
Enlightenment concept of the nation as a voluntary association or contractual entity and a
more particularistic German Romantic notion of a “predetermined community bound by
blood and heredity” (Malik, 1996: 131) – a community destined to be white.
A public pedagogy offers a way to work with hybridity and complexity when discussing
life in 19th century Victoria. We would argue that public pedagogy could foreground
issues around “identity” and “mobility” in a more overt and coherent way than the
official narrative as essentially presented by the CBC program on BC. It could have
allowed for an understanding of how history, politics, and culture inform the availability
and/or construction of identities and, furthermore, how movement across geographic
areas (re)translates and blurs these same selves (for an interesting and informed
discussion of some of these issues see Perry, 2010; and for a different approach Brigham,
2013.)
West Indian Diary
Public pedagogy offers the possibility to recognize complexities in national stories and to
take up issues of not just race but also issues of gender. Public pedagogy recognizes that
communities are spaces of learning, sites where knowledge and informal learning is
produced, exchanged, and transferred, places where adults meet and learn from each
other. One such example of public pedagogy is a play that I co-produced based on my
research using interviews, archival materials and focus groups.
This second example of public pedagogy discusses how educators can engage folks in
developing a play about their experience in coming to Canada, forming a community, and
becoming Canadians of Caribbean descent (African Canadians). It also records the
success of the 3 performances of the play before a total audience of 400 at Edmonton
Public Library Theatre. With the relaxation and opening up of the immigration laws in
1962 and again in 1967, the Alberta Black population was increased with immigrants
from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and Barbados. This group
of immigrants was diverse in terms of geographic origins and occupational skills, many
being technicians, tradesman of all kinds, clerical workers, and professional teachers
(who were able to emigrate from the Caribbean directly into jobs as teachers, usually in
rural areas or First Nations reserves).
The process of public pedagogy began with a traditional research project and design
mapping out the experiences of Caribbean immigrants to Canada in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
As the interviews and other research data were being processed it became clear that
developing a play-script would be a useful addition to the overall research project. With
the help of some additional funding from a community grant a playwright, Pat Darbasie,
whose heritage is in the Caribbean, was engaged to develop a script. This led to the
exploration of a number of questions. How might African Canadian adult learners
become engaged in an educative process about community through arts-informed
practices of public pedagogy? How do these differing periods of African Canadian
immigration contribute towards a sense of a unified community? A main focus was to
establish participant accounts of the experiences of becoming an immigrant in Alberta
and Canada and to give prominence to their “voices” to provide both data and direction
for the investigation.
Following one-on-one semi-structured interviews some of the participants were reengaged in a number of focus groups in order to give direction as to how the interview
data might be used in a play format. This process consisted of the playwright and myself
working for several sessions with a group of senior men and women whom emigrated
from the Caribbean. The play-script West Indian Diary was the outcome of the various
focus group meetings and highlighted the experiences of five main characters that
provided space for discussions to take place around their immigrant experiences. Once a
draft of the script had been written there was further feedback from the community and a
reading of the draft play with community members reading the parts of the main
characters (for a fuller discussion of the play-script development see Kelly, 2010.)
Some of the main themes to emerge from the play-scripting process included isolation,
marginalization, and the importance of community and community contacts in
overcoming these factors. Many of these early immigrants recalled being faced with
isolation in rural communities because of employment opportunities or having to develop
their store of cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1984) in order to access professional
jobs. Even in towns and cities new immigrants experienced marginalization in relation to
housing, work and social situations; all of which aided community development.
Participant: But you know like in those days…you take for instance you go and
you see somebody put up a notice ‘room for rent’ and you’re the black person go
there. The moment they go they tell you say they forget to take down the sign
you have a friend that’s white go the next day [the sign] is still there.
Of note, discussions of gender were surfaced through the development of the early playscript and provided an avenue into discussions reflective of what Stuart Hall (1996: 474)
might identify as the end of the innocent Black. As Hall argues, “what is at issue here is
the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of subjective positions, social experiences
and cultural identities which compose the category ‘black’; that is, the recognition that
‘black’ is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category” (1996: 443). In
other words, that Black representations do not run along a single narrative of good versus
bad; that complexities abound. Thus some participants in the development of the playscript suggested that not all representations should be open to public presentation in that
some of these discussions might not reflect well on the community. Others highlighted
gender within the early script and suggested that the play should represent the negative
aspects of gender relations between men and women. The tension that emerged raised
issues of authenticity and ownership. Who gets the right to represent the African
Canadian community and should those representations always be positive. In response
the group discussed who the audience for the finished play might be since for some of
those present issues of context are vital in terms of interpretation and meaning. It was
feared a play staged for the wider Edmonton community offered a different social context
from one in which the African Canadian community was reflecting on itself.
The play itself was performed at the Edmonton Public Library Theatre; the entrance foyer
was decorated with display boards containing material from the broader research project
depicting Black experience in Alberta from 1900. After the play the same space was used
for snacks and lively discussions of the play and performance (as well as the depicted
research material) with researchers, playwright, performers and leading community
members interacting with the members of the audience.
What makes these forms of contested knowledge socially and intellectually significant is
that while written accounts of family or community histories (Carter, 1988; Hooks, 1998;
Foggo, 1990) presently exist, the knowledge that this project mobilized was analytic
rather than just descriptive and draws on sociological and critical cultural studies
perspectives. So I was able to gain a sense of how these differing communities
converged at times over specific issues (such as racism) while at other times issues of
geographic origins took precedence. Returning the research findings to the research
participants, family, friends and fellow community members through these acts of public
pedagogy (the focus groups script-writing as well as the play performance, display boards
and the foyer discussions) was enormously successful and educational. These acts of
public pedagogy were able to contest the traditional simplistic understanding of
immigration experiences and to allow a broader public to access the counter narrative.
Conclusions
One of the reasons that we all find it difficult to engage in public talk about race,
racialization and history is because we are totally immersed in a discourse of liberal
multiculturalism. As part of this broader discourse it is often considered impolite to
highlight issues related to race and its effects on the lives of folks, young and old. There
is a strong push to be colour-blind, to see colour-blindness as a virtue. As an educator in
one of my early research projects said to me, “I don’t notice the colour of my students”
which is a noble effort to try to be inclusive but in such attempts at being inclusive that
teacher might well not be able to recognize and support a student who is experiencing
racism. Colour-blind racism is insidious since, as Bonilla-Silva suggests, it ignores “the
effects of past and contemporary discrimination on the social, economic, and educational
status of minorities” by “supporting equal opportunity for everyone without a concern for
the savage inequalities between blacks and whites” (2010: 31).
Adopting forms of analysis associated with public pedagogy we would be able to talk
more openly about the complexities of race and provide a space for public engagement
that could help re-script the traditional story of immigration and Canadian nationhood –
an opportunity which in our opinion was missed by the CBC’s portrayal of Sir James
Douglas by a white actor along with the downplaying of the multi-ethnic composition of,
and ethnic/racial tensions in, Vancouver Island and British Columbia.
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