Cornwall ON – February is Black History Month in Canada and it is an opportunity for Canadians to understand the role the Black community has played in our history and to recognize the significant contributions Blacks have made to the life of Canada in education, medicine, art, culture, public service, economic development, politics, and human rights.
Now until mid-day Monday, February 14 the library is hosting a bilingual picture exhibit that tells the stories of successive migrations to Canada by enslaved African Americans.
Bringing the exhibit to the library was a collaborative effort with “le Centre culturel de Cornwall”. The Centre is located in the former St. Croix elementary school on Anthony street in Cornwall and will host the exhibit beginning Tuesday of next week
I’m going to visit the exhibit, and would encourage others to do so. It’s another opportunity to learn and inform ourselves about things outside of our own experience.
That being said however, I question exactly how genuine is naming a month or dedicating a month to a specific group? What about Chinese History Month, Metis History Month, Women’s History Month… isn’t it a bit silly …almost as vulgar as a Yellow Month or Red Month.
All of the aforementioned groups have contributed and, if examined critically, have often detracted from this nation. But generally in these exercises, it is only selective memory that is used when celebrating only selected events, and the most positive atributes of “identified groups”.
Peel away the hype and promotion and you’re likely to find the motivation is not a celebration of people or culture, but instead, it is meant to benefit self-serving politicians; politicians so thick and out of touch that they don’t consider it might be paternalistic and an insult to people that have thrown aside past indignities, and don’t need to be coddled and praised. Or it may be something that a people already labled are not interested in.
And think about a White month… would whites want to be lumped in with others that put bounties on natives and hunted them, or whites that stole land, or whites that worked Chinese to death, or whites that created hysteria against “yellow” Canadians, interned them and stole their personal property?
Many people are satisfied with personal and family achievment, and confident and content to go about their business, free of special attention.