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POLICING THOSE "WE ALL LONG FOR": ON CANADIAN BL\CK MASCULINITIES By PHANUEL ANTWI, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master ofArts McMaster University © Copyright by Phanuel Antwi, September 2006 ii MASTER OF ARTS (2004) McMASTER UNIVERSITY (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Policing those "We All Long For": On Canadian Black Masculinities AUTHOR: Phanuel Antwi, B.A. (University of Guelph) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Daniel Coleman NUMBER OF PAGES: vii, 148 III Abstract This thesis, with its three chapters covering a range ofrepresentations ofpolice bmtality, social control and Black masculinities in Canada, interrogates texts from multiple genres. My introductory chapter will contextualize the study within the field of contemporary Black Canadian literary and social texts and provides background, by mapping out, understandings ofBlackness in Black Canada. My first chapter engages with national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, to name two, to examine how visual factors such as the juxtaposition ofheadlines, photo captions, and cutlines, the nature and quality of images, and the position of stories in the paper and on the page provide visual factors that shape media messages, which in tum shape the public understanding about Black men. Continuing my analysis of the "discursive reproduction of racism" (van Dijk 221), chapter two focuses on Dionne Brand's 2005 novel What We All Long For and Austin Clark's short story "Sometimes A Motherless Child" to address the dehumanizing abuses that encodes the Black male body during episodes of police brutality, and address the attitudes that develop about Black men in the imaginations and consciouness of many Canadians. Shifting from literal and popular texts to film, chapter three frames a reading ofCharles Officer's Short Hymn, Silent War to address the trickling effects of gun violence and Black masculinities on African-Canadian women. 1 introduce the term conjoined subjectivities to suggest that gun violence and Black masculinities do not only affects Black men but Black women as well, thereby highlight the collective damage ofthese violence on Black communities. With the work done here, it becomes clear to me that more work on Black masculinities needs to be done. IV Acknowledgments This project began a while ago, in a very different form. What has endured throughout the process is my strong desire to theorize Canadian Black masculinities. I must admit this is just the beginning. But even at this beginning stage, a series of conversations with friends and colleagues have helped me explore possible explanations for how mainstream society police Black men. Policing those 'We All Long For': On Canadian Black Masculinities could not have been finished without Daniel Coleman's continued support (in this and so many other ventures), his vision, and his generosity. Through it all he never stopped believing in the project, and his advice was sage, sane, and always reflected with his most endearing quality: a keen perspective about the academy and the work we do in and outside of it. My thanks to Don Goellnicht and Susan Searls-Giroux for their critical insights, for cajoling and, most importantly, challenging me to think assiduously about the relationships between American and Canadian Black masculinities. I would like to thank the office staff at the department who, throughout the summer, offered encouragement and timely advice, ranging from daily support when writing got tough to reminding me to eat when writing got good. My appreciation for the work you do for all of us. To the melanin squads in academia: thanks for paving ways which now allow me to pursue the work I do. I cannot thank Karen Espiritu enough for reading the entire manuscript and her gift oftime, criticism and encouragement. To my friends outside academia, thank you for your insightful interlocutors in our interactions. You have steeled and sustained me in the face ofacademia's white-taken-for-granted-privileges. Many thanks to Bella, for being the best friend anyone can ask for. On many occasions too numerous to account here, your friendship, love and support sustained as well as calmed me in the difficult hours of chapter writing. And finally, to my family: I remain indebted to you for your unwavering support and the joy you bring me in every exchange, this is dedicated to you, grandpa Lamptey and in memory of grandma Francesca Amina Ajah. With love. v Table of Contents Pteface 1 Introduction The Subject of Negotiations: Meditations on Canadian Black Male 4 Subjectivity Chapter I "Year of the Gun": Black Men Seem to Embody the Answers, 38 What Were the Questions? Chapter II Rough Play, Wounded Passions: Capturing Episodes ofPolice Arrest 70 in Austin Clarke's '~Sometimes a Motherless Child" and Dionne Brand's What We AllLong For Chapter III Their Forgotten Songs Resound: Screening Effects 105 ofGun Violence and Black Masculinities on Black Women in Charles Officer's Short Hymn, Silent War (2003) Conclusion A Staged Reflection: Phanuel Antwi Interviews Himself 134 Works Cited 141 VI Illustration Images of "Year of the Gun" victims Appendix 1 (149) vii M.A. Thesis - Phanuel Antwi McMaster (English) Preface A story of yours got this one going so l'm sending it back now, changed of course just as each person I love is a relocation, where I take up a different place in the world (Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars ofGrace) To this day, I still remember the moment I first stepped on stage decked in a white kente cloth borrowed from my uncle: I was curious to know whether I could elicit catcalls, thunderous applause or finger-snapping-cheers from the audience (as many before me had done) yet I was also anxious to "take up a different place in the world." The most I could hope for in that heated moment was to send my audience, as I hope to do in this thesis, the triggered stories Eli Bamfo's inspirational spoken words always beg of me. Here I invoke my epigraph and suggest that the stories from the texts I read got this project going. They triggered some of my own experiences, and these experiences have been included in this project to highlight the symbiotic relations between academic work and my everyday encounterings. Returning to my time on stage: for the first time, as I began to sling words, hoping to capture my audience's attention, I witnessed simple alphabets move bodies with a strange disturbing motion: one demanding that I "trust the body which, together with the mind, forms one intelligence" (Philip, "Who's" I). The mobility ofmy words disturbed the caged home of alphabets to release a floating narrative, a dialogue, so to speak. I can still feel the "auchs" emitted by my audience as my words ripped the fabric of their 1 M.A. Thesis - Phanuel Antwi McMaster (English) emotions; I can still see confused faces contemplating the angry political diatribes I spat in the room. In that heated moment I witnessed the growing movements of words dropping from my mouth into their ears. I realized then that the spoken word does not only ignite laughter, but it also educates as it entertains. I tell you this story-knowing it has changed by my telling you of it-to paint a moment that forced me to question the solitude of generic boundaries and play with multiple reading practices and writing forms. My body was charged but I could not understand what was happening until I accounted for my emotions-that there is a physicality to my mind and that this physicality has a relation to my body. [the body is not] Telling you this story is my attempt to explain the methodological approach of my thesis. Since the thesis geme is too restrictive for my project, in order to relocate and re­ discover, for myself, a different environment to talk about Canadian Black male subjectivity and masculinity, I have offered personal narratives, which sometimes take the form of poetry and at other times quoted conversations I've had with friends. The latter approach has been my attempt to create a community outside the political "we" of Canadian Black menlscholars/meaning-makers. I choose this problematic "we" to acknowledge my white readers' inability to easily understand the form of theorization on subjectivity I engage in this project, especially since critics in the position to theorize subjectivity are mostly white. In reworking this process, I align my thesis with a sort of "interfusional" work (244), a discursive term Thomas King uses to signal writings that blend elements of oral and written literatures. By adopting this writing strategy, I emphasize the oral character 2 M.A. Thesis - Phanuel Antwi McMaster (English) of the spoken words despite the confines of this written thesis, not only to welcome "an oral syntax that defeats readers' efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read the stories out loud" (King 244), but also to make "efforts to connect in a more intimate way," with readers, "in much like a prophetic [B]lack preacher soliciting critical response from an open-minded yet suspicious congregation" (West ix). In short, this project is my attempt to generate a framework ofreading Black male subjects which is "inclusive, sensitive, and understanding of [B ]lack history and culture" (hooks, Yearning 227). 3 M.A. Thesis - Phanuel Antwi McMaster (English) Introductlol1 The Subject of Negotiations: Meditations on Canadian Black Male Subjectivity I There is a well-entrenched notion in Western critical theory that Black (male) subjects are simply subjects for theorists to cast against a canvas of white screens: if we come into focus or appear on that canvas, it is as the colonized object of the White gaze-slave, emancipated slave, exotic, trivialized subject, or part of the backdrop representing time and place.

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