Kitossa Brock University

Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 255-284 Black Canadian Studies and the Resurgence of the Insurgent African Canadian Intelligentsia1 Tamari Kitossa Brock University Dr. Tamari Kitossa, Department of Sociology, Brock University [email protected] Abstract: This essay seeks to account for the appellaon, factors and forces implicated in the nascent ar?culaon of Black Canadian Studies. I suggest that the emergence of Black Canadian Studies is a dialogic interplay of the African Canadian intelligentsia and community’s proac?on toward appreciang the agency of African Canadians, and, a reac?on to racist epistemology and research that objec?ﬁes them. I seek to account for this dialogue as a progression of the earlier development of African and Caribbean Studies by the African Canadian intellectuals. I speculate on what the ﬁeld of Black Canadian Studies might look like, challenges it may encounter and propose steps for how its development might proceed. In doing so, I draw lessons primarily from African American Studies, but also Women’s Studies. Introduc;on be included) by this insurgent appellation and also as a bona fide As a practical matter, the study of emerging area of study. Toward a Black Canada is an established fact, but sociological analysis of the forces at it is not a contradiction to say it is not play, for further consideration are the yet an officially designated area of study. following: What is in a name – Black This could easily be an essay on the Canadian Studies – and what are its sociology of knowledge, on how characteristics – Pan-Africanism, disciplines or fields of study come to be Africentrism, Diasporic Studies? constituted and legitimated in the Compared to the 40-year time-line for academy by processes of political action. African American Studies, why has this That Durkheim for example was able to area of study not had an appellation until institutionalize sociology is no less an now, even if the content of its character act of politics than say African are yet to be worked out? Finally, who Americans or feminists who achieved a and under what conditions have similar end, but still with less legitimacy constituted this appellation and now seek from the dominant order. Some of this to elaborate the emergent fields’ will be addressed insofar as my aim is to contents? account for the emergence of Black Canadian Studies as a description for the This essay is a descriptive and work of African Canadian and other speculative social history of the people scholars (some of whom may not wish to and social forces implicated in the 255 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 255-284 insurgent field of Black Canadian Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Studies – the African Canadian Canadian Studies and the proposed intelligentsia, broadly speaking, and the Michaelle Jean9 Chair of Black community of African Canadians. I Canadian, Caribbean and African suggest this move can be explained by: Diasporic Studies at the University of an insurgent and self-conscious African Alberta will likely move in this Canadian intelligentsia; a small “p” pan- direction. Though a research institute, Africanism2 that is the historical the Harriet Tubman Institute at York consequence of the dynamics of University adds weight to the drive for dispersion (forced and voluntary) and re- Black Canadian Studies. In view of engagement with the African continent Althea Prince’s (2001, 56) concern about (Adeyanju and Oriola, 2011), anti- other such initiatives at York University, African racism and a pursuit of it is not clear what role African Canadian elaborating Black people’s place in the academics played in the naming and Canadian narrative; and, the fact that founding of the Institute, its relationship African Canadian communities are to the African Canadian intelligentsia in increasingly aware of the political general and community overall and implications of knowledge and research. orientation to an African centered, Pan- This move derives also from the tireless African worldview and diasporic work of Black Heritage societies across worldview. Canada, local historians, family genealogists and stalwarts such as Since description and speculation Wilma Morrison3, Rosemary Brown4, contain normative assumptions, I aim to The Hon. Jean Augustine5 and Senators make the latter explicit throughout the Anne Coles6 and Donald Oliver7, among essay by reference to small “p” and large others, who have ensured government “P” pan-Africanism, Africentrism and and school board recognition of Black diasporic Studies. The emergence of contributions to Canadian society. Black Canadian Studies is a dialogic interplay of the African Canadian At this point, one may find intelligentsia and community’s proaction across Canada individual courses on the toward appreciating the agency of African Canadian experience and a African Canadians, and, a reaction to similar concern in sections of courses racist epistemology and research that devoted to anti-racism, Canadian history, objectifies them. As such, the field in its post-colonialism, urban education and of nascent constitution is not an anemic course, problematically, criminology. imitation of African American Studies. It One may find also in African Studies is also a development arising from the and Caribbean and Latin American earlier establishment of African and Studies courses and dissertations on Caribbean Studies programs in the 70’ various African descended communities and 80’s founded in Toronto and in Canada.8 But as yet, there are no elsewhere, by the likes of Drs. Fred concentrations or degrees in African Case, Rudy Grant, Althea Prince, Percy Canadian Studies. The Dalhousie James Anderson, Ato Sekyi-Otu, Winston 256 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 255-284 Husbands and Paul Idahosa (see Prince 20th century undertook the task of 2001, 55-56). While African American knowledge production as key to the Studies and to a lesser degree Feminist/ political and socio-economic life of Women’s Studies offer vital lessons for African Americans (Drake 1993). Thus, issues to be considered in developing whatever the merit of Houston Baker African Canadian Studies, it is important Jr.’s contention that some African to consider that Black Canadian Studies, American intelligentsia have betrayed though informed by these inquiry, begins Dr. King’s vision, he writes his from a very different position. That said, excoriation precisely because there is African American Studies offers a sound such a class of persons (2008). Benjamin body of referential ideology and theory (2010), Jackson and Greggory (2010) as well as a socio-historical counter- and Rockquemore and Laszloffy (2008) point to explain why Black Canadian have also written about the African Studies emerges some 40 years after American intelligentsia and academic such a move in the United States. elite, but with attention to its experiences Extending the normative assumptions and resiliency in the academy. So much about Black Canadian Studies, I draw on do African Americans constitute an lessons from African American Studies intelligentsia, research into their and Women’s Studies to develop four numbers and training constitutes a points for consideration toward subfield in higher education research concretizing Black Canadian Studies in (Anderson 1988; Edwards, Bennett, Canadian universities more fully. White and Pezzella 1988; Spalter-Roth and Erskine 2007). Different from Baker’s concern with ‘betrayal,’ the problem in Canada is not a question of The African Canadian collusion with capitalism and white Intelligentsia? supremacy but rather the production of In spite of the implied elitism, Du Bois’s an essentialist Black political philosophy call for the “Talented Tenth” to assert that too narrowly construes the itself willed into being what was without complexity of Black ontology. Aside form. That call, and answer, gave birth to from the fact that George Elliott Clarke the African American intelligentsia as a is sympathetic to the necessity for a collective conscious of their shared normative Black political philosophy existence, aspirations and objectives. Of given the context of white supremacy in course what we would call public Canada, what is striking about his work intellectuals abounded: Ouladah is that in producing one of the first Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. thoroughgoing critiques of the African Wells, Booker T. Washington, Phyllis Canadian intelligentsia he has called Wheatley, Edmonia Lewis and Martin attention to a self-consciously aware Delaney are but a few examples. The African Canadian intelligentsia.. core point is that a self-consciously aware intelligentsia that emerged with If George Elliott Clarke’s critique the race man and woman of the early of the African Canadian intelligentsia is 257 Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1-2 (December 2012), 255-284 a sound point of departure in recognizing make the foregoing points to suggest the existence of an African Canadian there have been African Canadian public intelligentsia, we are now afforded the intellectuals in all stages of African opportunity to imagine the social history descended people’s migration and of Black intellectual life and culture in settlement in Canada. Canada. This is not to say that there have not been socially responsible African Yet, there appears to be a Canadian intellectuals in times past. decisive emergence of an African Indeed, from

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