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Earlier this week I went to see UK Trip-Hop artist Tricky at a downtown Toronto nightclub. The opening act was a local trio fronted by a young South Asian woman. Despite remarking to my best friend that I would have probably enjoyed the music 15 years ago when I could (barely) tolerate the 'Lillith Fair Vagina Vagina' type of stuff, this singer was interesting and her topics were very timely.
After finishing a song she suddenly addressed the audience. "Who here was born in Canada?" the crowd of predominately young white Hipsters proudly raised their hands.
"Okay," she paused, sounding a bit disappointed. "Who here was born somewhere else?" A small handful of beige and brown hands tenatively appeared.
She then railed on about how people always asked her where she was born and when she named the suburb just north of the city, they never beleived her. She was annoyed, she said that people always assumed that she was an immigrant. While I didn't particulary enjoy her lyrics- or her music, for that matter - I shared her sentiments.
People always assume I am an immigrant from Jamaica - even though I have no accent and no (biological) black members in my family. Sure, my blood is certainly from the beautiful, hot island, but I was born in the T-dot and have lived in Canada my entire, miserable life. Oh, and I must have at least five kids and no husband / partner in the picture. And uneducated. Maybe it is because of my age, who knows, but that has always puzzled me.
As you might be aware, Canada is going to have a Federal election on October 14th. Historically, many new immigrants and Canadians of colour predominately vote for the Liberal party or the New Democratic Party (NDP). There are historical reasons for this, one of them being is that when Canada's immigration policy expanded rapidly in the late 60's-70's, our beloved Prime Minister (Liberal) Pierre Trudeau was in power and had a huge infuence in the insurgence of new immigrants entering Canada from the Carribbean. When he died in 2000, there were many older POC's I worked with who cried and actually travelled to Ottawa for the funeral. My friend's father who was from Antiqua said at the time that if it wasn't for Trudeau, he would have never been able to find a better life for his family.
As part of Stephen Harper's bid to keep his job as Prime Minister (and he is seriously pandering, as his approval rate is low and the Conservative Party is actually a minority government) he is now trying to woo the demographic that his party has been ignoring (or trying to lock up and deport) for decades. In the past few weeks, commercials showing his 'softer, gentler' side have been appearing on Canadian television stations, a side that his shockingly false and transparent. Why, you ask? From Jerry's Thoughts:
Harper is not known for his socially conscious policies. His dealings with AIDS is a good example. In 2006 Toronto hosted the World AIDS Conference. Harper was absent from the conference - spending his time 'protecting Canada's northern sovereignty' (I'm sure the polar bears, those that hadn't lost their environment fromt he GHG emissions listed above, appreciated his support.)
This disdain was only a part of it. There are other reasons why Harper's stance on AIDS bugged me. In particular, the Harper government has proven "extraordinarily embarrassing in its inability to manufacture the generic drugs for export to Africa," Stephen Lewis has claimed. Three years after making a commitment to export more drugs "not a single tablet has left this country."
Now, to be fair, political parties have always courted ethnocultural groups that they think would benefit from their traditional platform that focuses on taxes, governemnt exclusion and supporting private businesses. Most often it has been the East and South Asian communities, people who are willing to invest money into the country. Canadian conservatives, just like American Republicans have never really been into social justice issues - ya know, like trying to figure out why there are homeless and poor people on the street, the precarious situations that lowe-income women and disenfranchised youth and other visible minorities find themselves in, and oh yeah, the LGBT community and health and adddiction issues. To be fair too, both the NDP and the Liberal parties who are known for their social justice platforms, have dropped the ball in the past decade in investigating these problems.
What bothers me about Harper is that in the past few weeks his party has
