Canadian-born and Black: the absurdity of identity
How it started
My parents left their home in Nigeria and landed in Canada just a few years before having me, making me, by definition, a second generation Canadian. Growing up as a Black second generation Canadian was super confusing. It was confusing because I was caught between two worlds — the world of my parents, and the world that existed outside of my house; Canada, and more specifically, whiteness. But I think a more significant portion of my confusion came from the fact that I was desperate for a sense of identity, and while others seemed to be able to so easily define who they were, representation of Canadian-born Black people was seemingly nowhere to be found. And so began my great search for identity.
First I tried to be as “Canadian” (read: white) as possible. This meant not learning Yoruba, forsaking Monday nights where my mom routinely cooked farina, and getting creepily into hockey (like memorizing the heights and weights of every member of the Calgary Flames creepy). All of these endeavours naturally made me feel less Black, but at the time, the benefits far outweighed the consequences. At times, I tried to lean into the Nigerian side of me, but my lack of embracing the culture when I was a kid coupled with the fact that I spent the majority of my life having never stepped foot in Nigeria, made me feel like a complete poser.
Growing up as a Black second gen Canadian, the only example I had of Black people who weren’t recent immigrants were Black Americans. So there I sat with two different ways to be Black. I could participate in the “Black Culture” (a.k.a. the portrayal of African American identity) that I saw on TV, the hallmarks of which were AAVE, hip hop, hilarity, and tragedy. Or I could be an immigrant. I tried to be both, and it didn’t work, because I wasn’t either.
My friend Sheridan (a Black second generation Canadian) and I often talk about our experiences growing up in Canada. Sheridan’s experience is quite different from mine, as she grew up in Edmonton among many other immigrant and second gen kids. However, themes of confusion and isolation are present in both of our stories.
“Your parents can’t help because they don’t know what you’re experiencing,” Sheridan told me. “And even though I was around a lot of other kids with my experience, we were kids, and we didn’t have the language to talk about what was happening…it makes for a lonely experience.”
Later on, when I asked Sheridan what it would have meant for her younger self to see Canadian-born Black folks represented (whether through media, literature, the education system, etc), she said “I would have avoided a few identity crises for sure.”
We’re not alone — second gens are going through it
Mine and Sheridan’s experiences are corroborated by a study that was conducted by sociologists Jeffrey Reitz and Rupa Banerjee. Shortly after its publication in 2007, this study inspired an article in The Globe and Mail called How Canadian Are You?¹ The study looked at how first and second generation Canadians were integrating into Canadian society, and if they felt a meaningful sense of belonging.
The study showed that immigrants who were a visible minority were slower to integrate than white immigrants. Duh. The study also showed that the children of visible minority immigrants experience a “more profound sense of exclusion” than their parents. In fact, while more white immigrants felt a sense of belonging from generation to generation, non-white immigrants, and more specifically Black immigrants, only got more disillutioned from generation to generation. At the risk of boring you, I’m gonna hit you with some stats.
White immigrants come to Canada and 48% of them report a “meaningful sense of belonging.” Among their Canadian-born kids, however, 57% report this sense of belonging. In summary, white people can expect a 9% increase in feelings of belonging generation over generation.
Now, non-Black visible minorities immigrate to Canada and 61% feel a sense of belonging. Among their kids, only 44% feel they belong. In summary, if you’re a non-Black visible minority, you can expect an 18% decrease in feelings of belonging generation over generation.
Now hang in there, this last one is really rich. Black immigrants come to Canada and note the highest meaningful sense of belonging at 67%. Among their children…37%. In summation, if you’re a Black immigrant, you can expect a decrease of 30% in feelings of belonging generation over generation.
All statistics can be found in this Globe and Mail article, written by Marina Jimenez.
These stats rang so true for me, cause while my parents were chillin’, missing home, but just happy to be here, I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. I just felt like a permanent foreigner. I felt like, as David Chariandy described so poetically, “the discomfortingly intimate stranger.” Let me give you a little more context, cause this is so deep and so true.
In his article titled The fiction of belonging: On second generation Black writing in Canada,² David Chariandy writes,
“…the old anxieties over Canada’s multicultural citizenry have found a new subject — not simply the visible minority immigrant, with her self-evidently foreign ways or customs, but that discomfortingly intimate stranger born here.”
I felt like white people knew what to make of my parents. They loved their accents, and loved it even more when they showed up in their aso oke outfits for fancy occasions. My parents were clearly foreign, but I was the discomfortingly intimate stranger born here. I talked like them, I acted like them, and when they asked “where are you from?” I was from where they were from. But I sure as hell didn’t look like them, so they didn’t know what to do with me.
In a western context, this felt like a uniquely Canadian problem. Because while Black American culture was on display (in problematic ways certainly, but on display nonetheless), I always wondered why Black Canadian culture and history had almost no visibility.
Representation matters (read: 👏🏿RE👏🏿PR👏🏿SEN👏🏿TA👏🏿TION👏🏿MAT👏🏿TERS)
I wasn’t the only one who wondered where the Black Canadian representation was. In fact, George Elliot Clarke asked this question in his 1996 essay titled Must all blackness be American?³
George Elliot Clarke, the previously cited David Chariandy, and André Alexis (don’t worry, I’ll get to him) are among countless Canadian authors who refuse to settle for the notion that the African American experience is the only lens through which diasporic Blackness can be imagined.
In his article, Clarke refers to an iconic quote from Canadian author André Alexis,
“…no one, black or white, has yet accepted the fact and history of our [African-Canadian] presence, as if we thought black people were an American phenomenon that has somehow crept north…”
Clarke echoes Alexis’ statement by saying that Canadians have “viewed blacks as misplaced Americans.”
African American stories, historic icons, and ways of being are often used to define the Black Canadian experience, suggesting, as Clarke puts it, that “no uniquely African-Canadian perspective exists.”
All this Americanization of Black culture led me to truly believe that Black people didn’t have any real roots in Canada. When I thought about Black people in Canada, I thought about the 1967 immigration act which eventually brought families like mine to this country. I thought that Black second generation Canadians were rare(ish), third gens were rare, and that fourth gens and beyond didn’t even exist. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Black history in Canada
While many people know that Halifax and Toronto have deep Black roots (due to slavery in the 17th and 18th century and the American Revolution, where Black Loyalists were promised freedom for joining the British lines), what I didn’t know for the longest time was that the prairies have an incredibly rich Black history as well. In fact, today, the prairies are the second most densely populated Black region in Canada, and Alberta alone has a Black population five times that of Nova Scotia. That little tidbit was revealed to me while reading The Black Prairie Archives,⁴ and while that was surprising, the biggest kicker in that book was finding out that a Black seventh generation Canadian exists; in the prairies no less. Her name is Addena Sumter-Freitag. She writes about being Black and Canadian-born, and her stories make me feel so happy and so seen. You can read her work and the work of so many other Black Canadian authors in The Black Prairie Archives edited by Karina Vernon.
So why was this the first time I was reading these stories? Why was I over the age of 20 the first time I heard about Amber Valley (Alberta’s largest Black community until the 1930s). Was it because communities like this were built from ‘displaced Americans,’ so they didn’t seem ‘uniquely Canadian?’ I don’t know. But what I do know is that these stories matter. They are a major part of creating a sense of place, belonging, and identity.
Stories build identity
I’ve come to discover that a sense of culture and place have everything to do with identity, and André Alexis expresses this concept so well in his novel Childhood,⁵ where he explores belonging and self-understanding. Alexis says “who I am is a product of where I am.”
When where you come from is not where you look like you come from, it leads to a permanent feeling of alienation. An alienation that comes from knowing you will always be viewed (and treated) as an outsider in your country of birth.
This alienation is enough to make anyone feel pretty lost, to the point where, as Alexis puts it, “the idea of home has become an absurdity.” And for me, the idea of self became an absurdity. I became a collection of what I needed to be to get the closest thing to love and acceptance as possible. The concept of ‘belonging’ became a collection of moments during which I felt kind of, almost safe.
I didn’t grow up around a lot of other Black people; that, combined with the Americanization of Black storytelling left me desperate for a sense of place. I felt like I had my hands pressed up against glass, looking into the window of someone else’s reality. I was desperate to understand how I existed in this world, and then maybe I would have understood that I was real too. My experience was real. My existence was real. I didn’t just accidentally end up in someone else’s world.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Black Canadian literature is so important. Black Canadian history is so important. Black Canadians are so important. So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who ever wrote something down or told their story or showed another human being that they exist.
References:
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-canadian-are-you/article18138461/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/30139279?read-now=1&seq=1
- http://canadian-writers.athabascau.ca/english/writers/geclarke/locating_canada.php/
- The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology edited by Karina Vernon
- Childhood Novel by André Alexis
About Tomi (She/Her)
Hey! My name is Tomi, and I have a Communications degree from Mount Royal University. My goal is to live as honestly as possible, and as a result, put something new and beautiful into the world. I write about activism, intersectional justice, and the Black experience. I know nothing and question everything. Thanks for reading along!
