#BLACKLIVESMATTER

It is a terrible thing that happened to George Floyd, and it is more terrible that this keeps happening over and over again.

I want to blame culture, so that it is the police culture at fault, or the american culture, or the culture of slavery or white entitlement, but the reality is that it was humans that took that man's life, and it's a dishonour to humanity to not value another being enough. It is always difficult to understand our duality, and how the human being can do the most beautiful thing, and then the most vile.

It has been another reason to reflect on ourselves, and understand the things we may not be seeing or need education on. We all have to look at the dark part of ourselves, to make choices.

Here are few thoughts about our ego and by extension our culture's shadows by Carl Jung.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote something in Beyond Good and Evil (Aphorism 146) that I reflect on often in my job in the system of health care.

"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

Translation: He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

I gave my daughter her allowance, and it had Viola Desmond on the bill. I realized I didn't have any other Canadian stories about important black women to tell than this one. So when I saw this article titled Why the Black struggle in Canada has all but been erased that ended with a bibliography, I wanted to list here some places to start.

Documentaries
The Little Black School House
Speak It! From The Heart of Black Nova Scotia
Speakers for the Dead
Journey to Justice
Sisters in the Struggle
It Takes A Riot: Race, Rebellion, Reform
Speakers for the Dead

Books and Documents
“’Membering” Austin Clarke
“The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal” Afua Cooper
“Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora” Karen Flynn
“Bromley, tireless fighter for just causes: Memoirs of Bromley L. Armstrong” Bromley Armstrong
“Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones Revolutionary” James Walker and Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones
“Being Brown” Rosemary Brown
“Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics” Dionne Brand
“Silenced” Makeda Silvera
“A Place Called Heaven” Cecil Foster
“After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing and Region” Wayde Compton
“The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology” Karina Vernon
“Race to Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts 1858-1958” Barrington Walker
“Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal” David Austin
“Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax” Ted Rutland
“Policing Black Lives — State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present” Robin Maynard
Children’s books
“Meet Viola Desmond” Elizabeth MacLeod and Mike Deas
“The ABC’s of Viola Desmond” Delmore “Buddy” Daye
“They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada” Cecil Foster

Canadian Historical Sites And Museums

Buxton National Historic Site and Museum Chatham-Kent

Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia
The Black Loyalist Heritage Centre Nova Scotia
The Amherstburg Freedom Museum Ontario
Africville Heritage Museum Nova Scotia

Here is a CBC radio show from Ideas in the Afternoon about the "Snow-job" of "whiting out" the history of Canada in Black Slavery.