The Agenda

So, tonight at 8:16 sharp, a bit late but, okay, i tuned in to The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO. It was a round table of sorts: four black women, 'successful' black women, i must add, and two 'successful' black men. What was the topic? The status of "Today's Young Black Women." Now, lets do a quick check list/run down of the kinds of precautions that any educated host would take:

The Blacks called upon are

1. From diverse backgrounds with diverse histories and experiences
2. Diverse in their opinions about blackness and race (one woman said that she grew up "raceless")
3. All agree that there are systemic problems in the "black community"

Okay, so we are good. No one will be criticized for being essentialist. But what do all these "black" people have in common? They are all being called upon to explain and account for black experiences, barriers and level of success in Canada (especially Toronto, the dominant loci of black hyper-visibility) against the backdrop of the systematic media violence that promotes blackness as hostile, criminal and dangerous. These men and women are pulled together to counter--explain everything from slavery to the role of the church as a moral centre in black life in Canada. Indeed, the called upon ness of these black men and women is part of the same narrative of the media base "black problem", a part of the same narrative of each speaker's 'race' and 'otherness', a part of the same narrative of Canada's covert (ethnic) multicultural marginalization, a part of the same narrative of the migrant subject as uprooted, displaced and problematic. There is no way out, it seems as if blacks will always be trapped; trapped in the doubleness of having to live and, then, simultaneously, having to explain to white Canada how it is that they live, with the popular stereotypical views always lurking in the background. I think that what needs to be changed is the systematic ways in which blacks (and people of colour, in general) always have to explain and account for themselves. The revolution should start with the government taking care of its peoples (not 'citizens' as is generally expressed: some are "permanent residents") through an anti-racist-educational-and-economic-system approach.

Oh, and what percentage of the Canadian population would have received this (positive) counter-discourse to the stereotyping of mainstream media? The same percentage that would have happened to "tune in" and/or were randomly switching channels and decided to take note of TVO's 'agenda'.