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The Current Transcript for February 21, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: You are about to hear a special edition of The Current from Halifax. And a warning — in the first few minutes you will hear offensive and racially charged language.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Walking]

VOICE 1: Like a little rink there, right? We made it. We used to go skating there in the winter time and we would skate until our parents’ came to get us. We were so late to getting home those nights, oh my goodness.

AMT: So what I'm looking at over here what did it look like when you were a kid? What was there?

VOICE 1: Old cars, clothes, tin barrels, whatever you could think. All food. Everything. This dump is now closed. But we don't know if it’s been closed properly. We don't know what's seeping into the ground. You're looking at years and years of chemicals and garbage. Everybody's household garbage. Every industry that's in the community garbage.

AMT: You call this environmental racism. Why do you use that term?

VOICE 1: Because it's right in the middle of our community. It's in our community and it's not in the other community. The North End is where the white settlers or the white people live. This is where the black people live.

VOICE 2: At first we were drinking the water. And then [unintelligible]said your [unintelligible] drinking in that water. And I said, “Well we must stop this.” And we did and we bought water.

VOICE 3: [Unintelligible]

AMT: Who else is gone?

VOICE 3: The whole neighbourhood. The whole neighbourhood. I’m the oldest one.

VOICE 4: You are the oldest man left. Yes, you are.

VOICE 3: Yeah. And I realize that. I realize that… It’s horrible. You couldn't open a window. You couldn’t open your doors. You had to keep your window shut all night long.

AMT: You couldn’t put the clothes on the line.

VOICE 3: No. You have to wait till night because a smoke would be in the clothes and that would be terrible. A lot of people made a complaint about it. But nothing solved. They went ahead and did anyway. To me it was like we were nothing. How do I put it? Well we were...We were black and it didn’t matter. We could live through anything.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: The people you just heard live in Shelburne, a community of fewer than two thousand people, tucked into the top of an inlet on Nova Scotia's south shore. And they say that in that small place they are living with a legacy of racism. Of government decisions that forced them and generations of their Black neighbours to grow up in the environmental shadow of a messy, smouldering, smelly landfill site. They worry it has contributed to cancers and early deaths. But they do not have and cannot get the studies to back up with hard science what they have been seeing and living for decades. In a moment we will hear more from them and from a sociologist who has been tracking and mapping the locations of landfills and industrial sites in Nova Scotia and has raised questions about the patterns she sees. We aren't stopping there. This is the first of The Current's three-city tour called Facing Race and we have come to Nova Scotia because of the rich and complicated history of African-Canadians here. Nova Scotia's black communities can trace their roots to the late 1700s when Africans victimized by the slave trade were brought here in chains and others on the U.S. side of the border were promised their freedom and land to settle by Britain if they fought on the British side during the American Revolution. Of course the black loyalists never received all that they were promised and though black communities grew and thrived they also suffered. Today their descendants can still point to the consequences of those early days in the political and social reality in which they now live. We will hear about belonging, gentrification, and the changing face of historically black communities in this province. We’ll also hear about violence against black women and girls and ask what's missing in the growing conversations around sexual violence. We are in Halifax before a packed house in the sparkling and splendid new Central Library. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current: Facing Race.

[Sound: Applause]

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'A community of widows': How African-Nova Scotians are confronting a history of environmental racism

Guests: Louise Delisle, Lucy Nickerson, Ingrid Waldron

AMT: You can read about the stories you hear today on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Please go ahead and tweet about this show with the #CBCFacingRace. We're going to start with two people you heard briefly in our opening tape. They both live in the South End of Shelburne. Louise Delisle is the co-founder of the South End Environmental Justice Society. Lucy Nickerson is her neighbour and friend. They call their neighbourhood "a community of widows." They say most of the men in their community have died of cancer. Hello to you.

LOUISE DELISLE: Hello to you.

AMT: Louise, the last voice we heard on our tape from my visit this week to Shelburne belongs to your Mom, Ruth.

LOUISE DELISLE: Belongs to my mother.

AMT: How old is she?

LOUISE DELISLE: She's 85-years-old in March.

AMT: She talked about not being able to hang her clothes on the line because of the smoke and the ash from the dump. Were they burning stuff all the time?

LOUISE DELISLE: The dump was a fire all the time and when it was burning the smoke was so thick it was like fog. And I remember as a child her saying, “I can't wash again today. I am going to have to wait till the night when that smoke is gone so I can put these clothes on the line.” That's one of the things that sticks in my mind from that time. She would always say “Someday someone's going to put an end to this.” I remember [laughs]. She used to say “Someday someone will put an end to this.” And I never dreamed it would be me — trying to.

[Sound: Applause]

LOUISE DELISLE: Here I am.

AMT: So when you were a kid what do you remember about that dump?

LOUISE DELISLE: Oh my goodness, Anna Maria. The smell was so — I can't express it in words what that smelled like when it was a fire and the smouldering every day. And the rodents, the rats, it was terrible.

AMT: How close did you live to it?

LOUISE DELISLE: Less than a quarter of a mile. It was just in the yard. Basically in our backyard because the houses here a little bit of woods and then the dump – it was our playing area. We played as children.

AMT: And the trucks would then come in all the time too.

LOUISE DELISLE: Yeah. There was always some traffic up and down that road going to the dump either from one of the ship yards dumping their stuff or one of the industry's down there. The Navy Base dumping their stuff. The hospital dumping its stuff. Everything bad was placed in the Sound End of course. All the garbage from the people that lived in the community. Old clothes, magazines, old food from stores that had to be thrown out all went to the dump and then set afire. So you can imagine what that smelled like.

AMT: Lucy Nickerson, what do you remember about growing up near there?

LUCY NICKERSON: I can remember... I had my granddaughter there one day and we were making a cake. And I said "Put these in the garbage for Nanny." She said "There is no garbage bag in their Nanny — seven rats.” Seven rats were in there. And I'm screeching and hollering to her to come and do something with them [laughs]. So he got a pellet gun and the only thing we could do with them. It was always rats around. There's nothing you could do.

AMT: Lucy, what's been the impact of all this on your family?

LUCY NICKERSON: Well I have no son. My son died in September at the age of 45 with multiple myeloma. It wasn't a pretty sight. It was about the worst thing I could ever put myself through. At the end of it I just walked over to him and I said "William, mum's going home." I said, "She's going to get Kayla supper.” I said "If you want to go. You go. Mum loves you and we will meet again. So it hasn't been very good from me.”

AMT: He was diagnosed just over a year before he died.

LUCY NICKERSON: Yeah, a little better than a year.

AMT: We asked the Nova Scotia Health Authority for cancer statistics for the South End of Shelburne. There are no numbers specifically for the South End of town. But for the town of Shelburne in general the proportions of three cancer types appear to surpass those recorded for Nova Scotia as a whole: bladder, kidney, and multiple myeloma. There are no hard numbers but you lost your son to that very cancer.

LUCY NICKERSON: I did.

AMT: You both live in what you call "a community of widows." Why do you call it that?

LUCY NICKERSON: It's mostly men that die.

LOUISE DELISLE: We've lost the majority of men in our community — the next generation from our generation. Lucy's son is a rare example. But majority of men like my father's generation have all died of cancers. The majority of people that are dying of cancer are dying of multiple myeloma in the South End. It is a rare cancer and for it to be in such a large cluster in such a small spot is very suspicious to me.

AMT: So why was the dump put there?

LOUISE DELISLE: It was put there because it was easy for them to put it there without any repercussions from it. It was easy for them because they knew my father's generation and my mother's generation were not going to fight them against it.

[Sound: Applause]

LOUISE DELISLE: They never had a voice. They never had a voice to stop it. It was there because we were black.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: They closed the dump officially in 2016.

LOUISE DELISLE: Yes they did.

AMT: What led to that?

LOUISE DELISLE: We decided that we were going to take some action and it was time we took action because people were dying too quickly. And we said well first thing we're going to do is call the Nova Scotia Environment and find out if what they're doing now there is something that we can get it closed by what they're doing now. And they were dumping white metal there at the time and oil barrels and stuff like that. Nova Scotia Environment found that they had reason to send a letter to the town to demand that they cleaned it up. After that we met with the town and told them that we wanted them to close the dump. And finally Mayor Mattatall closed it because we insisted on it being closed and we were go as far as we had to go to have to closed.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is a good time to bring in our third guest sitting up with us here. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and a professor at Dalhousie University. She is also the director at the ENRICH project, which stands for Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project. Welcome.

INGRID WALDRON: Thank you.

AMT: I have a couple of things I want to ask you. First of all I do want to say we invited the Mayor of Shelburne, Karen Mattatall, to be here today. She was not available. But sent this statement, and I'll read part of it: "The Council has previously offered to assist with the testing of water and soil to further inform consideration of community concerns however there was not support for this. The town remains willing to assist with any testing and would work with residents and other interested parties to reduce costs.”

AMT: How do you interpret what the mayor is saying there?

INGRID WALDRON: Well it's good to hear. It's the first time I've heard that. I actually met with the mayor when I visited Shelburne with some scientists in 2016. And she came to me privately and she said, "Do you realize that a number of African Nova Scotians in this community smoke?” So I got a sense from that conversation that she was very doubtful about the issue. So I'm extremely happy to hear that she is willing to collaborate with the community and I know the Louise is interested in collaborating with her.

AMT: You know neither the mayor nor the town councillor for your area — Rick Davis — were available to see us in Shelburne this week. If I could have seen them I would have asked, “Why do you need other people to do the testing? Why isn't government taking responsibility for this?”

INGRID WALDRON: Government's not necessarily responsible for water testing of wells. It's the responsibility of individual communities to do that. I think my argument is if industries or dumps, or landfills are placed in communities, communities that don't want those waste sites, then from me they are accountable. I think the government is accountable. But in the meantime I think it's important as people are dying that something is done. So we've taken a step — many of us some scientists, geologists Fred Bonner, and Wilber Menendez who is a chemistry professor, a science professor at Nova Scotia Community College. We've taken the initiative to address some of the concerns by initiating a water testing project because people are dying.

AMT: You do research around environmental racism. How do you define environmental racism?

INGRID WALDRON: Environmental racism is a term that was coined in the early 1980s by Benjamin Chavez. And it's characterized by the disproportionate location of environmental contaminants in communities of colour and Indigenous communities and low income white communities. It's also very similar to what Louise mentioned is the lack of power that many of these communities because they are racialized because they’re low income the lack of power they have for resisting against the signing of these facilities in their communities. And it's also about the lack of representation of these communities on committees, boards, and regulatory bodies — individuals who have a say in where these sites are located. So when you look at environmental racism you need to look at the full breath of environmental racism. I would say that those three issues characterise environmental racism in the United States and in Canada.

AMT: We contacted the Nova Scotia Department of Environment to ask them about all of this. Here's part of what they said: "We take the issue of environmental racism seriously. Government has been taking action on initiatives to address disparities, racism and systemic discrimination that African Nova Scotians have faced for generations. There is more work to do, but we are on the right path forward in our journey of healing and resolution. This is a priority for the Government of Nova Scotia." Do you see the Nova Scotia government making this a priority?

INGRID WALDRON: The Nova Scotia government is not making this issue a priority.

[Sound: Applause]

INGRID WALDRON: In 2014 and 2015 I visited 14 government departments, including Nova Scotia Environment and no one was interested in taking up this issue. While they agreed that they needed to be more transparent and accessible in terms of sharing information to communities. None of the individuals that I visited were interested in taking up this issue. So they are not interested in it. More so they don't have the lens and the understanding of environmental racism. And when I look at environmental assessments — that's a process that you use to decide where a waste dump or landfill is placed — they don't have the understanding, the critical understanding, and the sociological lens to understand why placing certain waste dumps or landfills in certain communities is problematic particularly because you're placing them in communities that are dealing with existing vulnerabilities relating to racism, colonialism, class, income, education, lack of resources, food insecurity, and income insecurity. So unless they have that lens, which is a sociological lens, then the individuals in Nova Scotia Environment and other agencies in government don't have a full understanding of this problem.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Ingrid Waldron, you have mapped the locations of industry and landfill sites in proximity to black and Indigenous communities in the province. We'll put it up on the screen here so we can see what you've found. It's also available at cbc.ca/thecurrent and our Facebook Live audience will be able to find it on our Facebook page. Tell us what we are looking at.

INGRID WALDRON: This is a map that was developed by a health geography student, Beau Ahrens, in 2016. And he mapped the location of waste dumps close to Indigenous and African Nova Scotian communities across the province. So what you'll find is that waste dumps on the map are close to Shelburne, Lincolnville, Sunnyville, Upper Big Tracadie, Monastery, Mulgrave, Trenton, Birchtown, Beechville, Lucasville. And you'll also find landfills waste dumps close to Indigenous communities like Pictou Landing First Nations which is to me the worst case of environmental racism in Nova Scotia — one of the worst in Canada. Acadia First Natio, Eskasoni First Nation, Membertou First Nation, Millbrook First Nation, etc.

AMT: A long list.

INGRID WALDRON: Well it's longer.

AMT: And I was going to say the "etc" tells us it's even longer.

INGRID WALDRON: It's important to stress though that this is simply another tool in the tool kit. For example, if I were to visit government to make my case I would take my data, I would take my qualitative research based on the focus groups that Louise did for example, I would take quantitative of data, I will take this map, and I will take other information to make a case about environmental racism. The problem with government is they want to connect a particular landfill site and a contaminant to a particular cancer. Multiple myeloma for example, you can never do that. You can never definitively say that a particular waste dump is causing a particular type of cancer. What you can say is the probability is very high that it is which for me is sufficient. For government apparently it's not.

AMT: Before we end I want to go back to Louise and Lucy. What do you want to see happen now?

LOUISE DELISLE: I want to see somebody come in there to test our water to make sure that our water is clean because there's town water in the North End but not in the South End. Like Ingrid said you can't prove that cancer was caused by certain things. But I want to know what we've been exposed when it comes to what's been dumped there.

AMT: We are talking really about one community. But Ingrid you've made the point this is an issue across the province.

INGRID WALDRON: And across the country.

AMT: Thank you all of you for bringing it forward to us.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Louise Delilse and Lucy Nickerson are life-long residents of the South End of Shelburne. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and professor at Dalhousie University, where she does research on environmental racism. Thank you very much all of you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: I just want to remind you if you are tweeting about this public forum to use the #CBCFacingRace. You can see pictures of our guests today and the site of the dump that we've been talking about at cbc.ca/thecurrent. On our website you can also see photos of this public forum. Coming up we're going to hear how development in Halifax historically black neighbourhoods has long-time residents feeling shut out of their own communities. We are here at the Central Library in Halifax. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you are listening to Facing Race, a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio.

[Sound: Applause]

[Music: Theme]

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'Call it what it is — white ignorance': Gentrification frays the social fabric in Halifax's North End

Guests: Rodney Small, Irvine Carvery, Melinda Daye

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Halifax, and this is a special edition of The Current: Facing Race.

[Sound: Applause]

[Music: Theme]

AMT: This is the first in our series of public forums on important issues of race in Canada. Today, we're hearing directly from Nova Scotia's black community about the lasting legacy of anti-black racism in the province. If you are tweeting about this event please use the #CBCFacingRace. Still to come, we'll be hearing from our audience here at the Halifax Central Library and from some watching on Facebook Live. But first we're exploring racial tensions as neighbourhoods gentrify, and some feel left behind.

[Music: Theme]

KYTUREA JONES: My name is Kyturea and I'm 24-years-old.

DONNTAYIA JONES: My name is Donntayia and I'm 22-years-old.

JOSH CREIGHTON: My name is Josh and I'm 20-years-old.

TIONA EMMERSON: My name is Tiona and I am 17-years-old.

JOSH CREIGHTON: So we're in the North End of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

KYTUREA JONES: I love that I grew up there and that you see a lot of black people.

DONNTAYIA JONES: I love that everybody just knows everybody. My neighbour, I probably called her auntie because I just grew up and she was my mom's friend and I could go next door to her house and it was just one big family.

JOSH CREIGHTON: Over the last few years we've just seen a rapid change that has been happening. You know condos going up everywhere. Obviously we can’t afford them. Like I said the business.

DONNTAYIA JONES: They don't have any black employees in their working environment at all.

KYTUREA JONES: Sometimes when you go into the businesses that are just down the street they will look at you sideways and it’s like kind of weird.

JOSH CREIGHTON: I get the sense that it's not for me. You see the price, you see that atmosphere, you see no black people, and I don't get the vibe that I'm necessarily welcome there.

TIONA EMMERSON: It's sad to say but I'm used to the feeling like I'm used to feeling like I’m not belonging there.

JOSH CREIGHTON: It's just not a feeling that you should feel it while in your own community. I think that's the biggest issue.

KYTUREA JONES: So we’re now at the corner of Charles and Creighton streets. We came here three years back to paint this painting here. It’s painting of a black girl with blue braids We basically spend our whole day out here creating this together as a community working together. There’s a bunch of kids around , paint splashing, yelling, and running.

JOSH CREIGHTON: It’s cool because it’s like we’re taking control of our own environment. It’s us that put this here. We're letting people know that we're here and we’re not going anywhere.

AMT: Well there you go a group of young people from the North End of Halifax and they’re with us tonight. Where are you?

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: They are part of the North Community Action Committee. Like them, my next guests are concerned about the changes they're seeing. Melinda Daye is a former chair of the Halifax Regional School Board. Irvine Carvery is the president of the Africville Genealogy Society. Rodney Small grew up in the North End and he is now a business development manager at Common Good Solutions. Hello to all of you. Welcome.

[Sound: Applause]

RODNEY SMALL: Hello, Anna Maria.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Melinda Daye, How long have you lived in the North End?

MELINDA DAYE: I'm a lifelong resident of the North End. Grew up on the streets of Creighton Street.

AMT: How have you seen your community change?

MELINDA DAYE: Aw gosh. Creighton Street was a community. We know that we looked for one another. We knew what was going on in the wider community of course. But we also knew there we were there with and for one another. Even though we may be poor, did we really know we were poor? Yeah there were times we did. I knew that. There were times. But there was that sense that I wasn't any worse off than the next one, so were there with and for one another. But now I looked over the community and I wonder you know the way they sometimes wanted to paint our community and paint our picture was that there were drugs and there was violence and nobody wanted to come to Creighton Street and nobody wanted to come to Gottingen Street. But that's not what we knew. That's not a sense of who we were. Now you see this change: this shift. I want to live on Creighton Street. I want to live on Maynard Street. I want to live there so much so that I may have to move you out. And there's that feeling of 'I'm being pushed out'. And I think that's what those young people are saying: "Am I being pushed out here? Am I being made to feel that I am unwelcome in my own home and in my own community?" Homes that were boarded up for years have now been renovated and remodeled but not for you to live in. So I looked today and I see something different — a shift happening here and it's a concerning shift.

AMT: I want to pick up on that. Rodney Small, how have you experienced the changes that Melinda is talking about?

RODNEY SMALL: First hand. First hand, to put it plainly. I mean growing up in the community, just like Melinda's saying; there's been a huge shift. I remember times where there used to be business in the community that the target audience was the people in the community. Not just businesses, we're talking about grocery stores — so that access to the food. And we're talking about banks. So these institutions were there for the community. Then we start to see our school close down, you know, which is the same location right. So there's a whole lot that's going on in the community right before our eyes. And the transformation is for real.

AMT: How welcome do you feel in the North End community you grew up in?

RODNEY SMALL: Funny enough I feel pretty welcome because I'm a pretty adaptable person. But at the same time I don't frequent those businesses because I don't feel welcome. I don't spend my money where I don't feel welcome. I understand my buyer power. So there is no way I'm going to go into a business that I know I don’t feel welcomed in that's for sure and spend my money. I spend my money where it’s appreciated. At the end of the day that's what it comes down to: do I feel appreciated and is my dollar going to actually get the bang for its buck? And when I say get the bang for its buck, let's think about the social responsibility we have to put on those business owners that are operating in those business, right? We're talking about unemployment, it's for real. It’s for real. These are statistics that we know that are disproportionate in the black community.

AMT: So the black community is not getting the jobs of the new places.

RODNEY SMALL: Jobs are one thing. But in saying so we have to be able to change the narrative from not only employment but black ownership, right? Black ownership.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: I want to bring Carvery into this. Do you relate to what Rodney is saying?

IRVINE CARVERY: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember a time in our community — Gottingen Street — was the shopping area for all of Halifax. People came to Gottingen Street to shop. I hate to admit it but I'm old enough to remember when we had nobody in those shops working and when we weren't allowed in some of the restaurants because of discrimination. I remember those times. So yeah I can relate to what Rodney is saying. I'm absolute believer in jobs are nice. But we need to our own business and we need to hire our own people. Until we have economic independence, as black's living in Canada for 400 years, we're always going to be challenged by what the larger society feels that we are deserving.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Rodney, you want to jump in. Go ahead.

RODNEY SMALL: Yes. No, I want some play. I got to be real here because now we're getting into the root of the conversation. So when we think about small business being the back bone of our economy, right? And we go anywhere across this country where there's a significant culture or a group whether it's Italians, Jamaicans, you name it. Guess what that business district will reflect? The population it serves. We need to learn to actually create businesses that represent population it serves. Our associations that are established in these areas need to recognize and know their roles, and advocate to make that the statistics are appropriate because they have the numbers. It's within their membership. So if you know there's not a significant representation of black business in your district then you should advocate for that and start empowering to want to own and not just employ.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Irvine, why do you think the existing community hasn't been able to become part of the growth and transformation that's happening there?

IRVINE CARVERY: Well it's a historical problem that we're up against. Historically the marginalization of the black population in Nova Scotia and Halifax did not adequately prepare us to take advantage of the economic opportunities and the home ownership opportunities that became available. When I talk about I can remember a time, well I can remember time when my wife and I married and we were looking to purchase a home. And we looked in other areas of Halifax. We looked in the West on Duncan Street and Dublin Street. And at that time homes in that area were being sold for around $50,000 to $70,000. But we made a conscious decision. We wanted to stay in our community. So I was able to purchase a home on Maynard Street for $20,000. Now today the purchasing cost for a home in Dublin and Duncan is exactly the same as the purchasing cost on Maynard and Creighton. So we've seen a shift in terms of property values. I lived in Uniacke Square. I lived in public housing. I was able to leave public housing and gradually work my way up. First, in a rental, and then to home ownership because of the cost of properties in the area. Today, currently, people living in public housing cannot look to leave public housing because the rents in the area are way beyond their needs and home ownership is a dream. There has been this dramatic shift.

AMT: Melinda, with your experience in the education system, how have you seen this play out?

MELINDA: I went to school of course when I was a young girl in Joseph Howe School. And lo and behold I became the principal of Joseph Howe School. This is an elementary school in the North End of Halifax. What happens in in education and the community is that you have a group of people that will move into to the community but don't really want to be a part of the community. They have their reasons why they move here. And they don't want their children to attend the school which predominately black children attend. So what would happen is you move into the community, you come to the school, and you automatically ask for a transfer to another school. You can receive those transfers.

AMT: How would you react as the principal when that happened?

MELINDA: Well that's not something that I was readily wanting to do. For one thing the way the system is made up is that the more students that you have in your school, the more resources that you can get in your school. And I need that as much as any other school in the West End or the South End. So I'm trying to build my school. I would say, “Well let me take you and tour you around my school so you could see just what the school does offer and what these children are learning.” The person didn't like that, reported me to the school board at the time and I received a phone call telling me that if anyone comes to you and requests a transfer you are to automatically give it to them. I said “No questions asked. No questions asked.” If they want to transfer out, let them have their transfer. They don't have to explain to you. That's an indication. That's something I don't say very often in terms of what are some of the things that have happened within our community. We're a very strong community. We face a lot of adversity and a lot of the challenges. We face the racism. But we try our best to keep the community — the sense of community — within the North End of Halifax. We want to own homes. We did on homes. We still own homes. If somebody were to come to your door and just say, “Knock knock. I want to buy your house.” Well I don't have any for sale sign up here. “Yeah. But I'm willing to offer you X amount of dollars because my daughter lives over here on this street and I would like to get this house for her.” This happened in 2011. This has happened not only just to Melinda Daye but I'm going to say it has happened to others as well. So is that sense of what's happening here.

AMT: And spell it out for me. Are you talking about white families doing this?

MELINDA: White families coming in.

IRVINE CARVERY: Times have changed Anna Maria. There was a time as described by Melinda when our area was not desirable. It was considered the ghetto. But the area itself is within walking distance of the hospitals, recreation, entertainment, and grocery stores. And people recognize the value in that. That's when they began to come in and purchase the properties because they see the value in it. But what has changed dramatically is when the community was predominantly all black community, people sat on their stoops, people congregated on their front porches. They communicated with their neighbours. It was a community. But what I find strikingly surprised is that the new folks coming in, they come home from work and put their car there, they go in their door...

MELINDA: That's it.

IRVINE CARVERY: That's it.

MELINDA: That's it [laughs].

IRVINE CARVERY: Or the condos that are being built in our community. Those condo dwellers — they're not a part of our community. They have underground parking. We don't see them. We only see them when they're clogging up the traffic in the community. But that's it. They add no value to the community.

AMT: So you're telling me a couple of things. You're talking about the gentrification "of a community." It's not people who want to be part of your community because of the electric air of a long time association with neighbours. They don't want anything to do with your community.

IRVINE CARVERY: No, I'm not really saying that. They bring their own culture. They bring their own way of life from where they came from.

AMT: And what happens to yours?

IRVINE CARVERY: Well you know what? We say “God bless you”. But we will sit out on our stoops, and we will still continue to gather and express our culture the way we always have. The first folks into our community — and have to speak this — the first people to move into our community was the gay community. The gay community came into our community. You know why? Because we are welcoming. We were welcoming.

[Sound: Applause]

IRVINE CARVERY: When they came and purchased and fixed up homes and did a lot of things because a lot of places in Halifax, they were not welcome. They didn't feel welcome. But they felt welcomed in our community. Because of course given our history being discriminated against and being marginalized we empathize with their position.

AMT: We have one of the newer business owners in Halifax with us in our audience today. Ditta Kasdan is owner of Dee Dee's Ice Cream shop, which opened its doors in 2010. Hello.

DITTA KASDAN: Hello.

AMT: What drew you to the North End as a place to open your business?

DITTA KASDAN: Well for a number of reasons. I had actually lived in the North End for a couple of years. I was drawn to the diversity of the North End and it's also absolutely true that I was beginning a business with no access to capital. And it was a reasonable place to open a business. But aside from that I never saw myself as a spring garden road type person.

AMT: How aware are you of the dynamics and tensions that we've been hearing about?

DITTA KASDAN: I'm very aware of them. I can't say I've always been very aware of them. But I've been a part of a number of community meetings related to this issue.

AMT: And when you went to hire. Who did you hire to work in your store?

DITTA KASDAN: Well when I first opened I actually did not have the hiring practices that I do now. I have to be perfectly upfront about that. Now I try to hire, and successfully I would say, hire local youth. I'm quite seasonal. But last summer I think I had six youth working for me.

AMT: From the community.

DITTA KASDAN: From the community.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: How did that change things for you?

DITTA KASDAN: Oh, well they're wonderful people. It's absolutely true that — first of all my clientele has changed. I definitely feel more a part of the community. I now know their parents. Some of those youth I've been working with for probably three years now. So you begin to know them. You begin to know their families. You get to know their aspirations and what they wish for in their lives not — necessarily just working from me for the rest of their lives. Yes so very much I feel more a part of that community.

AMT: By making those jobs available to young people from that community.

DITTA KASDAN: Yeah.

AMT: To what extent do other business owners who are relatively new to that area make an effort to hire from within the community?

DITTA KASDAN: Well it's difficult for me to speak for other business owner. I can say that there are a number of initiatives that are being taken every day. In fact I just heard of a new group of people partly coming from the community approaching the business association. There's a lot of interest in it. I think there are a lot of challenges. We're at the beginning and at the same time we’ve realized that something really serious needs to happen really soon.

AMT: Ok. Well Ditta thank you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Rodney, do you want to speak to that? The important of jobs in some of those businesses.

RODNEY SMALL: I think it's extremely important that the businesses in the community start to engage the youth in the community. I think this is a great way to start building those bridges. We have to build the bridges. We have to start the conversation somewhere. You know I think they can be some great mentors to these young people in the community and actually encourage and empower to want to own someday. I think that's extremely important. I think it's a very important part of the conversation. Some of those conversations that Ditti is actually talking about and some of the information both Melinda Irvine identified. Call it what it is: white ignorance. Because that's what the conversation was hosted and that's what it was known as. So let's call it what it is. Because when you have people that actually are willing to come in a community with such a strong history and not willing to indulge in that history and learn about that community it is what it is. Ignorant. Plain and simple.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: She makes the point that when you hire somebody you end up getting to know them and the conversation changes. You end up having a conversation with the whole family and with the neighbourhood.

RODNEY SMALL: Changing the narrative once again.

IRVINE CARVERY: I think it should be recognized to that in our community we have long standing Lebanese community who have been there for years and years and years. And not only do they run their business but they live in the community. They've raised their families and now we have third generation of that same Lebanese families’ in our community. So it's always been a very diverse community.

AMT: So as we talk about this what do we need to think about in terms of how the community can retain a real sense of ownership in the North End of Halifax as things move forward?

RODNEY SMALL: We've been really engaging with our youth over the last two years and we're having these enriched genuine conversations to really carry them out into the community and to create awareness for them so that they know there's a transformation going on before your eyes. You need to understand and be involved in the conversation and see yourself in their conversation. We've already had our conversation with the youth. Now we're engaging their parents and we have the expertise of over; let me see, I am not going to tell you how old I am… but over 100 years combined.

[Sound: Crowd laughs]

AMT: I am very grateful that you were willing to have some of this conversation with us as well. Thank you all three of you. Thank you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Irvine Carvery is the president of the Africville Genealogy Society. Rodney Small grew up in the North End and he is now a business development manager at Common Good Solutions. And Melinda Daye is a former chair of the Halifax Regional School Board. They were all speaking to me live at the Halifax Central Library. Coming up next here at the Central Library we will be hearing your experiences and questions in person and online through Facebook live. A reminder if you're tweeting about this public forum to use the #CBCFacingRace. For more on the stories you are hearing today go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. You will also find more information about upcoming forums in Vancouver and Montreal. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Halifax and this is Facing Race, a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Sound: Applause]

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#MeToo (but not you): Black women are being left out of the conversation on violence, says El Jones

Guests: El Jones

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Halifax at the Central Library and this is Facing Race, a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is the first in series of public forums we are recording in three cities to explore important issues of race in this country. Today we've been talking about the legacy of anti-black racism in Nova Scotia. A reminder, if you're tweeting about the program, use the #CBCFacingRace and you can head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent to learn more about our guests and the issues we're talking about. And to see more about this series… we have town halls coming up in Vancouver with Piya Chattopadhyay and with Duncan McCue in Montreal. In this half hour we want to hear from our audience. But first I have another guest joining me on stage. El Jones is the former poet laureate of Halifax. She is also an activist and a Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. She has spoken out and written extensively on violence against black women and girls. Hello, El.

EL JONES: Good evening.

AMT: What are the stories you are hearing about violence against women and girls in Nova Scotia?

EL JONES: Yes. So right now there's an international conversation really going on with #MeToo. But often only some women are making that conversation. So I work a lot with criminalized women and girls. So women and girls who have contact with the law or are criminalized in other ways like through the care system and in their schools. And their stories really aren't being heard at all. Some of the stuff you'll hear from very young girls. For example, I've had girls tell me, particularly girls that have been in the care system, that they were sexually assaulted at age 12 or 13. And it says in their files that they were street workers and prostitutes and so their rapes weren't taken seriously. One girl told me that in her file it said well her body is very curvy like an adult and this was used to deny her reported being sexually assaulted. Young girls in school have told me about their mental health not being considered. One girl came to me she said, “My teacher told me am a bully.” And I said “What do you mean by that? She said “Well I got upset at school I get angry. And the teacher told me I'm a bully and they basically told me I can't be in the class.” And this was a younger girl that was suffering abuse in her home. So rather than asking this young girl what was happening in her life she was being labelled as violent and then pushed out of the school. So you hear these stories over and over again. A lot of the issues that we've been talking about on this panel: education and housing — these are things that particularly affect the bodies and the lives of black women who are living in poverty and then don't have any resources and are suffering from trauma either in their homes or the communities and particularly from the state. So when we're talking about #MeToo we're not talking about state violence women are experiencing in prisons where we see black women being the highest growing rate of women being put into prison. And we know that women who are criminalized are victims of trauma and they're not being part of this conversation. So it's not only that some women are being left out. We're also only talking about some kinds of violence and some kinds of power. But what we're not talking about is how from the beginning of black women existence in this country, black women bodies have been raped, black women bodies have been exploited, black women bodies have been state property in particular ways, and that is still going on. And you're still seeing that today in the lives of women and girls.

AMT: You have a radio show where you talk to female inmates in Nova Scotia. Tell me a little bit more — you've touched on it. Tell me a little bit more about what they tell you about their experience.

EL JONES: We talk to both women and men. But what the women will talk about is lack of mental health care and lack of feminine hygiene products. So I don't know if you can imagine what it's like to be in jail and to have to bleed through your underwear because you don't have access to a tampon or a pad.

AMT: In Canada?

EL JONES: In Canada, yes. Solitary confinement issues. So even though that's been declared unconstitutional, women will talk about being in segregation. Women are being segregated while pregnant. Women who aren't being able to see their children. So you have all kinds of violence that all of you are experiencing. And what's really beautiful about women is that they will speak for other women at great risk for themselves. So often they'll call in and will say there's another woman here and this is happening to her. And so we know that black women are entering the system more and more and more. That the rate is going up high among black women who are often in jail because of things like driving the car for a boyfriend who is abusive and who told them you drive the car or else. Women who are involved in the drug trade, who are being coerced in their relationships, who are being beaten or raped and then told to carry drugs. And those stories aren't making the news. They're being criminalized and they're being told that they're the ones that are wrong and that they are the [unintelligible] and there's no understanding of that. So we know that the justice system doesn't serve black women and girls or Indigenous women and girls. And so what we're seeing is being caught up more and more into the systems. Having their children taken away from them because they have a record or because they're poor and they're being accused of neglect. So I really think that we need to speak out about this. It's something that's very difficult for women to speak about and even more difficult for black women. Particularly if we have to speak about men in our communities, that's difficult. Because our men also suffer from so much racism and so much of our incarceration and we know that they suffer from violence and it's very difficult for black women to also have a voice on this.

AMT: So if you need help and you're a black woman you're afraid that you're going to hurt your wider community and if you're a mother and you ask for help, what happens?

EL JONES: Well I mean we are checked three times… the police in Halifax. We know that our police in Halifax aren't serving the black community. So why do you think that you're going to be able to call the police> A woman has to make a decision about that. Does she want to invite that into her house if she's suffering abuse? And yes, also if we know that black men are also going to be criminalized and seen unfairly, when our entire communities are called pimping communities or violent communities, and we know that this myth exists that our communities are the most violent, you don't necessarily want to contribute to that as a woman knowing that in the end you're not going to get help and what's going to happen is just that narrative is going to make the news of people going to say ‘see black men are what we said they are. They’re thugs’. So as long as we live in a racist society that criminalizes black people this is what we see that we have violence that is being done to us by the state. And when that violence comes into our homes and communities we don't really have the tools to fight it.

AMT: And we make the point we are at this heightened conversation now about violence and sexual violence against women. But we're still not talking about this in a wider way.

EL JONES: All women are subject to abuse. There's not being white being rich as we know from seeing the #MeToo conversation. You can be the most famous woman in the world and suffer from sexual violence. So I'm not discounting that. But what I'm saying is that can’t be the only conversation and we can’t only talk about sexual violence that’s taking place one way because black women also experience sexual violence in all kinds of other ways. So they experience violence in their schools in particular ways. We experience violence in the way our children are taken from us and the way our parenting is critiqued. The way that we're seen as bad mothers which has a particular sexual history for black women. In the way that black bodies move through space. So when black hair products are locked up behind the counter at Shoppers because black women are thieves that's putting a particular criminalization onto black women's bodies. It marginalizes our bodies and that makes us more vulnerable in other ways to violence. The way we move around our workplaces. The way our hair is critiqued and you know having natural hair makes you less professional. All these ways our bodies are judged. Our skin is judged. Our body is too curvy. It's too thick. “Why are your breasts out?” When you're trying to go to work and just wear a shirt and you're being critiqued. What I'm saying is all these things are racialized violence as well and we can't just talk about it as sexual violence and we can't just talk about it as ‘OK if you're boss sexually harasses you’. We have to say what happens. How does policing become sexual violence on women? How does going to school become sexual violence on black girls?

AMT: You make the point this starts with girls just going to school. The way they are treated or even how they dress.

EL JONES: How they dress. They've talked about how they will express to teachers or to school officials that they're feeling anxiety or depression and that's seen as attitude. So you're being bad. Rather than you're in need of help. Some of them have said that when they have these problems in school with racism, their homes get called, and then they go home and they experience their parents being disappointed and angry with them and they can't explain this happened to me because of racism. So then they experience marginalization in their own homes. So they're seen consistently as being bad and acting out rather than needing help or any assistance or having something going on that needs a conversation.

AMT: What kind of reactions do you get when you talk about these things?

EL JONES: Well I mean I experience racialized sexual violence as well. I was drawn as a monkey in a cartoon which has a particular history for black people. Obviously a history is calling us savage. A history of calling us primitive. When I talked about Sidney Crosby going to the White House and suggested that maybe he could take a stand, I received all kinds of messages like N-word written 12 times, death threats, suck on this part of my body, or a C-word. And this was constant. It's not something that we're supposed to complain about. If we complain about it we're just being sensitive. And if you do complain about it there's nothing anybody can do. So a point I was making, if I play my music after 10PM in my apartment my neighbours can call the cops on me. But if a white man wants to send me a message telling me to suck his whatever and I call the police. If it's not persistent and he didn't put my address there and make a direct threat, well then he can. That's his free speech, right? And in fact the problem is me trying to stop him from having that free speech. Not him sending me these messages. So there's all these ways that power is balance. I'm being mouthy. I'm a B. I'm all these things and because I speak out therefore I'm asking for it. So you get the same kind of narrative you get around sexual violence being applied to black women who are outspoken that you deserve it. You shouldn't be out there talking about race. You're just playing the race card. So if white people want to attack you, well that's your own fault. So when you try speak about these things you get a huge amount of violence directed towards you. And if you complain about that violence you just get more violence.

AMT: I was going to ask you what has to change but I think the answer would be everything.

[Sound: Crowd laughs]

AMT: How do you move forward? Not you. The wider society. How does our wider society move forward so that you don't have to point out these things

EL JONES: I think we're building and resisting all the time. I think about Harriet Tubman who made multiple trips into the south to save children — brought them up to Canada to save black people. We have a long history of resistance. Viola Desmond in this community in Nova Scotia. I could list so many more women. Black women have had long histories of holding down our communities on no resources and on the little that we have and sharing with everybody else. So we know what to do. We are a resilient people. We are resistant people. And we have consistently built communities through spaces of love, through the spaces of survival, and where we thrive in. So it's not that we don't know what to do. It's just that we're not usually being allowed to do those things to our fullest extent and our fullest humanity. So we have the solutions. The solutions are to give us the dignity that we have to allow black women to live our lives in the way that we know how to live our lives and to allow us to love each other, to allow us to care for each other, hold each other accountable in our communities, to allow us to do the work of raising our families, and to stop being so cruel to us all the time and interfering with us. And if people would stop doing that we already have the solutions. I'm not alone in this I can look around this audience and see the faces of so many women in this room and we just have to continue focusing on that because the love that we have, the resilience that we have, can never go away. It can't be taken from us.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: El Jones is the former poet laureate of Halifax. She is also an activist and a Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. And stay with us you'll hear El performing her own poem on this issue at the end of our program. Now, over to you in our audience here, and through Facebook Live. We want to hear about your own thoughts and experiences with what we've been talking about today with racism in your community. But before we do, I want to introduce someone with us in our audience. Tony Ince is the Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs. Minister Ince, hello

TONY INCE: Hello.

AMT: You have been listening to all of us. What have you been thinking as you you've been listening to the stories and the issues of our guests?

TONY INCE: Well first of all let me say that it's really important for me to be here to hear this. I'm quite emotional right now because these are stories as I've repeatedly said I hear often and I've heard since I was a young person. I can relate to a number of the issues that people have raised. I left Nova Scotia in the 70s and I didn't come back to till 2004. Many people stayed here and stayed in the fight for years while I was somewhere else. Part of these stories is what got me into government. It's what motivated me to step forward and move in the direction that I'm in. I said to many of my friends around the country — I've lived in different parts of the country — it's time to be at the table as opposed to talking about the table.

AMT: What solutions do you see then to the concerns you've heard here?

TONY INCE: That's a tough question because I'm one individual. Despite what some people may think I have raised issues and there is some evidence that it is being listened to. I'll just point to one example which is emotional is to me because I have friends that were affected by this and that's Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children. We have a premier apologized for that. Not only did he apologize, he put into action something which would hopefully help us change the direction of systemic racism and discrimination in this province. A restorative inquiry which is unlike any other. There are actions, there are things that the government is doing to listen. There's a lot more work to be done though.

AMT: I was just going to say what do you need for those people who sit around that cabinet table with you to make faster decisions on those issues?

TONY INCE: Well you know what? They talk about... it's not as simple as everybody would like to make it be because community needs to be more involved. There are several levels of government. So we are moving in that direction. Yes maybe it should be. But it's 200 years. I've only been elected since 2013.

AMT: Well we'll come back and check with you another year. But thank you for speaking with us.

[Sound: Crowd laughs]

AMT: Thank you. Tony Ince is the Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs. He's here with us at the Halifax Library, in his special edition of The Current. We're going to open this up to your audience now. Go ahead sir.

VOICE 1: When you think about the conversation tonight. All of the people involved with putting dumps in place. All of the people who call schools and tell them to just let people move when they don't want their children to go to school with my child. Now Dalhousie has made an effort to try and identify a person for a board. And I've listened to different call-in shows and I've read articles and watched comments on Facebook and Twitter. How do we address the education piece that's required to make people understand that just because — they use the term "reversed racism" and I say if it didn't exist in the first place how could it be reversed? So the question is how do we educate the Twitter people and the Facebook folks to know that just because we are in the job because of the requirement of identification on this committee then I am not less qualified to do that job? Anyone wants to try and hit that one up?

AMT: Who wants to speak to that?

EL JONES: What I would say in this particular instance where Dalhousie has done a job hiring where they've requested racially visible people. You can look at any picture of the Dalhousie Board of Governors, any picture of the administration, and see white man, white man, white man. And that's not a problem and the minute you say maybe we want somebody else, suddenly we're oppressing everybody else in the world.

[Sound: Applause]

EL JONES: So I don't know if you can education people out of realities that they refuse to see. The facts are in front of people. You can walk into any boardroom. City Council only recently just got a black councillor after 16 years. So if you believe that black people are somehow running this city when black people had no representation and all those rooms were white for years and that wasn't a problem. I don't see how they're going to pretend that's a problem suddenly you have one black woman or one queer woman or one Indigenous woman. So I don't think it's a question of educating people. I think what white people like to do is defend whiteness at all costs. And that is the construction of whiteness. Whiteness is constructed in particular ways and it depends upon other white people defending it. What needs to happen with that is white people need to do the work of speaking to other white people about addressing it in your family's addressing and communities because we can't do that work. White people need to continue to do that work with each other.

AMT: We've got time for just a few other questions. We've got one here. Go ahead.

VOICE 2: Oh, hi my name's [unintelligible] I'm a racialized youth living in the North End and I'd like to share my experience. So living in the North End my community is currently being gentrified and I have the experience of leaving my house and seeing all these white people who can't even say hi to me [unintelligible].

[Sound: Sobbing]

VOICE 2: This year I can't even go to my English class without a 50-year-old white man throwing around the N-word in my face and having to read books that racially oppress me. So I was wondering when the Eurocentric curriculum is going to stop?

MELINDA DAYE: It's real. Your pain is very real. There's no exaggeration here. She speaks for herself. She speaks for so many others. I'm still in the system. I'm a retired teacher and a retired principal as many of you know. I'm subbing right now. And it pains my heart that many kids are still coming to me and telling us this is yet what's happening to me. I'm still feeling ostracised. I'm still feeling belittled. I'm still feeling like I'm lost in this school and in this classroom. This is very real folks. And when you see people tell us or write articles about an Afrocentric school, please don't look at it negatively as some people do. The province of Nova Scotia has an Acadian school, has a francophone school. They just keep the French school board because that culture is so important. Mine is too. Mine is too. And my kids matter. What you feel today, we felt. Why should you be going through that in 2018? Stand up, stand strong, and stand united, and let her know somebody is coming in that school to support you dear. Somebody is going to show up.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Go ahead.

VOICE 1: I'm feeling very emotional right now for the younger girl there and the four young black people in their community with the paintings and so forth. I grew up in the black community. Now I had the privilege of also serving in my community — working for a large establishment. In that establishment I was very well-qualified, if not overqualified, because as black person I felt I had to work three times as hard as the white person to be recognized. And then one evening in my community, in my place of employment, I walked in on a conversation. And the white girl said to the white group — she had that whole black attitude thing going on — and I'm like "Excuse me?" She said "Oh my God!" "What do you mean by this whole black attitude thing?" "Oh... I didn't realize you were there. I'm sorry." "That's OK. But I still want to know." I took it further. Because if you can't have a disagreement without race being brought into it. If you can't have that conversation — let me tell you — I took it to management. And that's the problem in the workplace in the North End community. Management is not doing their job. They know there's a problem. They admit there is problem. But when it comes time to do something about it, they turn their heads the other way. They squeeze you out. Guess what? I fought it. Guess out? I was squeezed out. But not without a fight. And I won. There's all kinds of these incidents going on in the community. There not isolated incidents. They want to treat them like they are. But they're not.

AMT: Thank you. We're going to leave it there. I want to thank the people involved in putting this forum together. This forum was produced by Yamri Taddese, Pacinthe Mattar, who is also our director. Mary-Catherine McIntosh, Leanne Stepnow, Nick McCabe-Lokos, Cathy Simon, Kathleen Goldhar, Lara O'Brien. Our digital producer is Ruby Buiza. Our technical team is Gary Francis, Bruce Whiteford, P.J. McNeill, Andrew Shipley, Susan Holly, Eric Wiseman, Kenny MacDonald, Shane Hayden, Ryan Dunn, Adam Walters, Roy Mombourquette, Paul Poirier, and Ian MacDonald. Our makeup artist is Rosie Davis. Our photographer is Robert Short. Our camera operators are David Laughlin, Colin King, Mark Crosby, and Peter Sutherland. Special thanks to Mary Lynk, Chantal Bernard, Nadia Greenidge, and our communications teams in Halifax and Toronto. We're going to give our last word today to El Jones who will debut a new poem she wrote especially for today's town hall. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Halifax. Thank you for being part of this special edition of The Current: Facing Race.

[Sound: Applause]

EL JONES: There's discounted black dolls on the shelves at Walmart. So black girls are assigned less value before they even start. A five year old black girl on the news led in handcuffs from class. So we're set up for failure before we can pass. White little girls they are treated like glass. But the teachers say black girls just have too much sass. Called security to knock a teenage girl from her desk flat on her back. Same as those girls at a pool party police knocked to the grass. Most of the time when it's us they don't even keep statistics. Can't find numbers on how many of us dead or missing. So then they tell us our experiences aren't realistic. Say that we ran away when we're kidnapped and trafficked. And when we come home then they label us ratched. They taught us histories that said that we're cannibalistic. Said that our cultures were backwards and simplistic. So now they claim that their stereotypes are our characteristics. They say we're not worthy of love, not worth being romantic. Say that we're acting so white if we think we're scholastic. Tell us our men won't make it past 25 without prison or the casket. Say it's against his nature to stay when the baby's in blankets. The hashtag on twitter says black girls are magic. But too many are born into circumstances that are tragic. They say we're the animals and put us through mental gymnastics. I'd tell you more of what they do to us but it's probably too graphic. When we try to talk about our issues people change the topic. But the Kardashian family uses our bodies for profit. We've been taught to be ashamed . We're told Instagram models are our best path to fame. If I said there's Black woman astronauts would you know their names. They deliberately only show some images in the frame. The blood of African queens still flows through our veins. But they'll make you believe we were fashioned for pain. It's not been so long since they had us in chains. I deserve more than the crumbs and whatever remains. Fire burns in my soul and it's lighting the flames. And don't think I'm your savage that you have to tame. With our natural hair that's our lioness mane. Uh uh we're Cleopatra returning to reign. But forgetting our heritage fits with their aims. We don't look at black queens and think we are the same. We see too much black booty and rarely black brains. White people lie to us and say to stay in your lane. And don't pull the race card when we try to complain. Got us working twice as hard til our energies drained . Call us angry black woman like it's a refrain. Say we're ugly and stupid, attitude and insane. It's like us just existing gives them a migraine. That's why Oscars so white like the grammy's again. Show us as mammies or welfare moms hooked on cocaine. When we have a black woman Prime Minister I'll crack the champagne. But stop telling Black woman how much we have gained. But there's little Black girls that we're fittin to train. See black girls aren't just magic we're hurricanes. And you better believe that they'll bring the propane. Because we're full of a power that you can't contain.

[Sound: Applause]

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February 21, 2018 Episode Transcript

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