As a coloured woman born from Indo-Trinidadian parents, I look for what it means to be Black
Valini Lalla
Contributor
If we decide to think about Blackness as a characteristic based on phenotypes and biological features, then I’m not Black. For me, a woman of colour, born to parents of Indo-Trinidadian descent (my parents have lineage to India but were born and raised in the Caribbean island of Trinidad), the concept of what it means to be Black in Canada shouldn’t concern me, but it does.
Knowing all this, I guess you’re asking, why am I concerned with Black History Month and the construction of Blackness? This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a very long time, because exploring this avenue of history provides me with a better understanding of the complexities within my own ethnicity.
The concept of multiculturalism in Canada doesn’t help with these complexities, and in a lot of ways becomes a dangerous mechanism for looking at the differences between peoples. For people like me who are in a grey space because they don’t fit into one specific ethnicity neatly, multiculturalism has failed in some ways. For me, exploring Black history in Canada has allowed me to understand the complexities of race and ethnicity in the ways that could not be explored through multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism in Canada operates in such a way that specific cultures become tied to particular ethnicities—which leads to a dangerous path of singularizing those ethnicities and ignoring complexities.
While many critics argue that multiculturalism gives way to cultural extremism and doesn’t assist in fostering a country’s unified identity—such as discussions surrounding “interculturalism” in Montréal and Germany’s proclamation that multiculturalism has failed—I argue that when ethnicities are packaged and sold as one culture, it leaves little room for “inbetweenness.” This leaves people like me who can identify with both South Asian cultures as well as Afro-Caribbean cultures, left out from both categories.
Cultures are not monolithic and associating specific cultures with broad racial categories poses serious problems.
Multiculturalism in Canada is one of the many reasons that being from the Caribbean is immediately associated with being Black—and only Black—a gross misconception considering that Blackness is a diverse experience in itself and an extensive presence in Canada. However, since Blackness has been associated with the Caribbean recently, the culture practise is associated with Blackness.
The experiences of multiculturalism in Canada surrounds the diversity of food, language, and music, and as such, my experience has taught me that being Indo-Trinidadian has not been given much value within South Asian communities, since I don’t hold markers of authenticity in those communities.
My parents don’t speak another language other than English; we cook variations of “Indian” food (like curry chicken as opposed to butter chicken and roti instead of naan); and while I enjoy Bollywood films and songs, I am not as immersed into the culture as a “typical South Asian” would be. So I don’t identify with the stereotypical traits employed by the culture of multiculturalism.
Furthermore, many people throughout my lifetime have been quick to proclaim “You’re not brown! You’re Black!” This is a very confusing and loaded statement. In many ways, by dismissing what it means to be brown because I’m not from direct South Asian lineage, my default identity has always been Black.
And since being Black in Canada is also complicated, there are many questions that I continue to ask myself as I go through my studies. Maybe, it’s because of those loaded proclamations that I became interested in Black history and the ways that Blackness has been constructed. This investigation has been leading me on my journey as an adult.
I chose history as a field of study because I truly believe that to understand your identity you have to understand your history. However studying “grand narrative,” “mainstream” history, left me feeling more incomplete. I longed for images and stories of people like myself in the pages of my history texts.
It wasn’t until I began taking REI (Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity) courses at York that I realized some of the answers to my identity were found in the narratives of Black history. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the same skin colour as the people in these narratives or didn’t come from a direct ancestral lineage of African descent; I identified with the historical trajectory of people of African descent and in many ways found myself through that history.
Blackness isn’t a skin colour or a specific culture. To me and many others, it is a state of mind that defines itself through specific political and historical moments in time. So although I don’t hold the stereotypical markers of Blackness, I am concerned with its construction and history because it has been defined through my culture and history.
I’m not completely sure what it is that I wish to accomplish by occupying this space of Blackness, but I do know that the topic is very complicated. This essay hasn’t come close to conceptualizing the ways that race and culture have created identities. However, I hope that other people of colour who are frustrated by the singular notions of culture due to multiculturalism or unfiltered ignorance can look at the ways that history, specifically Black history can assist in them finding their own identities.
While I don’t agree with all of the criticisms against multiculturalism, I do believe that it needs to be re-examined and reworked to adapt to the differences between people. Celebrating and sharing culture is a wonderful thing, but when it begins to exclude on the basis of “authentic” culture, it fails for everyone.
However by studying different forms of Black history in Canada, I have learned the importance of oral history and the importance of differences between people which provide me with tools that guide me as I find my way.
While I do not specifically identify myself as Black, I relate to the ways that Blackness has been constructed and I wholeheartedly believe that the re-telling of Black history can benefit everyone.
