Abstract
Since the official promulgation of multiculturalism by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau on October 8, 1971, there has been a concerted attempt to build awareness and acceptance of the policy by recognizing the achievements of individuals from immigrant and racialized groups. This chapter draws on extensive archival research to address the work of key figures who advocated for civil liberties, human rights and race relations in Canada within a context of state-sanctioned multiculturalism that uses prestigious annual awards to advance “harmonious race relations”. It proposes a reading of their strategic interventions in a Canadian public sphere as a form of shy elitism that grants prestigious awards and credentials to ‘accessible’ work that represses material that may appear too elitist or radical for ‘ordinary Canadians’.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Will Kymlicka, The Three Lives of Multiculturalism in S. Guo and L. Wong (eds) Revisiting Multiculturalism in Canada (Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2015); Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel. Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism, Employment Equity, and Globalization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
- 2.
See, for example, Himanji Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000); Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley and Sonali Thakkar (eds), Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2011); Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
- 3.
See, for example, John English, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968–2000 (Toronto: Vintage, 2010), Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Becoming multicultural: immigration and the politics of membership in Canada and Germany (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).
- 4.
Administrative Orders 40–46 (1942) passed under the War Measures Act, R.S.C. 1927 c. 206. Library and Archives Canada. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, Volume 8 (8 October 1971): 8545–8548, Appendix, 8580–8585.
- 5.
Christine Inglis, “Multiculturalism: New Policy Responses to Diversity,” MOST Policy Paper 4 (Paris: UNESCO, 1996) 16. Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel. Selling Diversity, 121. Yuzyk was the first to employ the word multiculturalism in a parliamentary debate on March 3, 1964. He also collaborated with other senators and groups such as the Canadian Cultural Rights Committee to develop a Thinkers’ Conference on Cultural Rights to study Canada’s Multicultural Patterns in the Sixties, which was held in Toronto from December 13 to 15, 1968.
- 6.
Green Paper on Immigration and Population (Manpower and Immigration Canada, 1975).
- 7.
Conseil National Parti Québécois (1975), 27–8. BaNQ Quebec City. 1987-10-003/6. P661, S4, D8.
- 8.
Dr. Mark MacGuigan, “Remarks delivered to the Canadian Library Association Annual Conference on behalf of the honourable John Munro,” Halifax, June 11, 1976. Library and Archives Canada, Jack Budd Cullen Fonds, R11236-2-1-E. 183-16-1.
- 9.
John Munro, “Confidential Political Cabinet Document,” October 22, 1976. Library and Archives Canada, Jack Budd Cullen Fonds, R11236-2-1-E. 134-4-1.
- 10.
Revolutionary Marxist Group Alliance, “Rosie Douglas” and “Rosie Douglas Defence”, Library and Archives Canada. MG 28 IV II 98. 41-10. 87-3.
- 11.
Robin Winks, “Introduction,” in R. Winks (ed.), Age of Imperialism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1969); Robin Winks and J. Rush, “Introduction,” in R. Winks and J. Rush, Asia in Western Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 5; Robin Winks, “Getting to Know the Beau Savage,” The Opening of the Pacific: Image and Reality (London: National Maritime Museum 1971), 16. Also see Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Daniel McNeil, “Confronting ‘Liberal Lies’ about Black Canada: George Elliott Clarke and the Children of Frantz Fanon,” Slavery, Memory, Citizenship, eds. Paul E. Lovejoy and Vanessa Oliveira (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2016), 191–210.
- 12.
Robin Winks to Yale History Faculty c. 1967. Robin William Winks Papers, Yale University. 1992-M-070 5.
- 13.
Daniel Hill, Negroes in Toronto: A Sociological Study of a Minority Group (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1960), 175, 221. Canadian Association for Coloured Youngsters, Script for the slide show, ‘A child is a child is a child.’ March 2, 1964. Archives of Ontario. RG 76-3-0-263 17. Also see Daniel McNeil, “Ushering Children Away From a “Light Grey World”: Dr. Daniel Hill and his Pursuit of a Respectable Black Canadian Community,” Ontario History 99:1 (2007), 96–106.
- 14.
Meeting between the Continuing Committee on Race Relations with Douglas Creighton, publisher of the Toronto Sun, Archives of Ontario, August 31, 1978. RG 74-44 B306105. For examples of the Toronto Sun’s position on affirmative action, political correctness and the civilizing mission of British imperialism that antagonized racialized communities see, for example, its editorials on “racial lunacy” and “curried history” on May 25 and June 1, 1978.
- 15.
Bob Bowers, “Interview with Daniel Hill,” CKLW, June 4, 1981. Archives of Ontario. Daniel Hill Fonds. F 2130-11-0-17. Daniel Hill, Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada (Agincourt, ON: Book Society of Canada, 1981).
- 16.
David Lewis Stein, “The counterattack on diehard racism,” Maclean’s, October 20, 1962.
- 17.
Institute of Public Affairs, The Condition of the Negroes of Halifax City, Nova Scotia (Dalhousie University, 1962).
- 18.
Ibid., iii.
- 19.
Gus Wedderburn, “From Slavery to the Ghetto: The Story of the Negro in the Maritimes,” A Paper Presented to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, March 26, 1968.
- 20.
Gus Wedderburn to David Orlikow, February 24, 1969. Library and Archives Canada, Jewish Labour Committee. MG28 V 75. 41-1.
- 21.
Marvin Schiff, “Director’s Report to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission,” May 26, 1969. Library and Archives Canada, Jewish Labour Committee. MG28 V 75. 41-1. Emphasis added.
- 22.
George Elliott Clarke proffers alternative interpretations to Henry’s inability to recognize cultural differences among people of African descent, and insists that critical, x-ray exact scholarly work must recognize the radical, liberal and conservative dimensions of black Nova Scotia, Africadia and African Canadian culture. George Elliott Clarke, Odysseys Home (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 8, 13, 14, 113. Clarke’s doctoral dissertation maintained that English Canadian and African American cultures “share a similar political philosophy, namely, that of a classical conservative collectivism stressing communitarian values and a respect for tradition”, and had both been cast in a “dissident or dissenting relationship with mainstream American – essentially liberal – culture.” George Elliott Clarke, A Comparative Study of the Development of English Canadian and African American Poetry and Poetics (PhD diss., Queen’s University, 1993). Also see Daniel McNeil, “Confronting ‘Liberal Lies’ about Black Canada: George Elliott Clarke and the Children of Frantz Fanon,” Slavery, Memory, Citizenship, eds. Paul E. Lovejoy and Vanessa Oliveira (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2016). Daniel McNeil, “Wrestling with Multicultural Snake Oil: A Newcomer’s Introduction to Black Canada,” Unsettling the Great White North: African Canadian History, eds. M. Johnson and F. Aladejebi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Forthcoming.
- 23.
The black male who lodged the complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission accepted the apology of the Toronto Metropolitan Police force for incorrectly clocking his speed, and the assumptions made by the police officer about a black male and a white female in a large white car with a red leather interior. “He and his wife have decided to leave Canada and return to his home in Trinidad, partially because of the continuing harassment they have experienced, not just from the police, but from Canadian society.” Ontario Human Rights Commission, Community Relations Report, January 17, 1979. Archives of Ontario. Race Relations Policy and Program Records. RG 74-44. B306105.
- 24.
“Is Multicultural Government Policy Working?” Ethnicity, January 30, 1985. Library and Archives Canada, R8446. 1993-0300.
- 25.
Ibid. Bonnie Gross consistently asked guests on Ethnicity to describe how they had experienced the burden of anti-black racism, but did not ask her guests to share their understanding and experiences of blackness as a political culture that resisted racism. In response, guests such as Vera Cudjoe, the founder of Black Theatre Canada, and Robin Breon, Black Theatre Canada’s administrative director, patiently pointed out that Black Theatre companies in Canada had audiences that were more diverse and reflective of Toronto than the mostly white audiences that attended supposedly universal and state-sponsored theaters. Ethnicity, Black Theatre in Canada, April 1985. Daniel Caudeiron, the executive director of the Black Music Association, assertively maintained that blackness was a culture that had helped the world to dance. Ethnicity, Black Music Association, May 28, 1985.
- 26.
Francs Henry, “Our Backgrounds,” https://www.yorku.ca/fhenry/background.htm Emphasis added.
- 27.
On Gilroy’s penchant for the phrase “it bears repetition” see, for example, Paul Gilroy The Black Atlantic, 105, 155, 218, 223; “Exer(or)cising power: black bodies in the black public sphere,” in Dance in the City, ed. Helen Thomas (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), 24, 32; Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) 59, 165, 196, 237; Darker than Blue, 30, 33, 71, 77, 82, 137; “Shameful History: The Social Life of Races and the Postcolonial Archive.” Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing 11.2 (2011), 25, 30; “‘My Britain is fuck all’: Zombie multiculturalism and the race politics of citizenship.” Identities, 19.4 (2012): 384.
- 28.
See, for example, The Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing, which includes “the quality of writing, accessible to a general reading audience” as a selection criterion (http://atlanticbookawards.ca/scholarly-writing/) and The Wilson Award for books that succeed in making “Canadian historical scholarship accessible to a wide and transnational audience” (https://wilson.humanities.mcmaster.ca/wilson-institute-prizes/)
- 29.
A fuller history of shy elitism would consider the manner in which it complicates and exemplifies an elitist system of settler colonialism that rewarded work written with due decorum in English or French even if the abstractedness of such work meant that many average citizens would not read it. Ian McKay, “After Canada: On Amnesia and Apocalypse in the Contemporary Crisis,” Acadiensis, 28.1 (1998): 76–7 n1. Paul Rutherford, “Made in America: The Problem of Mass Culture in Canada,” in Frank Manning and David Flaherty (eds.) The Beaver Bites Back? American Popular Culture in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). It would also analyze the way prestigious awards in Canada celebrate and defend the primacy of the category “individual” and work with book clubs, top 10 lists in the interests of promoting marketable, accessible texts. Jennifer Scott and Myka Tucker-Abramson, “Banking on a Prize: Multicultural Capitalism and the Canadian Literary Prize Industry,” Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne 32. 1 (2007): 5–20.
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McNeil, D. (2020). Shy Elitism: A New Keyword in Critical Multiculturalism Studies. In: Mielusel, R., Pruteanu, S. (eds) Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30158-3_10
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