• Centering Black Youth Wellbeing

  Canada Multiculturalism- White Picket Fence, Great White North & BIPOC

  Posted by Rahma on September 23, 2025 at 4:01 pm

  Canada loves its diversity show. Since 1988, we’ve been the country that gets it—multicultural, welcoming, progressive. We put it on our money, in our tourism ads, on our international reputation. But check the receipts.

  Caribana gets defunded. Blockorama fights for survival. Black youth organizations get their budgets slashed while City Hall poses for photos at their events.

  But as Dr. Andrea Davis reminds us is Module 2 (2.2: Challenging Constructions of Black Youth Masculinities)that this celebration can be a shield.

  It lets us enjoy the flavours of Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia without facing how anti-Black racism—and colonialism—still shape our lives.

  I once had a white coworker smile and say,
  “Was colonialism fun? I mean, we get to have jollof rice and curry goat all in one place!”
  It was meant as a joke, but it landed heavy.
  Because behind that abundance is a history of displacement and violence we rarely name.

  Hyper-performative multiculturalism is Canada’s specialty: we’ve mastered celebrating culture while starving the communities that create it. We’ll fund the festival but not the youth center. We’ll Instagram the parade but ignore the program cuts. We’ll applaud Black excellence while Black kids still face suspension rates three times higher than their white classmates.

  It’s brilliant, really. Everyone gets to feel good. The politicians get their photo ops. The public gets their cultural tourism. And when the music stops, when the cameras leave, the real work—the funding, the policy changes, the daily grind of supporting Black communities—that’s someone else’s problem.

  This isn’t accidental. Comfort and complicity are best friends. It’s easier to celebrate Blackness as performance than to confront it as lived experience. It’s easier to cheer diversity than to challenge the systems that make it necessary to fight for basic equity.

  The danger isn’t that we don’t care. The danger is that we think caring is enough.

  Real solidarity doesn’t come with a parade permit. It shows up with sustainable funding, policy changes, and the uncomfortable conversations Canada loves to avoid. It means moving from audience to accomplice.

  As Dr. Andrea Davis Davies reminds us in her work on challenging constructions of Black youth masculinities, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988 promised inclusion, but what is performance when the system underneath is decaying, rotting, eating communities alive? What good are multicultural celebrations when the very structures meant to protect and nurture are exploitative and rotten at their core? So in our face, super that.

  Rahma replied 4 hours, 35 minutes ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
• 0 Replies

Log In to Reply