A hunter leaves his campsite and travels one mile due south. He then travels one mile due east, where he shoots a bear. He drags the bear back to his campsite by traveling one mile due north. What color is the bear? **
From the moment he announced his candidacy, I knew we — meaning Black Americans — were in for a wild ride. I couldn’t have anticipated that this dream, this historical moment that before only existed as a figment of Hollywood imagination would be made real, and in the United States no less.
I’m sure you know what dream I’m referring to, so I don’t even think I need to mention The Man’s name just yet. But give it time, it’ll come.
For the last two and some-odd years, we’ve watched as a relatively inexperienced first-term senator from Illinois captivated the global imagination and went on to reinforce the myth that in America, all things truly are possible. I am certain that it will go down as one of the pivotal moments in American history, and if I’m being honest with myself and others, I should say that I never thought I’d live to see this day.
Even here, above the 49th parallel, we couldn’t escape the media coverage of The Man’s meteoric rise, and his installation as The Most Powerful Leader in the Free World. Canadians love a good story (give a Newfie a chance, and they’ll spin yarn all night long), and there hasn’t been a story as inspiring, as uplifting, and with as much chance for redemption as this one.
Yet when looking through the lens of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), one might come to the conclusion that Obama’s story was one of pain, misery, injustice and victimization.
For the first time since moving to Canada, a Black person (people, if you count his family) was at the front and centre of a major developing news story, one that didn’t involve gangs, or drugs, or murder, or violence.
The CBC must’ve thought otherwise, because it seemed to me that for every profile of Obama, there was a profile of a former civil rights leader, usually male, who inevitably was asked what this moment meant to him. Women were mostly absent from the remembrances.
Amid the footage of celebrations, joy, happy tears, and yes, of racial reconciliation, CBC inserted footage of firehoses, of dogs, of silent marchers, bombed churches, and American injustice. It was as if there was no other lens through which to view a Black American story save one that involved violence and focused on Black people as victims, as the acted upon.
I’d like to take a moment to say something to anyone from the CBC who may happen upon this entry.
I am not a victim.
Oh sure, I grew up in the Southeastern United States, and yes, I am a Black woman.
But I have never been forced to ride in the back of a bus.
The only time a dog has been set loose on me was when I was picking my own dog up at the vet.
I’ve never had my head bashed in.
I’ve never been at the business end of a firehose, or a fire hydrant. My mother wouldn’t even let me play in the spray from a fire hydrant during Atlanta’s brutally long, hot summers.
And it may come as a surprise to you that I know many White Southerners who are kind, compassionate, loving people. Some of them are even my closest friends.
Resisting Representations
Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and did not move to the mainland until he entered university in 1979. I think that at some point during his early political career, Obama became acutely aware that unless he paid some sort of verbal homage to those civil rights leaders who came before him, he had no chance of making inroads in some African American communities. Yet Obama would be the first to tell you that their story is not his story.
There were no race riots in Honolulu. While the political situation in Indonesia was often unstable, I doubt that Obama had fire hoses turned on him, or ever knew how it felt to have police dogs tear into his flesh as he lay helpless on the ground.
What these representations of Barack Obama — and other Black Americans, by extension — say to me is that the CBC has absolutely no connection to Black communities in Canada, and very few connections to Black communities in the United States beyond those whose names appear on well-handled and dog-eared cards in the corporate Rolodex. Because these connections do not exist, only the vicious side of the Black American story is shown to Canadian viewers, and the only connection the producers can make to this Black American president is to remind Canadians again and again of America’s shameful racist history, and how Obama overcame…a history that he never had to live through.
As I was getting ready for work this morning, I tuned into CBC Vancouver’s morning radio show, The Early Edition. It’s the day after Obama’s visit to Canada, and the country is still basking in his warm, cafe-au-lait coloured afterglow. Host Rick Cluff was interviewing the director of the Vancouver Gospel Choir (I *know*), and commented that for him, the most arresting image from yesterday’s events was seeing President Obama come off the plane to greet Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, the Governor General of Canada. I’ve commented on Mme. Jean before, so I won’t belabor the point, but I will say that any cynicism I was feeling about this visit melted away as soon as I saw the smiles on their faces when they met for the first time.
Cluff then asked his guest what this meeting meant to him “as a Black man, from the South”. He asked the director, his voice thick with concern, to tell him what his life was like growing up in the South, and of course, the director was all to happy to oblige Cluff with stories of racial injustice and hatred.
Why Diversity in the Media Matters
This line of questioning was sadly predictable, but no less frustrating. Cecil Foster, a noted Canadian journalist and author, believes that this perspective exists not only because of last-minute, shoddy journalism, but because Canadian news media are incapable of telling a news story from any other perspective than a White perspective. In his book A Place Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada Foster relates his experience with the Canadian press as they scrambled to find available Black bodies to offer perspectives on The Million Man March, an event the press largely ignored. “Planning for the march wasn’t a part of their society,” Foster wrote, “therefore the news media needed only to inform Whites of what Blacks were doing.” He goes on to say:
This news was only important if it fitted in with the Whites’ perception of their world; that is, only if the news alerted them to any threats to their way of life posed by Blacks who tend to show up in mainstream news mainly as dangerous stereotypes.
The only experience many Canadians of any (non-Black) background have with Black Canadians or Americans is that which is beamed into their homes, cars, and computers. When the major Black American story involves our persecution, one can almost understand why so many in the Canadian media can only tell Barack Obama’s victorious story in contrast to that bleak and amoral time in American history.
Cutbacks in news organizations are very real, and many news organizations are cutting their research departments drastically in an effort to save money. Yet the producers, writers, and hosts of CBC television and CBC radio have had more than two years — they have had more than forty years — to learn to tell stories about Black Americans in which we are the actors.
President Obama’s story will open eyes across the globe. As he succeeds, and as he fails, as he inspires us, and as he angers us, the world will gain a perspective on a Black American story quite unlike any they’ve ever witnessed before. Perhaps we won’t be the “nation of cowards” any longer; maybe we will begin to foster those connections that make it easier to tell, fairly and simply, Black people’s stories of victory, of triumph, and of our day to day realities as citizens of the world.