In Canada we spend most of our racial issues energy on the situation of aboriginal people, and with good reason. But because that issue (or set of issues) still looms so large, and because we can look directly south to the U.S. and see a far more egregious system of white-on-black racism, the problems black people face in Canada are rarely given as much attention as they warrant.
One person who fought this problem was Burnley “Rocky” Jones, a human rights activist and lawyer in Halifax, N.S. Jones died yesterday of a heart attack. Despite being an influential activist who spent several decades fighting injustice, Jones is not a household name across the country.
He founded Dalhousie University’s Transition Year Program, intended to help First Nations and African Canadian students entering the university, as well as the Dalhousie Law School Indigenous Black and Mi’kmaq Initiative and the Black United Front of Nova Scotia.
In a National Film Board video from the 1960s, Jones discussed how education had made fighting racism in Canada possible:
I don’t think you can reach the parents. I think that parents, our parents, mine included, have gone through a system where they’ve been put down. The educational difference between the young people here, and our parents, it’s so great. I mean, all young kids of today are much different from their parents. All young kids, and blacks are no exception.
I don’t think the issues are the same, I don’t think they look at them the same, but I think the kids are willing and I think they’re also able to look at the issues. They read more, TV is here, they’re able to travel more. I think it’s the kids, man. If you can show the kids that this system out there that they’re living in is basically a racist system… then you can do things.
Encounter at Kwacha House - Halifax by Rex Tasker, National Film Board of Canada
[CBC]