The Skin I’m In: I've been interrogated by police more than 50 times—all because I'm black. ⇒
21 April 2015, early evening
I hate it when people ask me where I’m from, because my answer is often followed by, “But where are you really from?†When they ask that question, it’s as though they’re implying I don’t belong here. The black diaspora has rippled across Toronto: Somalis congregate in Rexdale, Jamaicans in Keelesdale, North Africans in Parkdale. We make up 8.5 per cent of the city’s population, but the very notion of a black Torontonian conflates hundreds of different languages, histories, traditions and stories. It could mean dark-skinned people who were born here or elsewhere, who might speak Arabic or Patois or Portuguese, whose ancestors may have come from anywhere in the world. In the National Household Survey, the term “black†is the only classification that identifies a skin colour rather than a nation or region.
Desmond Cole has been on fire, recently. Some great stuff. I still remember him from City Idol. I wish his monologue from that film was online.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.