Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., died this week on the eve of Black History Month, which began yesterday and lasts the rest of February. The convergence was heartbreaking: the obituaries wistfully recalled Mrs. King’s lengthy uphill struggle alongside her husband for the basic rights of African Americans, but as Black History Month begins, it is clear that we need the Coretta Scott Kings of the world now more than ever. Her loss is a sad irony as racial tension simmers in our own city and around the world.
Judging from the media, Toronto is miraculously recovered from its pangs of guilt about the year 2005, which saw a record 52 gun murders, almost all the victims and perpetrators young, unemployed black men from rough neighbourhoods. An epidemic of hand-wringing swept the city as the year ended, and for a time it seemed as though progress might be made on Toronto’s deep, largely unacknowledged racial divide. But now, a month into 2006, the guns have fallen silent and the politicians, community leaders, and newspapers have followed suit.
Black History Month is dedicated to acknowledging the wrongs of the past and celebrating the people and institutions that fought to right them. Progress has been made, and marking it is important. But instead of just remembering Black History, it’s time to make it. A grim history of indifference, inaction, and indecision is unfolding right this minute in Malvern, Parkdale, Jane & Finch, and other Toronto neighbourhoods, and it is taking lives. During Black History Month 50 years from now, will U of T students and Torontonians look back at us with condemnation or admiration? What will we do, how will we reach out to the disenfranchised, which politicians will we lobby? Who will be our Mrs. King?
Toronto’s race divide isn’t the only painful issue on the radar this month.
Divisive rhetoric is going to be widespread at U of T this February: the new “Know Radical Islam Week” will directly precede the second annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” at U of T, with lectures, screenings, and other events organized by partisans on each side of the Israel-Palestine quagmire. Last year’s Israeli Apartheid Week provoked fierce protest and attracted the attention of the international media; there is scant comfort to be taken in the fact that now the outrage will be mutual.
This newspaper will report fully on both of these weeklong events, and intends to give them equal coverage. But we will say for the record that we find Know Radical Islam Week and Israeli Apartheid Week neither righteous nor depraved, but simply frustrating. The organizers of each Week have legitimate grievances and thankfully, they have the freedom in Canada to air them, loudly or softly, stridently or subtly, and without resorting to violence. But the them-and-us, with-or-against mentality embodied in these events is a dead end.
The day Coretta Scott King breathed her last in Rosarito, Mexico, two-thirds of Toronto’s 2005 gun deaths remained unsolved; about 6,500 Africans died of AIDS; 8.1 million African Americans were living in poverty, and 900,000 more were in jail; Israeli construction of its controversial fence and/or wall continued apace; on the far side of it, Hamas was settling into government, one finger stained with purple ink and the other on a trigger. The forces of racism, ignorance, misunderstanding, distrust, and blind hatred were gathering steam.
The world is poorer for the loss of Mrs. King, but perhaps by considering her tremendous sorrow and equally tremendous compassion, we will find the courage not just to remember our past, but to take control of our future.
