Martin Luther King Jr. is a hero to Kofi Hope, a U of T political science graduate and Rhodes scholar who yearns for the day when teaching black history won’t be confined to a single month.
Hope was the organizer of last year’s Bring Love In Not Guns (BLING) summit, which was set up following a rash of gun violence in the black community.
Hope and others want the history lessons of Black History Month to become more than overviews of such figures as Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. In addition, instead of being a “special subject” concentrated within its own month, Hope would rather see these matters taught, as a matter of course, alongside the rest of the curriculum.
“It’s part of the fight for a more inclusive and truthful history,” said Hope, who was hunkered down in Ryerson’s Student Centre on Tuesday night, busily helping the coordinator of the Freedom Summit, a follow-up to BLING taking place at Ryerson on March 24.
Hope said he doesn’t see the achievements of the black community over the course of history reflected in the teaching of history as a whole in Canadian institutions. Instead, he pointed out, an education in black history is often an optional part of most education systems-and usually takes place in a separate classroom.
“That doesn’t just include black people, but of all people of the world-that when we teach, it [should be] human history [being taught]. Which includes the voices of marginalized communities, and the voices of other cultures outside of Europe and the accomplishments of the world as a whole,” said Hope.
History lessons, in their current form, might not reveal that slavery once existed in the territory that now encompasses Canada’s borders up until the early 1800’s, or of the sacrifices made by black Canadians in the War of 1812.
Hope bemoans the fact that U of T’s Black History Month focuses on figures that are already familiar, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman-ignoring U of T’s own black pioneers.
These were figures like Leonard Braithwaite, who obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from U of T in 1950 and went on to become the first black Canadian to be elected as a member of the provincial parliament.
Canada’s first black physician graduated from U of T in the late 1800’s, according to Shawn Knights, whose work on an essay examining the history of black students at U of T spurred the creation of the first black alumni association in Canada in 2004.
Canadian classical soprano Measha Brueggergosman acquired her Bachelor of Music at this university before traveling the world singing in opera houses across Europe.
Many black U of T students say that although the prevailing message of this month may be that the position of blacks in Canadian society and around the world is far better than it once was, many in the community feel that there is much further to go in the struggle for equality.
“We aren’t fine. Even though significant strides have been made, there still needs to be a lot of changes. Not only for us black people, but for everyone else,” said Patrick Clarke, a second-year journalism student at UTSC, who is Jamaican.
“Everyone needs to fight and push for the equality that we all deserve.”
