Black Lives Matter Doesn't Speak for Me

The activist movement Black Lives Matter has been speaking up in Canada this summer. And media and politicians have been paying attention.

But in a recent op-ed, Toronto writer and journalist Septembre Anderson says she doesn't feel represented by the group, and cautions the media against using Black Lives Matter as spokespeople for all black communities, urging more critical discussion about the movement instead. 

The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length

What segment of the black community does Black Lives Matter represent? 

They represent a very small slice with academic connections. They don't speak to the larger black community...and even, rather, larger black communities. We're not a monolith. There are so many of us. Those who don't necessarily have the university education. Those who don't speak the specialized language of black liberation. Those who are in lower income brackets. Those who are parents. I don't feel that they're getting spoken for. I feel [Black Lives Matter] speak to the black literati or black bourgeoisie. 

You also say in your column there is systemic racism in Toronto and Canada. So how do you express the opinion you're expressing and still bring attention to that? 

[Black Lives Matter] have taken this American blueprint and misapplied it to the Canadian experience. Racism manifests in Canada differently than it does in the United States. So no, we don't have 580-something murders of unarmed black people by the police. We've got two.

But we do have the carding rate. We've also noticed with recent numbers an overrepresentation of black people in federal prisons, and that black people in federal prisons experience more violence by wardens etc than other populations.

We've also noticed there's an overrepresentation of black kids in child services, taken away from their parents and foster homes. We're noticing lower income despite having good university numbers. So it's much more systemic, meaning the system does the role instead of one-off violent incidents.

It can be very difficult to question a movement with momentum, and to question people who are in the eye of a media storm. How are Canada's largely white media doing at asking crucial questions? 

They're not. And that's part of the problem. We've had "liberal" media being tentative and careful with this issue and not asking the critical questions. And then we've had the more racist anti-black media with personal attacks. Which is why I wrote this thing. I'm hoping it gives media the opportunity to be more critical, and also to not view the black community as a monolith. 

When Black Lives Matter speaks they speak about black people. But we have to remember there's so much diversity within blackness. Not only to speak about men, women, those who exist outside the gender binary, but also to talk about people who are Jamaican, who are East African, who are West African. People who are here as refugees, people who are here as immigrants, people who were born here. We're not getting that discussion. 

We look at the Somali community here in Toronto and they are experiencing so much marginalization within black communities in Toronto. They are over-policed, they have a higher push-out/drop-out rate. That's a community that needs some attention and support and I don't see any Black Lives Matter speaking towards that. So I don't see them furthering the discussion, and applying that nuance.

What do you think will happen for Canada's black communities once the American story of police shootings fades, or the attention moves on, inevitably, to something else?

That's where organizing comes in. That's where mobilizing stops being so useful, and we have to talk about organizing. How do we manoeuvre and navigate and create things without the media's attention, or even without the government's support. Those are the conversations we need to have, those are the meetings we need to have in order to have the conversations and come up with the solutions to these problems. I'm just concerned with what's next. OK, we've got the attention, what's next? Talk doesn't always beget action, especially in the Canadian context. 

Click the play button above to hear Septembre Anderson's interview with guest host Jason Proctor