More African-Nova Scotian decision makers needed, panel hears

Wednesday’s virtual talk was presented by Dalhousie University’s MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance

CITYnews halifax \ Michael Lightstone

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The province’s Black communities would benefit from more African-Nova Scotian decision makers in the government’s halls of power, a panel discussion hosted by Dalhousie University heard Wednesday.

Ways of achieving this include a community-based, nonpartisan education program providing lessons about our political system, to help people consider a run for public office, panelist Robert Wright said, and the government actively recruiting Black candidates for senior public service jobs.

He said having more African-Nova Scotians in leadership positions so there “are people in government to help government work more effectively in the Black community, is probably one of the most important things that we can do.”

But Wright, a longtime social worker and sociologist, a university instructor and a consultant, added a warning regarding employment in the provincial civil service.

In order for the recruiting and hiring to be done, “government must acknowledge that the civil service is a hostile environment for Black people” because they can face bigotry on the job, he said.

“You cannot hire Black people into a toxic environment and then task them with trying to address the systemic racism that exists in the community, when they’re battling the systemic racism every single day at their desks.”

With respect to community-based civics and political science lessons, Wright asked: “What are we doing to educate ourselves and our people about political processes?”

He said “it’s one thing to have a demonstration, and say: ‘Stop (police) street checks.’ It’s another thing to be engaged in the development of policy and legislation that would change the very nature of policing.”

According to promotional material, the key component of the online discussion was this: how the relationship between the African-Nova Scotian community and provincial government should be changed to better serve Black citizens “without unduly burdening the community.”

Panel member Lynn Jones, a veteran civil-rights activist, Black community archivist and labour movement campaigner, said African-Nova Scotians often find themselves reacting to the agenda of the government of the day.

That’s not productive, in her opinion.

“I personally am not interested in what the government agenda is,” Jones said. “I’m interested in the community agenda developing apart from whatever government’s doing, and how we’re going to move that forward.”

On the subject of societal systems and this province’s Black citizens, panelist Barb Hamilton-Hinch, an associate professor in Dalhousie’s School of Health and Human Performance and assistant vice-provost of equity and inclusion, said history has shown government decisions haven’t worked to support African-Nova Scotians.

Greater representation inside the power structure is needed, she said.

“We are not part of the fabric of the government in the ways that we need to be,” Hamilton-Hinch said.

“We have been left out and not included in so many of the decisions that have been made that affect us directly as people of African descent,” she said.

Panel member Carolann Wright, an economic development specialist with the African-Nova Scotian Communities team at Halifax Partnership, said “piecemeal stuff that is happening now,” directed at Nova Scotia’s Black communities, isn’t the way to go.

She said the provincial government’s role should be to acknowledge a holistic revitalization plan the community has developed, “not to develop the plan for (the) community but recognize the plan that the community developed and put resources to that.”

Discussion moderator Sylvia Parris-Drummond, chief executive officer of the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute and a consultant, said the level of public interest in the forum was encouraging.

“It inspires us for the hope of opening ourselves to believe that there’s a readiness to address the way race shapes society, and the need to dismantle the systems that perpetuate the injustices,” she said.

Wednesday’s virtual talk was presented by Dalhousie’s MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance, the learning institute and Inspiring Communities, a non-profit group founded in 2018 that advocates for social justice.

The non-profit institute is an Afrocentric organization established in 2012 to help “improve educational opportunities and outcomes for Nova Scotian learners of African descent,” its website says.

This month, the learning institute (and other groups) and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission have been hosting information sessions designed as “a two-way conversation between commission staff and members of the community,” says the commission’s website.

More information can be found here.

In the past, the human rights commission has been criticized by African-Nova Scotians and others for what they said was its failure to protect the rights of Black people. Critics have called for reform to the agency.

The Black Cultural Centre in Cherry Brook says Nova Scotia has 52 Black communities with roots stretching back generations.

In 2018, then-Premier Stephen McNeil proclaimed 2015-24 as the United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent in Nova Scotia. The following year, his government released a 22-page report which it said was an action plan addressing support of the UN’s declaration at home.

African Heritage Month begins in less than two weeks. The provincial launch of the 2022 version is scheduled for Jan. 26 and will be an online-only event, a government staffer said last week.

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth