This year, we celebrate Black History Month amid growing resistance to rapidly escalating threats to working people’s hard-won social, political and economic gains, including equality rights for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).
Echoing Donald Trump’s right-wing attacks in the US, governments and corporations across Canada are rolling back DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs which exist to promote and defend equal opportunities and protections in the workplace. These attacks are part of an effort to undermine working-class unity and solidarity, by depicting equity as a threat to society rather than as a necessity for social advance.
Marginalizing DEI is also a mechanism to mute criticism of, and therefore maintain, the racial wage and employment gaps. A 2023 report from Statistics Canada showed that, while racialized people are generally more likely than their non-racialized and non-Indigenous counterparts to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher, they have lower employment rates, poorer wages, and reduced pensions. Data from 2017 shows that racialized workers in Canada are paid an average of 30 percent less than white workers, with Black workers experiencing some of the largest gaps.
At the same time, the Carney government’s program of drastically cutting public services and employment, while increasing spending on the military and security infrastructure, is both deepening inequality and escalating xenophobia and racism. A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in October warned that deep cuts to the federal public service – from which the military and security departments are excluded – will disproportionately affect equity-seeking groups including Black people: “we can expect wider employment gaps, wider pay gaps and the erosion of access to critical employment benefits.”
In response to these rollbacks and threats, resistance is growing. Across the country, labour organizations have signalled that anti-racism and defence of migrant rights are a priority, and they are moving into action with BIPOC organizations to expose the dangers of the current attacks and build opposition. This includes mobilizing counter protests to shut down anti-immigrant rallies, which overwhelmingly target Black and racialized communities.
Black people and organizations are often at the heart of this resistance, as they have been since the very earliest years of what is now called Canada. Remembering and celebrating Black history means acknowledging, learning from and supporting this ongoing struggle against erasure, inequality and oppression, and for emancipation, full equality and liberation.
This includes Marie-Joseph Angélique, who escaped from slavery in Montreal in 1734 but was captured and executed on a charge of arson which burned much of the city. It includes Black railway porters, whose combined struggle for labour rights and against racism led to the formation of the Order of Sleeping Car Porters in Winnipeg in 1917, the first Black labour union in North America.
It includes Black-published abolitionist newspapers during the 19th century, Viola Desmond’s 1946 act of defiance in the Roseland Theatre, the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the 1969 student protest at Sir George Williams (Concordia) University. It also includes the movement against apartheid in South Africa, resistance to anti-Black police violence in Toronto and other cities in Canada, the Black Lives Matter movement, and so much more.
Black history is the history of Canada, and Black History Month is a key element of resisting Black erasure.
This month, the Communist Party of Canada reaffirms its commitment to uniting the working class on the basis of equality, and to helping build the struggle against racism. Inequality and the very idea of “race” are embedded in and replicated by capitalism. So, while we fight for immediate and radical reforms to confront and diminish social, economic and political inequality, we also build the struggle for socialism – for a society based on solidarity, equality and emancipation.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
[Photo: Mass Vancouver demonstration in solidarity with Black Lives Matter]
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