Author: Robin Browne

Categories
GDPR GoC Regulation SurCap

All the great “free” stuff we get from Google and Facebook is costing us a lot more than our privacy

In my post, COVID-19 could mean we lose and surveillance capitalists win — again, I discussed some of the challenges of surveillance capitalism (surcap). This post starts the discussion of what we can collectively do about those challenges.

One of the first issues is who is “we”? Only those who think there’s a problem will see the need for a solution. However, unlike the rise of the resistance to industrial capitalism that was partly fuelled by people slaving under horrible working conditions, surveillance capitalism’s most negative effects are mostly cloaked. Most people see only the benefits like free search, email and YouTube.  

For those that do see a problem, there are, thus, two challenges:

  1. How to fight back.
  2. How to get more people to join the fight.

As knowing how to fight back is key to getting more people to join the fight, let’s focus on that for now.

The success of surveillance capitalism is due to a lot more than lots of folks feeling hooked on great, free tools like Facebook and Gmail. In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, released in February 2019, Shoshana Zuboff identifies 16 reasons for surcap’s success. Here are 7 of them, including the most personal ones:

  1. Unprecedented – Surcap is a completely new phenomenon so we have a hard time fully understanding it as we tend to compare it to things we know.
  2. Velocity – “Surcap rose from invention to domination in record time”, says Zuboff. She says this is by design to freeze resistance while distracting us with immediate gratification.
  3. Inevitability – Surcap rhetoric makes us believe that it’s all inevitable and we should simply accept it, enjoy its benefits – and don’t think too much about any possible down side.
  4. Inclusion – Paraphrasing Zuboff, “Many people feel that if you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist. People all over the world raced to participate in Pokemon Go. With so much energy, success and money flowing into surcap, standing outside of it, let alone against it, can feel like a lonely and risky prospect.”
  5. Ignorance – Surcap’s inner workings are secretive by design. Their systems are intended to ensnare us, preying on our vulnerabilities bred by an unequal balance of knowledge, and amplified by our scarcity of time, resources and support.
  6. Dependency – Most people find it difficult to withdraw from using surcap’s free tools and many wonder if it is even possible.
  7. No alternatives – There just aren’t great alternatives to Google Search, in terms of quality, and Facebook in terms of ubiquity. There are better alternatives to things like Gmail and Google Docs but, with so many people using them, it’s very hard to switch.

However we decide to combat surcap, one thing is clear: we can’t do it on our own. Stopping surcap’s march will require many of us constantly pushing our governments to bring in effective regulation – and working to get more folks to join the fight. 

In terms of government regulations, Zuboff says many hopes today are pinned on the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became enforceable in May 2018. The EU approach fundamentally differs from that of the US in that companies must justify their data activities within the GDPR’s regulatory framework. The regulations introduce several key new substantive and procedural features, including:

  • a requirement to notify people when personal data is breached;
  • a high threshold for the definition of “consent” that puts limits on a company’s reliance on this tactic to approve personal data use;
  • a prohibition on making personal information public by default;
  • a requirement to use privacy by design when building systems;
  • a right to erasure of data; and
  • expanded protections against decision making authored by automated systems that imposes “consequential” effects on a person’s life.

The new regulatory framework also imposes substantial fines for violations, which will rise to a possible 4% of a company’s global revenue, and it allows for class-action lawsuits in which users can combine to assert their rights to privacy and data protection. 

In May, 2019, Jim Balsillie, co-founder of Research in Motion that created the Blackberry, made other suggestions for what governments can do. Balsillie appeared as a witness, alongside Zuboff and Zucked author Roger McNamee, at a hearing of the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy, in Ottawa and suggested:

  1. Eliminating tax deductions of specific categories of online ads.
  2. Banning personalized online advertising during elections.
  3. Implementing strict data governance regulations for political parties.
  4. Providing effective whistle-blower protections.
  5. Adding explicit personal liability alongside corporate responsibility to affect CEO and board of director decision-making.
  6. Creating a new institution for like-minded nations to address digital co-operation and stability.

The Grand Committee is a first step towards achieving #6 as it has members from around the globe, some of whom come from countries like the Philippines which are already experiencing life and death consequences of uncontrolled surcap. However, it is #5 that may have the most impact given one of the most dangerous impacts of surcap: an increase in online hate fuelled by real “fake news”.

One of the points that came through clearly at the Committee hearing is the most disturbing: surcap companies resist removing hateful content and fake news because it generates by far the most engagement and the most money. Balsillie’s point was that making CEOs and board members personally liable for such content would make them think twice about letting it proliferate on their platforms.

So now it’s up to us to demand that our political leaders start implementing ideas like Balsilli’s.

Our very freedom is at stake just like it was during the Second World War. Only this time, instead of being controlled through blatant terror by a power that knows very little about us, we’re being controlled through hidden systems by powers that know almost everything about us.

Categories
COVID19 SurCap

COVID-19 could mean we lose and surveillance capitalists win — again

This post is on rabble.ca

Update, April 18 – Since posting this, I found some good blog posts on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Barbara Fisher’s post, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: A Mixed Review on the Inside Higher Ed site, nicely explains how businesses aren’t just using the predictions about our behaviour that they buy from surveillance capitalists to help them better target their ads:

“That Fitbit your employer paid for? It feeds information to insurers that can use to change your behaviour and reduce costs – or charge you more if you don’t comply. Google drove into our neighbourhoods with camera-equipped cars to capture images of our communities and create detailed maps that will be useful for routing their self-driving cars and even planning entire cities where everything will be connected and everyone’s life experience moment by moment can be rendered as data.”

Categories
Education OCDSB Trustees

Covid19 brings out the best in all of us (ok, only some of us)

Although the covid19 pandemic has generated lots of great stories of people coming together to help one another it has also led to the kind of stories that don’t surprise Black folks one bit: covid-related confrontations with white people.

On Friday March 27, a young Black man here in Ottawa was the victim of such a confrontation with a white woman who apparently was a self-appointed covid19 rule enforcer.

After being cooped up for weeks, the young man had sought out, and found, an empty basketball court to shoot some hoops. While there, he was confronted by a woman who accused him of breaking covid19 social distancing protocols and proceeded to interrogate and verbally threaten him. She then posted her version of events on Facebook, including this comment:

“So I had to go to the drugstore for an essential and then bought deodorant. I am sure my pets love me no matter what I smell like. When I got home people playing basketball in the park. Went over to politely ask them to leave, kid gave me attitude and played dumb. Then I said, parlez-voux francais? Yeh kid I can argue in both official languages.” (sic)

In her post, she also revealed what elementary school the boy, now in high school, had attended.

According to the boy’s father, and clearly evident from the picture taken by the woman herself, his son was in fact at the park by himself as he had specifically looked for a hoop with no one around.

(I include the photo only because it was already published online as, unlike the woman apparently, I want to respect the boy’s privacy and I care about his safety). The boy also told his father that the woman said, “Oh you’re graduating? If you are, I will be at the graduation ceremony and I will trip you before you get your diploma.” and “You’re going to go to Innes road”, clearly making the racist insinuation that, because he is Black, the young man is destined to end up in Ottawa’s notorious detention centre.

The woman’s actions were appalling, especially given who she is: Donna Blackburn, the Ottawa Carleton District School Board trustee for the very school the boy attends.

Blackburn’s actions violate school board policy on a number of fronts.

The Board’s Code of Conduct states that, “It is a policy of the Board that a positive school climate exists when all members of the school community feel safe, comfortable, accepted and valued.” Blackburn’s actions will clearly make the young man feel the exact opposite. 

The Code’s standards of behaviour fall into two categories: things that people should do and things they should not do. It states that all members of the school community should, “act with decorum and be respectful of other Board members, staff, students and the public.” The Code says that school community members should not engage in bullying behaviours and what Blackburn did was clearly bullying.

Blackburn’s actions also violate the Board’s privacy policy which states that members of the school community should, “…practice good digital citizenship by being respectful when they post photos of others, which includes only posting photos involving…students with permission.”

This is not the first time that Blackburn has run afoul of Board policy. In December 2016, she was under fire for accusing her Board colleague, Erica Braunovan, of “buying her children” after Braunovan adopted two young daughters from Guyana. Then, a year later, in December 2017, Braunovan filed another complaint against Blackburn for emails Blackburn sent her that, once again, violated the Board’s Code.

The Black community quickly mobilized to demand Blackburn’s resignation and that effort continues. However, the larger question is why Blackburn has been allowed to remain and do so much damage for so long? It’s true that, as she’s an elected school trustee, she can’t be “fired”, but there are clearly other ways to get problem trustees to “see the light” and do the right thing. This seems to have been accomplished with York region school trustee, Nancy Elgie, following public outrage at her racist comments.

Both cases also raise questions about why these people were elected in the first place. Did they only put on their metaphorical white hoods after the election – or did voters elect them with their hoods proudly on?

Food for thought…

Categories
#TFTP #wetoo 613-819 Black Hub FBEC Government of Canada Plantation tales

Tales from the Plantation #2

When I left off my story in Tales from the Plantation #1, the formal work action plan, and the manager who had imposed it on me, were both gone and I was back working in the buildings from which I had been banned, as if nothing had happened.

I worked like this for months, feeling a bit like Keanu Reeves’ character Mr. Anderson from The Matrix. All my colleagues seemed unaware that we worked in a place that bans people from buildings for asking questions.

In the summer, I asked for the opportunity to work with an organization outside the government on interchange. Most interchanges are for one year and the organization you go to pays your salary. Interchanges are one of the many privileges, like french training, travel and acting opportunities, that me and other Black employees would often see our white colleagues get but would rarely get ourselves. I asked to go for a two year interchange, paid entirely by ECCC, and they agreed.

I started on interchange with the Federation of Black Canadians (FBC) in January 2019. Around my third day, I was forwarded an email from an FBC steering committee member, who had decided to resign, who described problems with the organization in terms of lack of competency, transparency, accountability – and even basic humanity among steering committee members. I was shocked, as I had chosen to go on interchange with FBC because everything I knew about it, before receiving this person’s email, was great. They had co-organized the inaugural National Black Canadians Summit, in Toronto in December 2017, with the Michaelle Jean Foundation and their leader was Judge Donald McLeod who had a fairy tale back story having overcome the adversities of growing up in Toronto’s Regent Park to become a lawyer then a judge.

However, shortly after starting with the FBC, I saw examples of every issue the departing steering committee raised – and more. Like I had done at ECCC, I questioned behaviour that I felt demonstrated a lack of transparency, competence and connection to community concerns. On May 27, the FBC terminated my interchange. In their email to my department announcing my termination, the FBC made 10 allegations against me including that I had “physically threatened my direct report” at the FBC, a completely false claim.

My ECCC manager at the time responded to the termination of my interchange by launching an investigation – against me. She hired a consultant who used to work at Correctional Services Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency and whose LinkedIn profile showed no evidence of any investigative experience. After a five month investigation, during which he interviewed only me and my two FBC accusers, he found all 10 allegations “founded”.

I am currently in the process of suing the investigator for libel in small claims court and the manager who launched the investigation has since left the department.

In February 2019, I also filed a complaint against ECCC with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). I was reluctant to do this as I saw the CHRC as being quite ineffective in dealing with race-based complaints. (I’m old enough to remember what happened to whistle blower Shiv Chopra.) However, a friend convinced me, saying that it was important to get such complaints on record as one measure of the magnitude of the problem. So, I filed.

At first, the Commission acted as expected and sent me a letter saying they would not deal with my complaint. As the letter they sent was missing a page, they sent another one that had a glaring contradiction. In one paragraph, it said the Commission would not deal with my complaint because I hadn’t exhausted my departmental harassment process then, right below, there was a paragraph explaining how I had exhausted my departmental harassment process. I responded with a letter saying that I was co-founder of the Federal Black Employee Caucus, that I felt the CHRC was useless, and that them sending me an incomplete letter, followed by one with a glaring contradiction, showed that, not only are they not paying attention to detail, they’re definitely not paying attention to larger things like systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism. Two weeks later, they sent me a letter saying they would deal with my complaint.

Things moved quickly at first, with us getting through the mediation phase to the investigation phase in mere months (mediation failed). However, I have been informed that, having completed its investigation, the Commission is now deciding whether to dismiss my complaint or refer it to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and that this will take…two years. This, once again, renders the Commission useless to the many people who are suffering horrific harassment daily.

So what can people do? We’ll look at that more closely in TFTP #3.

For more on the Federation of Black Canadians, see Desmond Cole’s blog posts:

Black Tea—the truth about the Federation of Black Canadians

Steeped Tea—An update on the Federation of Black Canadians

Justice Donald McLeod resigns as chair of the Federation of Black Canadians—again

Note: The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Black Employee Caucus. To contact an FBEC spokesperson use the Contact Us page on FBEC’s website.

Categories
#TFTP #wetoo FBEC Government of Canada Plantation tales Public service

Tales from the Plantation #1

Some Black employees of the Canadian federal government, including me, refer to our workplaces as “the plantation”. We don’t do this because we’re in chains, being underpaid and over-whipped. We do this because the treatment that many of us face is based on systemic anti-Black racism just like slavery was in Canada. Here is my story.

I am an African-Canadian man who has worked for the federal government for over 20 years, the last 11 with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) Communications. I have also lived with depression for most of my adult life and for all 11 years that I have worked with ECCC. During those 11 years I got used to seeing my white colleagues, sometimes junior ones, being given privileges that I was denied. I didn’t question it because, like most depressed people, I didn’t think very much of myself, or my work, so I thought it was because my work wasn’t good enough. This is despite the fact that I had consistently good performance reviews.

However, about three years ago, I learned to manage my depression in a way that allowed me to start doing things I had never done before, including questioning my treatment at work.

In early 2018, I questioned one of my managers on her decision to give an acting position to one of my white, junior colleagues, who had been with us for three months, without even offering it to me who was the senior team member. Her response was to suddenly say that my work wasn’t meeting expectations, despite my consistently good performance reviews, and to immediately impose a formal work action plan on me. Action plans are normally the last resort after many efforts to help employees deal with performance issues. Action plans are also required before firing someone.

In response to my manager imposing the action plan, I filed a union grievance against her citing anti-Black racism and the impact of her actions on my depression, the symptoms of which had begun to return.

The day after filing my grievance, my manager accused me of “several aggressive incidents in the last two weeks”, a completely unfounded claim, and said they were “concerned for my health and safety and the health and safety of my colleagues”. She then ordered me to have a medical exam to prove I was fit for work, despite the fact that I had returned to work 10 days earlier, cleared by my doctor, from stress leave I had taken due to the treatment I was experiencing.

My union representative, who was at the meeting, told me that I had no choice but to do another medical exam, and leave immediately, or my bosses would have me escorted out by security. I left immediately and was off work for about a month. During that time, my manager, without informing me, and with the support of the director general, had me officially banned from all ECCC buildings and circulated the poster below to all ECCC security guards.

It says, “Access revoked by order of XXX. As of today, March 16, 2018, Robin no longer has access to any Environment and Climate Change Canada buildings. If Robin Browne presents himself at reception of [any ECCC building], ask him professionally for his access card and to leave the building. If Mr. Browne refuses to cooperate, please contact a security officer immediately at 819-918-8903. Don’t hesitate to call 911 if ever Robin shows signs of violence.”

I got what I now call my “mugshot”, through Access to Information. I also contacted my Member of Parliament and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s office and told them everything that had happened. I told them that since Prime Minister Trudeau had recently become the first Prime Minister to acknowledge systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism exist in Canada, including citing the lack of support for Black people with mental health issues, banning Black guys with depression from ECCC buildings, on false pretenses, was pretty bad optics.

A few weeks later my formal work action plan, and the manager who had imposed it, were gone and I was back working in the buildings from which I had been banned, as if nothing had happened.

There is more to tell, but that will come in later posts. Let me end this one by saying that I have continued to question discriminatory treatment of myself and my colleagues and the response like I describe above has continued non-stop. Let me also say that I am co-founder of the Federal Black Employee Caucus (FBEC) currently organizing to help the government fulfill the Prime Minister’s commitments and the attendance, and stories shared, at our meetings clearly show my story is disturbingly common in the federal public service.  I co-founded FBEC in December 2017, just months before the non-stop harassment began.

But maybe it’s just a coincidence…

Note: The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Black Employee Caucus. To contact an FBEC spokesperson use the Contact Us page on FBEC’s website.

Categories
613-819 Black Hub National Black Canadians Summit

Help send two Ottawa Black youth to the National Black Canadians Summit

******* UPDATE March 18 ******

We had to cancel the fundraising campaign as the Summit was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. When the Summit is back on, the campaign will be too!

****************************************

From March 20-22, Canada’s Black communities will converge in Halifax to celebrate the history of Black Nova Scotia and gather for the 3rd National Black Canadians Summit (NBCS). This year’s Summit is youth-led and youth focussed.

Help the voice of Ottawa’s youth be heard!

The 613/819 Black Hub is raising money to send two young people from an Ottawa community to the Summit so they can share their valuable knowledge and experience and learn from others.

The Summit is fast approaching (and we just came up with this idea) so we need your help ASAP!

Donate here: 613-819 Black Hub NBCS youth fund GoFundMe page

Together we grow stronger.

Categories
FBEC Self-advocacy Unions

Tales from the Plantation #3

When I tell people my stories captured in TFTP 1&2 they’re always shocked and often say, “Oh, I’m so sorry you’re going through this!”

Whenever someone says that, I always think it would be like saying it to the students who helped launch the US civil rights movement, violating Jim Crow laws by simply asking to be served at a restaurant. Despite being screamed at, hit and doused in hot coffee, I’m pretty sure those students would have responded the same way I do: “No need to feel sorry for me. This is the price of change.” Every successful social movement needs a steady stream of people willing to challenge the system head on to draw it out in the open. This is even more true in Canada in 2020 where we are fighting anti-Black racism and white supremacy cloaked in myths of how “Canadians are all so polite”. Most Canadians are polite – until someone or something threatens their real, or perceived, power or privilege – then we see Mr. or Ms. Hyde emerge in all sorts of colors.

But I’m not encouraging martydom. Hell no. We need you to stay alive, healthy and in the fight. However, the established channels for fighting back in the federal public service – talking with one’s manager, or filing departmental harassment complaints or union grievances are, for the moment, very limited in their effectiveness. Therefore, here are the some things I’ve used to fight back:

  1. Access to Information and Privacy requests – as I said in TFTP#1, I got my mugshot via Access to Information (ATIP) and have gotten other invaluable evidence of discrimination that way. ATIP is cheap and fast. All you need do is go on the ATIP site and pay $5 for a request for general documents. If you’re looking for things specifically about you, you can make a privacy request on the same site for free.
  2. The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) – As I said in TFTP#2, I filed a complaint against Environment and Climate Change Canada with the CHRC. In the early stages, the Commission did something that no one else had, up to that point: they asked my manager for explanations of the things in my story. Although my complaint is now stuck for the next two years awaiting a decision, it still has impact. No department wants to be seen to be violating people’s Charter rights. Also, should the Commission refer your case to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal then, win or lose, the entire version of your story gets posted on the internet. It’s kind of like having your day in court – then having them post the entire transcript online. #exposed
  3. Small claims court – also in TFTP#2, I said I was suing the investigator my former manager hired, for libel, in small claims court. Like ATIP, small claims court is cheap, compared to regular court. It has cost me about $500 so far and the next step is a “settlement conference” at which I’ll get to plead my case before a judge, with me as the plaintiff and the white guy I’m suing as the defendant. This is powerful because, systemic discrimination requires chains of people to support actions that protect the system and, therefore, their own power and privilege. As public servants, we don’t have the right to sue any of our public servant managers in the chain but we can sue 3rd-party contractors. As word spreads that Black people are suing 3rd-party contractors who participate in discriminating against them, that weakens the chain.

None of the established processes for fighting back have led to anyone being held accountable for anything they’ve done to me or to any Federal Black Employee Caucus member as far as I’m aware. The methods above have.

The unions, in which I always had great faith, until now, have done almost nothing for me or any FBEC member I know. This is due to a number of factors:

  1. The union reps have little training dealing with anti-Black racism.
  2. The union reps have massive workloads and are told to prioritize cases where people are facing imminent termination, and sexual harassment cases.
  3. Union reps recommend solutions involving “3rd-party” mediators that aren’t 3rd party. In my case, that was ECCC’s former Office of Conflict Management (OCM) that my union rep said was supposed to act as an unbiased mediator between employee and employer. After finding the OCM process painfully slow, I did some checking and learned that the OCM was, in fact, run by Labour Relations that also represents management. I guess that’s why they called it the Office of Conflict Management and not the Office of Conflict Resolution.

FBEC is working with the union management to get the unions to do their jobs but, in the meantime, people need tools that work, so please share this post.

Note: The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Black Employee Caucus. To contact an FBEC spokesperson use the Contact Us page on FBEC’s website.

Categories
Black brand branding marketing

Is there a Black brand?

Is there a Black brand and, if so, do Black people own any part of it?

I’ve thought a lot about this throughout my life but the picture above, from a local mall, inspired this post. It’s the perfect visual analogy of using Blackness to sell as the products are clear in the foreground but the Black folks are obscured in the back so you can’t see them clearly – and there’s a 90% chance this display is in a store not owned by Black folks. The Black brand is also used to sell things but images of real Black life are omitted or obscured and Black folks don’t own most of the places this happens.

Using Blackness to sell products means showing a very narrow image of Blackness, not Blackness and Black people in all (or any) of their complexity.

The most obvious examples are in music, sports and the associated clothing. A recent experience I had with my 15-yr-old son and his white teammates on the way to a soccer tournament really got me thinking about this. The boys were playing their music in the car – exclusively rap music. At one point, I laid down the rule that they could only play music that had less than two BPMs (“bitches” per minute). Being an old guy brought up with Public Enemy’s Fight the Power, hearing rap music with mostly young, Black men mentioning “bitches” and/or money every few seconds got me thinking about how narrow an idea of Black men my son and his friends were being exposed to. It also got me Googling.

As usual, I found lots of stuff that made me realize the issue is more complex than I originally thought – and I also got an important history lesson.

The term brand comes from branding living property, i.e. cattle and slaves. In her Aug. 2017 article What Is Branding? A Brief History, Taylor Holland says, “What we brand, how we brand it, and why we brand it has changed. But branding in the twenty-first century is still about taking ownership.” Black folks must keep this in mind.

One article I found that backed up what I suspected was Hannah J Davies’ Guardian article, For white hipsters, blackness is a thing to consume but not engage with. Davies’ argues that the blackness marketed to white folks can’t be “too black” and highlights the problem for Black creators. “How can you create great art in a world where being “too black” is seen as a legitimate criticism?”, she asks. She cites examples of stories “that prioritise a proximity to whiteness picking up awards over those with radical narratives.” She mentions Boots Riley’s anti-capitalist, Afrofuturist epic Sorry to Bother You, which wasn’t even nominated at the Oscars (and I bet you never heard of), as an example of one of those radical narratives. To that, I’d add Nate Parker’s 2016 Birth of a Nation based on the true story of the slave rebellion led by slave preacher, Nat Turner. Davies gives an alternate opinion on two popular Black cultural symbols: Meghan Markle and the movie Green Book. She quotes Elaine Musiwa in a 2017 article for US Vogue saying, “Meghan Markle is the type of black that the majority of right-leaning white America wishes we all could be, if there were to be blackness at all.” On Green Book, which won five Oscars including Best Picture, Davies reveals (at least to me) that the film was created by white people and despised by the family of its Black subject, pianist Don Shirley. “Why does the turgid black-white buddy trope still persist in cinema? For many, [the film was] a highly revisionist piece of cinema, framing [Shirley and his Italian driver Tony] as friends rather than employer and employee respectively. The Shirley family was not consulted during the making of the film, with [Don’s] brother Maurice telling Essence magazine that the film was “a continuation of white privilege””.

But while Davies focuses on the pressure to not be “too Black”, other forces demand Black artists be “more Black.” R&B singer, PJ Morton’s song, Claustrophophic, tells of the pressure he got from record labels to be Blacker. Morton sings, “PJ, you’re not quite street enough/Thug life my nigga/Can you act a little more tough/Or, can you switch your style up a little more?/You can be yourself later, for now we need the radio.” Are the rappers my son and his buddies listen to told to be “more street” to sell more records?

Also, would Davies’ explain the massive success of Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, and his straight-outa-Compton self and lyrics as being just “street enough” to sell to white folks? And what about the 2018 blockbuster movie Black Panther that raked in billions with a story by, and about, Black people? Black Panther’s Killmonger arguably was the on-screen expression of Black desire for revenge for historical injustices – and white people loved it.

Branding is about ownership. Those who own the channels using the Black brand control how Black are people are represented in those channels, including what’s too much or too little Blackness.

Black folks need to keep pushing to be the ones defining Blackness and telling its stories in all its beautiful, messy complexity – using more of our own channels where we’re not selling stuff.

Some great Canadian examples are: The Black Power Hour (Halifax), Black On Black (Ottawa) and Desmond Cole’s radio show (Toronto.)

Categories
FBEC

Shining the light…

This blog is about the same stuff sister El Jones talks about in her poem Canada is so polite. It’s about dispelling the simplistic, “US bad/Canada good” myth, exposing systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism in Canada – and showing how Black folks are organizing against them – and making Canada greater in the process.

I will use these pages to back up sister El’s words by blogging about my experience as a Black employee of Canada’s federal public service and co-founder of the Federal Black Employee Caucus. (My opinions are my own and are not the official, or unofficial, opinion of FBEC.)