In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean—people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, Rocky Jones, and Walter Rodney. Within months of the Congress, a Black-led protest at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) exploded on the front pages of newspapers across the country—raising state security fears about Montreal as the new hotbed of international Black radical politics.
http://www.btlbooks.com/book/fear-of-a-black-nation
Fear of a Black Nation. Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal
By David Austin
Between the Lines (May 2013)
Paperback, 256 pages
ISBN 9781771130103
$34.95 CAD
David Austin’s much-anticipated book Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal was released at the end of May 2013, available just in time for the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) conference at Brock University. The book represents the culmination of two decades of formal and informal inquiry by the author including extensive conversations and interviews as well as international archival research. It describes experiences and self-organizing activities of Blacks in Montreal in the late 1960s, and offers unique information and insight about activities leading up to and following the 1968 Black Writers Congress at McGill University and the 1969 occupation of the computer center at Sir George Williams University. Furthermore, Austin analyzes the Canadian state response to these events through a critical reading of RCMP files that not only document the surveillance of Black students, community members and groups (and their allies) during this time but, in the observations, comments and actions recorded by the agents, also expose a profound fear of Black political organizing in Montreal and its potential national and international consequences.
biosexuality, “a primeval fear of Blacks that is based in slavery and colonialism and the recurring need to discipline and control Black bodies”
While Fear of a Black Nation is centered on Montreal in the late 1960s, its reach extends from slavery in 17th century New France to today. As Austin described in a recent interview, his approach required a deep archaeological dig to unearth narratives that had been silenced and made invisible, with which he then attempted “to write through history in order to make sense of where we are today.”[i] Emphasizing the importance of understanding how the past lingers and continues to influence us in the present, Austin situates Black political organizing in late 1960s Montreal within the contexts of broader North American and world histories, anti-colonial struggles, and theories of race. His close and layered reading of the activities surrounding the Congress and protest at Sir George serve to both highlight Black agency and social – political resistance to institutional and systemic racism, and to reveal the dread on the part of the state that was generated by an increasingly visible Black presence in Montreal during this era. Austin shows the threat perceived in Black – White political solidarity and socializing, pointing to what he refers to as biosexual politics or biosexuality, “a primeval fear of Blacks that is based in slavery and colonialism and the recurring need to discipline and control Black bodies” (p. 11). Recorded comments by RCMP officers about Black – White racial mixing, particularly about relationships between Black males and White females, suggest how the Black male was seen as an inherent threat poised to violate. These comments point to the “afterlife of slavery”[ii] and deeply entrenched racial codes that continue to inform our attitudes and govern our everyday interactions.
Deconstructing the longstanding Canadian myth of two founding nations, Austin highlights the accompanying conception of the French and British as two founding “races” and how the identity of the ‘French race’ as subordinated by the English in Canada led to an identification of the French in Québec with Black anti-colonial struggles and the African American Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As Austin discusses, comparisons to and appropriations of Black experience by oppressed groups were not uncommon during the sixties, for example, among students and white feminists. The notion of French working class Québecers as nègres blancs, however, ‘took on a life of its own’ once the idea was popularized by Pierre Vallières in his 1968 Nègres blancs d’Amérique, published in English in 1971 as White niggers of America. Austin’s astute analysis of Vallières’ work and of race politics in Québec strongly grounds this work in the province’s history, culture and politics while revealing the afterlife of slavery and complexity of race as it continues to permeate all aspects of Québec and Canadian societies. The continuing relevance of such critical structural and systemic analyses of race and nationalism today could hardly be more starkly evident, as the Parti Quebécois announces proposed changes to the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms that, in the guise of “religious neutrality,” will prohibit the wearing of all religious symbols including hijab, yarmulke and turbans by public employees including government workers and anyone working in daycares, schools and health services. The government justifies this proposal for the legal adoption of a common set of “Québec values” by asserting a perceived need to “set clear rules for everyone” that will eliminate the “discomfort” caused by religious accommodation and “build a strong Québec identity.” “To maintain social peace and promote harmony,” the government website asserts, “we must prevent tensions from growing.”[iii]
On the last weekend of May 2013 students, scholars, and artists gathered to share and discuss Black Canadian histories, experiences and scholarship at the BCSA conference titled Where are you from? Reclaiming the Black Presence in Canada. This was an ideal occasion for the debut of Fear of a Black Nation, and Austin, a founding member of the BCSA, spoke on Black Canada, race and the state in a presentation with historian Barrington Walker. In the summer months that followed, Fear of a Black Nation was launched through a series of media interviews and appearances by Austin: at the UNIA in Montreal in conversation with author H. Nigel Thomas; in Ottawa at Octopus Bookstore in conversation with journalist Adrian Harewood; and in Toronto at A Different Booklist. The significance of the locations and styles of the launch events should not be overlooked. Such choices reflect and reinforce the location of Austin’s work within a tradition that understands intellectual work and activism as inextricably linked, and that emphasizes oral history, grassroots autonomous organizing, popular education, face-to-face dialogue, and accountability to community. How this book has come into being and been presented to us suggests how we are to receive and engage with it—with patience, deep reflection, in conversation with others, and with an emphasis on bringing theory and practice together in ways that help us to better understand what Austin calls the “irrational-rational logic” that facilitates the survival of race and the racial codes that continue to govern White supremacy.
Book display at the BCSA Conference, May 2013 (photo: BLACK DOT Roots & Culture Collective)
[i] Wojtek Gwiazda and David Austin (2013, June 24). “‘Fear of a Black Nation,’ new book on Black activism and 1960s Montreal.” Radio Canada International, http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/06/24/fear-of-a-black-nation-new-book-on-black-activism-and-1960s-montreal/
[ii] In the opening chapter of Fear of a Black Nation Austin explains Saidiya Hartman’s use of this term and Jared Sexton’s related call for further examination of the system and practices of slavery and its long-term destabilizing effects.
[iii] Gouvernement de Québec (September 2013). The Québec Charter of Values: Five Propositions. http://nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca/en#rules
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What a load of Marxist crap. There is no “fear” of “a black nation”. There is anger at the fact that the mass immigration and Zionist multiculturalism are imposed anti-democratically from the top down, and then the people to whom Canada has belonged since 1867 are slapped with “hate laws” to silence their legitimate complaint that they are being forcibly deprived of self-government, and the right to their own culture and territory. This is constitutional first, and racial only to the extent that mass immigration of hundreds of foreign races, many non-assimilable, are spelling the GENOCIDE of the Founding Peoples of Canada. But that is precisely what Trudeau intended when he planned it, as clear from his 1962 article in Cite Libre, “New Treason of the Clerics”.
https://nosnowinmoscow.wordpress.com/tag/the-new-treason-of-the-clerics/
In that seditious hate-mongering piece, Trudeau attempted to rile up French Canadians against “Britanno” Canadians with a view to using their rage to destroy Canada as founded in 1867 for mass immigration and “polyethnic pluralism”.
Trudeau moreover reveals in that article his INTENTION to perpetrate what in effect is GENOCIDE upon the “Britanno” Canadians — by forcibly reducing them on their own soil to a powerless minority; and he then later admits that the French Canadians will also probably “disappear” one day.
This is not about “fear of a black nation”. It is about the legitimate fear of GENOCIDE, which is valid apparently only for JEWS, and not for “Britanno” Canadians, or French Canadians, or the British peoples who also are being wiped off their own soil in UK, or for that matter, Palestinians.
Speaking of the British people in UK, the leftist Guardian newspaper perversely published a wistful lament at the disappearance of JAMAICANS who had immigrated to UK, because of inter-marriage with other races. The statistics show they intermarry most with white, British people. The fact that the necessarily parallel disappearance of the WHITE BRITISH PEOPLE, who are the “aboriginals” on their own soil where they have lived and prospered for well over 1,000 years, is NOT LAMENTED by the leftist Guardian newspaper. The Jamaicans have a homeland of their own elsewhere; the white British do not any more — the entire West is being washed out in Zionist mass immigration and multiculturalism, while the JEWS OF ISRAEL maintain ethnic purity by means of immigration barriers, DNA tests to prove immigrants really are JEWS, and jail and deportation for BLACK people. So, if you would like to write an article about “fear of a black nation”, go do it in Israel, since the Jews have no business being in Palestine in the first place, as Palestine belongs legally to the Palestinians whom the Israelis are obviously bent upon exterminating.
The planned GENOCIDE of the Founding Peoples of Canada, being executed NOW, is being buried under the phony fog of imaginary “race politics”, which has nothing to do with it.
The Constitution has something to do with it. Canada was founded in 1867 with a plan for as many as 10 or more Provincial Legislatures, instead of simply one central legislature, because the Founding Peoples of the original colonies, which were HOMOGENEOUS, and whose populations were NATIVE TO THIS LAND, being born here for generations, and not immigrants, obtained constitutional protection for their existence, and that of the culture and SELF-GOVERNMENT, in the form of constitutional FEDERALISM.
The principle of “SELF-GOVERNMENT” is so prized internationally that the United Nations recognizes a “right” of “peoples” TO SELF-DETERMINATION, up to and including SECESSION to secure it. Therefore, what are the “Britanno” and French-Canadians supposed to do now? “Secede” from their own country to escape extermination by outbreeding and outnumbering? Why does “self-determination” mean something for some races, while others, like the Founding Peoples of Canada, and of the West in general, are reviled, analyzed, chided and insulted for their “fear” of DISAPPEARING from the soil of their ancestors!
The mass immigration and Zionist multiculturalism have no basis in the lawful Constitution of Canada; they are in fact not merely an illegal constitutional bypassing formal amending formulas, they are A NEW CONSTITUTION which gives this country to people WHO DID NOT FOUND IT, and destroys the rights of those who DID.
Kathleen Moore
ALLIANCE OF THE FOUNDING PEOPLES OF CANADA
ALLIANCES DES PEUPLES FONDATEURS DU CANADA
http://1867confederation.net
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P.S. The real “fear” out there is “Fear of a WHITE Nation”.
Only WHITE non-Jews have no right to exist, no right to stand up for themselves as peoples, no right to preserve their culture, identity, race and heritage.
Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Aboriginals on every continent, even Chinese if they want to, are free to march in the streets to preserve their race, culture, heritage and values… when THEY do it, it’s “ALRIGHT”. When white non-Jews do it, it’s “FAR RIGHT”.
The obvious double standard is designed to attack and destroy WHITE non-Jews. “Fear of a white nation?”
How about fear, hatred, jealousy, envy, and contempt for WHITE non-Jews, i.e., for Western Civilization itself, because WE WHITE NON-JEWS CREATED IT.
It’s the old Wyatt Erp Complex. Fastest gun in town is a target.
As for Aboriginals… the U.N. and international accords OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZE NOT ONLY THEIR RIGHT TO EXIST, BUT THEIR RIGHT TO KEEP ALIENS OFF THEIR TERRITORIES, TO ENSURE THEY CONTINUE TO EXIST.
And yet, when WHITE non-Jews would like to protect our territories, and have the same international recognition of our FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT to exist, nobody likes that.
And again, concerning Aboriginals. In Europe, many of the great ancient WHITE nations who are being harassed and defamed on their own soil… are indeed the “ABORIGINALS” on their own soil. And that includes the British peoples, who should be signed on to the same international accords that protect the race, culture, identity and territories of other “Aboriginals”.
The very arbitrariness of the viewpoint as to WHO is entitled to exist, makes it very apparent that WHITE non-Jews are deliberately targeted for EXTERMINATION as races and peoples, by forced genocide through race-mixing.
The Jews have another term for it: “bastardize them out of existence!” And they’ve been using that term ever since the Jews first recommended “bastardizing” the WHITE Dutch Boers “out of existence”, in order to pave the way for regional union in Africa…. a stage on the way to world government…. with only WHITE non-Jewish peoples and nations standing in the way to regional unions on all the other continents.
That explains the arbitrariness of the “FEAR OF A WHITE NATION”. It’s a “fear” and “hatred” of ALL non-Jewish WHITE PEOPLES AND NATIONS, because we built Western Civilization, and we and our nations stand in the way of its eradication for Zionist world government.