Death. Destruction. Life. Creation.

This is a story of despair and hope.

A story that began with the creation of the Black Barbadian as a dehumanized object only useful for physical and sexual exploitation. By White people. The very existence of Blacks—Black people in the Americas—was part of a system designed to objectify and exploit our physical labor as bodies devoid of any, and all, human characteristics. This is a historical truth that is the basis for how Black people negotiate their humanity in the twenty-first century. This way of negotiating human rights, as equal Canadian citizens, in this settler colony of “Canada” must have a historical grounding that the very existence of Black people was never to be human. Collectively, one can begin to deconstruct, or construct, a narrative on how we can confront and challenge Canadian systems, particularly our education systems.

Chattel slavery, the calculated act of government-sponsored terrorism, and the colonization of Indigenous peoples, defined human history throughout the Atlantic World, the Caribbean, and the Americas; whites sowed the deracinated and displanted humanity from the African continent in the fertile soil of the coral island on the easternmost edges of the Caribbean Sea. Out of these seeds grew a Diaspora that broke out of the confines of the institution of enslavement, colonialism, and the stench of racism discrimination. Black Barbadian agency and perseverance developed within the structures of oppression, first used as a means of individual and collective survival under the physical and ideological whip of the overseer and the slave master. This subsequently epitomized their determination as migrants and Emigrant Ambassadors—individual Black Barbadians, particularly Black women, who overcame significant barriers to lead the emigration of their people to Canada during the mid-twentieth century. The ideology of Blackness denied human and civil rights, and racism defined the immigration and colonization policies of the very same nation-states that profited from, and continue to perpetuate the fallacies of, Black people’s supposed ignorance and intellectual inferiority.

This article is a case study of Black Barbadians, colonialism, and education systems on the Island and in Canada. Throughout their respective histories and contemporary realities, euro-centric systems of education have been, and continue to be, tools to control and conform Black and Indigenous peoples. This piece argues that change can manifest itself by supporting Black student achievement in Canada, specifically the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), by indoctrinating the values of a West Indian, specifically Barbadian, culture of education or culture of academic success. This will not “solve” the systemic racism that is rooted in all levels of the Ontario education system (and arguably all education systems across the country that perpetuate anti-Black racism). However, this can facilitate the empowerment of Black children, particularly second- and third-generation Black children of West Indian descent, to challenge the racial bias of “mainstream” educators and the system designed to keep them in a collective state of mental slavery.

The objective of this article is to present one small (but influential) sphere of influence. It is to highlight how Black Barbadians took the “impossible” to the “art of the possible.” Through pride and industry, autonomous Emigrant Ambassadors capitalized on an education system that created pacified, compliant, and colonial “Black Brits,” devoid of any historical and identity ties to their ancestral kin of the African Continent. Through this “double-edged” cultural genocide, Black Barbadians developed a culture of education that they used as drivers of opportunity in mid-twentieth century Canada. One way of challenging contemporary anti-Black racism is by reaffirming this culture of academic success in second- and third-generation Black Canadian children, particularly those of Barbadian and West Indian descent. The approach to this article is to provide a historical lens on slavery, colonization, and education in Barbados and Canada. Moreover, within the structures of a settler colonial state, this article highlights how Black and Indigenous peoples interacted and intersected within these systems. Historical sources, including Barbadian Colonial Reports, and contemporary reports from the Black Experience Project and The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, draw linkages between the historical and modern lives of Blacks, particularly Black Barbadians, and Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island. This article will begin with an exploration of the historical and ideological creation of Black Barbadian Blackness; a history of the Barbadian education system and the creation of a culture of education; a history of Residential Schools in Canada; and anti-Blackness in the contemporary education system. Most importantly, this article will compare how colonial education and racist colonial education systems simultaneously destroyed Indigenous peoples in Canada and facilitated the emigration and settlement of Black Barbadians.

Roots of Anti-Black Racism in Canada: “Black” and “Liberal” Myths

The idea of Blackness and Black identity influenced white British colonial perceptions of Blacks in Barbados, the West Indies, and Canada. White hegemonic rule over the “native savages” defined the European destruction and subjugation of Indigenous peoples, while the same parallel, with exceptions, can be drawn for the Barbadian slavocracy of Africans in the Americas. The enslaved Other may have differed; however, whites’ belief in white “goodness” and Black or Colored inferiority dictated how whites in both Canada and Barbados saw themselves compared with those of a darker phenotype. This diachronic white creation and perception of Black inferiority provided the foundation for the exclusion of Barbadians and Black people as a whole in Canada’s immigration history. Contrary to popular belief, Canada did not adopt the insidious anti-Black racism from the USA; the Canadian discrimination against Blacks was a product of British ideals and a “liberal racial order” (Walker 2009). The diachronic and geographical transfer of racialized ideas and anti-Black sentiment from the seventeenth-century British West Indian slave codes to early twentieth-century Canadian immigration policy were not entirely a linear historical process, but an ideology that existed throughout the Black Atlantic and Western political thought since the Biblical “fact” of the Curse of Ham:

“And the sons of Noah, that went forth from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth; and Ham is the father of Canaan.”

“And he (Noah) drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.”

“And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him. And he said: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said: Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant.” The “sons” of Ham were said to be Black Africans.

The sons of Ham were (mis)interpreted to be Sub-Saharan, or Black, Africans. Anti-Black racial attitudes were decidedly British—subsequently Canadian—in nature, and not simply adopted from the USA or transferred from the West Indies. The Curse of Ham, and its many misinterpretations, was at the forefront of the racialization and justification of slavery of Black people in the Americas (Davis 2006). Religion and Christian doctrine justified Black African enslavement throughout the Americas. Jack Gratus, Peter Kolchin, Davis, Allahar, Roger Bastide, and Kyle Haselden argued that the Church and Biblical interpretations demonized and “racialized” the Black African, which subsequently permitted and encouraged their eternal enslavement. The Biblical justification for White domination began within the institution of slavery. Through his interpretations of Exodus and Leviticus, the Bible and, subsequently, Christianity, Reverend Raymond Harris (1788) supported slavery. Nevertheless, leading abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and Thomas Buxton believed Blacks (in Africa) were heathens “needing conversion, and needing the benefits of white Christian morality” (Davis 2006; Allahar 1993; Gratus 1973; Haselden 1964). Furthermore, three religious arguments (supposedly) justified chattel slavery: Hebrews owned slaves and Jesus did not condemn slavery; the Curse of Ham; and slavery was God’s plan to expose “heathens” to the “blessings of Christianity” (Davis 2006).

Liberalism was the supposed “vehicle for equality” for Indigenous and People of Color in Canada; a concept that has nefariously morphed in to the neo-liberal excuse for the perpetuation of inequality in society is at the foundation of anti-Black racism and the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples in this country. Collective equality and decolonization are futile in this system. The liberal racial order and the process of transfer of anti-Black attitudes to Canada are exemplified when one deconstructs the rigid geographical and ideological nation-state boundaries of place and space. If imagined geopolitical barriers are challenged and redefined, it is much easier to contextualize anti-Black racism in a transnational paradigm. The paradox of liberalism as equality did not extend to all, nor was the system designed to work in such a manner.

The British West Indies and Canada were areas “where white, male, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, wealthy, middle-aged, and older heterosexuals hold power in the leading institutions,” which was altruistically supported by historical “facts” (Allahar 1995). Furthermore, the functionalist argument of natural inequalities in society supports liberal ideology. Functionalist liberalists argued that “social inequality is a fact of life” and has “existed in all known human societies and is therefore thought to be inevitable” (McLellan 1986). Once the ideology of “Blackness” was conflated with functionalist liberal ideology, Black people were deemed perpetually inferior in a system designed and dependent on social inequalities. Social inequalities served “the political functions of social order and control,” and through the power of liberal ideology, “no systemic injustice explains their inequality, instead, those who do not get ahead have failed themselves. What is more, they themselves believe this to be so” (McLellan 1986). Canadians and Canadian society were firmly entrenched in liberal philosophy and anti-Black racial attitudes and social inequality prior to the mass immigration of West Indians in the mid-twentieth century. The conflation of liberal ideals with Canadian state institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century subsequently produced “a tendency to replace the vocabulary of race and distinction with legal phraseology that was self-consciously race neutral and ostensibly universal in its application” (McKeown 2008).

By refusing to acknowledge the historical roots of race and racism in Canada, the historiography presents race as real; it assumes that whites were here “first.”

According to former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, as “native Canadians,” “a country should surely have the right to determine what strains of blood it wishes to have in its population,” and immigration was, and is, not a “fundamental human right,” but a privilege (Mackenzie King 1947). Mackenzie King and others assumed that a fabricated belief of whiteness equated to the virtues of Canadian identity and Canadian nation-building. The historiography on race and anti-Black racism in Canada rarely examines the ideological roots of identity construction and the ascription of negative codifiers that dictate institutional and personal discrimination. One must historicize and contextualize how race and racism operated as a tool of colonization. This negation normalizes whites and Canadian whiteness. This negation assumes that all People of Color are excluded—physically and ideologically—based on their own failings and not because of colonialism, nor that the British liberal racial order and the liberal democratic state defined difference as inferior.

This operated within a context of the on-going attempts at colonization, and extermination, of Indigenous peoples in Canada. During the early twentieth century, race continued to authenticate imperial citizenship to maintain socially and politically constructed white nationalist sentiments. Early to mid-twentieth-century Canadian immigration policy, a key mechanism for anti-Black racism in the twentieth century, was a manifestation of the state’s need to maintain white hegemonic rule by the exclusion of all Blacks and racialized groups, individuals that could challenge the fallacy of white supremacy. Meanwhile, the white supremacist Canadian nation-state, through centuries of anti-Indigenous racism and colonization, characterized by Residential Schools, the “60s Scoop,” a (failed) White Paper, egregious child welfare policies, a lack of adequate funding, and the overall violation of (legal and constitutional) Treaty Rights, attempted to “solve” the “Indian problem” through policies of physical, ideological, and cultural genocide. History has shown that Canada is a country for the “white” race. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge and highlight how various actors were able to navigate this system of marginalization, specifically how Black Barbadian colonial identity facilitated migration North.

Colonial Education = Colonial Identities?

Black Barbadian colonial identity, specifically during the early to mid-twentieth, contextualizes Canada’s anti-Black sentiment. Black Barbadians adopted—and were forced to adopt—a British colonial identity, and the education system was a key factor in this cultural assimilation. Canada’s adoption and perpetuation of racial hierarchies, specifically the racialization of Black Barbadians, paralleled the British social construction and debasement of Blacks throughout the history of slavery in the West Indies. Geographical boundaries did not prohibit the dissemination of ideas. Canada and the West Indies established trading and socio-economic relationships during slavery as members of the British imperialist empire in the Americas. Despite the northern neighbor’s lack of a true slavocracy, the British consolidated anti-Black West Indian and Barbadian racism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that remained relatively dormant until Canada faced the prospect of mass migration during the twentieth century. The British fabrication of a binary white-Black racial dichotomy is the foundation of the historical social construction of the virtues of whiteness in Canadian society and the pejorative nature of Blackness in Barbados. Canada, a settler and colonial state, deliberately created racial and ethnic hierarchies to promote and maintain Anglo-Saxon hegemonic power.

To understand the positionality of the Black Barbadian in Canada, it is important to contextualize their identity as British colonial citizens as well as how their identity fit within a British sense of self. Barbados was distinctively British in culture and customs. John Western (1992) stated that “of all the formerly British Caribbean islands, none is more British than Barbados. Both Barbadians and non-Barbadian West Indians will tell you this, though likely with rather different imputations: the Barbadians with pride and satisfaction, the others with mirth and exasperation.” Tony Gill, an employee of British Rail at the time of Western’s study, also expressed his “consciousness of Barbadian superiority,” and argued that Barbadians not only settled in Guyana and Trinidad, but as a result of the “good education in Barbados,” there were Barbadian teachers throughout the Caribbean teaching other British colonial subjects (Western 1992). Audley Simmons, a former employee of London Transport, recalled that Barbadians were “brought up so English. When we got here [London, England], I was amazed in the cinema at the end of the film, we were the only ones who stood still for the playing of ‘God Save the Queen.’ Everyone else was rushing for the exit!” (Western 1992). Barbadian Londoner Gladstone Codrington, a high-ranking British official, revealed why Barbadians assimilated well to English society. He stated that “Barbados is a more conservative society than England (author’s emphasis)” (Western 1992). D’Arcy Holder, a former London Transport employee, asserted that she could recall all three verses of the British national anthem. She also pinpointed Barbados’ diplomatic watershed moment at the beginning of the Second World War that internationally recognized the West Indian island as “Little England.” The Barbados legislature had sent a telegram to Neville Chamberlain on September 3, 1939, that stated, “Stand firm, England; Barbados is behind you” (Western 1992).

It is important to note that the Black Barbadian in England during the 1950s and early 1960s, and those that migrated to Canada as first wave Emigrant Ambassadors during this same period, did not wish to overthrow an oppressive system and society, but work and fit within it. I must emphasize the importance of this statement as it relates to the current realities of activism against anti-Black racism in Canada (specifically as it relates to Black Barbadians) within an Indigenous decolonization framework. There was a fundamental philosophical difference of inclusion; the mid-twentieth century Black Barbadian engaged with the Canadian nation-state as wanting to fit in, and unlike Indigenous people, did not challenge or attempt to deconstruct an oppressive system. This desire for inclusion and relative autonomy within structures as equal British subjects, albeit within an unequal and racist liberal democratic system, was a part of the legalized status of People of Color in this country first through official multiculturalism policy in 1971 and enshrined in law in the Multiculturalism Act of 1988. This ideological sense of belonging as commonwealth brethren is how we, as Black Barbadians, engage with the Canadian system. One may argue that Black Barbadians simply wanted recognition as British and not their skin color or colonial status. Analogous to the demographic climate of the UK, Barbadians were “prepared to be members of a small minority among white neighbors, for as they (Black Barbadians) rationalize it, this is a white country” (Western 1992).

We cannot essentialize this case study of Black Barbadians as representative of all Blacks in Canada, nor can we provide a reductionist rationalization for Black-Indigenous relations; however, as we engage with this issue of education in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), it is important to frame the distinction between Black Barbadians and Indigenous people in Canada. Due to the physical and ideological genocide of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the institution of slavery, the Black body was denigrated and recreated as a nefarious threat. However, Black Barbadians, with the resiliency forged by their ancestors on the African Continent and tested by the horrors of centuries of enslavement, worked within a system and adopted it as their own. The Black Barbadian Emigrant Ambassadors came to Canada as Black Brits, colonial subjects, educated by a colonial system, wanting to fit within a settler colonial state. During this period of Truth and Reconciliation, it is important for Canadian People of Color to articulate their historical colonial identities. It is critically important to understand how Black Barbadians engaged with Canadian systems—the education system—and how this, unfortunately, continues to perpetuate, and delegitimize an Indigenous culture of education and the profound impact of Residential Schools. Indigenous peoples are not a special interest group nor have they, or should they, adopt a colonial system as their own. By sharing the diachronic realities of deracination, slavery, colonization, and White Supremacy, Indigenous and Black people can move forward with one common goal: to make Canada a better place under a shared philosophy of the Two Row Wampum. Numerous government policies focus on contemporary education issues without contextualizing or acknowledging the colonial legacies embedded within the system, for both Indigenous peoples and Blacks. One must first begin by understanding how Black Barbadians engaged with the British colonial education system.

The pursuit of education and the Barbadian education system were two driving forces behind the emigration of a highly upwardly mobile population during the mid-twentieth century. Barbadian Government domestic policies since the late eighteenth century had focused on the education of Blacks and all Barbadian children. These policies in turn contributed to the Barbadian Government’s emigration schemes and their selection of Emigrant Ambassadors. Barbadian officials were confident that these educated individuals were well-suited to represent themselves and the Island as “exceptional” migrants.

Throughout its post-Emancipation history, Barbados trained and educated a population that was not confined to the Island’s geographical boundary of 166 square miles; Barbados operated within a system that saw education as a means for self-empowerment and growth within a liberalized and globalized environment. In his memoir, the late Austin Clarke (2005) wrote of the importance of a successfully completed education for the social mobility of young Black Barbadians:

So we prepared ourselves for this [Cambridge University Senior

Cambridge Examination overseas], the most important event in our lives.

It could determine whether we were going to be sanitary inspectors for

the rest of our lives or were going to get into the Civil Service, not the

Department of Customs, which buried men alive from drink, but the

“Col-Sec’s Offices,” and rise to positions of power and hold confidential

files under the soiled arms of our white shirts. Perhaps to be given an obe

(Order of the British Empire) at age fifty, with one foot in the grave…

This examination determined whether we would qualify and go up to

England by boat, third class, tourist class, with a borrowed winter coat,

and enter one of the Inns of Court, and after eighteen months’ studying

the law, return and flood the country; and get MP behind our name.

It determined whether we would be able to enter a British university.

It meant life and could mean death. If you were not lucky and careful

and had failed, it meant that for generations afterwards people would

whisper when you passed, and say that you had wasted your mother’s

money and had not got your Senior Cambridge.

Education was not taken for granted, and educated and skilled Barbadians capitalized on these opportunities by seizing employment prospects first throughout the Caribbean basin, the USA, the UK, and finally in Canada. The Barbadian Government facilitated the emigration of its people to various locations abroad, but the early twentieth-century emphasis on education provided the foundation for Barbadians to challenge the racialized structures of the international migration system. The Government of Barbados provided both the education and the schemes necessary to assist the emigration of Barbadians during this period. The pursuit of education is a fundamental Barbadian characteristic that contributed to and enabled the emigration of an upwardly mobile population.

Education as a means for Barbadian social mobility and prosperity originated in the late seventeenth century. The “philanthropic efforts of private individuals and by the humanitarian interest of the Churches” founded the Barbadian education system (Historical Developments of Education 2000). Most of the older existing public schools were initially founded for the education of white Barbadian children during slavery. Elementary schools for newly emancipated Black slaves on the Island grew out of the Anglican, Moravian, and Methodist Churches’ efforts to deliver a Christian education.

By 1846, the Barbadian Legislature provided the first state education grant of £750. Government expenditures and its involvement in education increased exponentially with the passing of the first Education Act in 1850. The Act established the education committee that included a part-time inspector who served as its executive officer. The £750 education grant increased to £3,000 per annum, and by 1878, the new Education Act fixed the spending at £15,000. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Barbadian colonial government officially recognized 169 elementary schools with an enrolment of 24,415 children and 532 students attending the three First Grade and five Second Grade schools, respectively. The First Grade schools provided teaching of particularly high standards, which enabled “boys to sit for open scholarships at English Universities” (Colonial Reports 1927–1928). The historical emphasis on education continued to expand during the twentieth century with the growth of an established freed Black Barbadian citizenry in search of avenues for self-improvement to emancipate themselves from the shackles of legislated ignorance during slavery.

By the late 1920s, the free elementary education system was considerably successful in providing the training needed for a highly intelligent and skilled middle-class workforce. The system was a success. It prepared countless Barbadians for the public service, and many pursued their education to secure meaningful employment and improve their social standing on the Island. However, the lack of employment opportunities in Barbados curtailed the aspirations of young Barbadians and their newly attained educational capital. Education was a means for mobility and an avenue to escape poverty and destitution, and the public service epitomized societal success. A new class of highly educated and unemployed youth emerged during the late 1920s and beyond; youth desperately sought means to be placed “on a higher social plane” as described in the 1927 Report (Colonial Report 1927–1928). The education system worked, but it also facilitated the push for young Barbadians to emigrate to search abroad for the meaningful employment and financial opportunities that Barbadian society could not provide. Barbados thus exported its most valuable commodity—a highly skilled and educated citizens. Education was the foundation for Barbadian progress, development, independence and, most importantly, its history of emigration.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, 116 primary schools were free for both boys and girls aged 5 to 14; education and access to education became the main priority for the Barbadian Government. Male to female enrolment ratios began to show an alarming trend. The male to female ratio was relatively similar for elementary school enrolment and attendance; however, it differed at the secondary level. More than twice the number of boys (1,017) attended First Grade schools compared with 467 girls. One must note that by the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was only one First Grade school for girls (Queen’s College) as opposed to two for boys (Harrison College and Lodge School) (Colonial Office Annual Report 1958 and 1959).

To put this in perspective, in 1955, out of a total population of 229,119 Barbadians, 35,577 children were enrolled in primary schools. This equates to approximately 16 percent of Barbados’ total population in primary school. From that number, there was almost complete gender equality in primary schools for boys (18,289) and girls (17,688). In Canada in 1955, out of a total population of approximately 15,601,000, a total of 2,681,000 children were enrolled in grades 1 to 8. This was approximately 17 percent of Canada’s total population (Statistics Canada 2017a). Education was a fundamental feature of not only the government’s budgetary expenditure, but also the country’s collective upbringing of generations of past, present, and future Emigrant Ambassadors. Through their education system, the Barbadian Government prepared its citizens for success and social mobility in the global environment; their education was of a British standard and internationally recognized. Education capital became the means for physical and ideological decolonization. By the 1960s, the government facilitated free and equitable access to education for all Barbadian citizens, and emigration became the result of a comprehensive and well-executed educational strategy. The 1960s became the grounds where Barbadian and Canadian colonial histories collided.

This reverence for (colonial) education for Black Barbadians must be situated within the framework of Canadian Indigenous education policies, specifically Residential Schools that contributed to the cultural genocide of Indigenous people. Why did Black Barbadians take hold of education and use it to become Emigrant Ambassadors, while colonial education in Canada destroyed the very fabric of Indigenous existence in this country? It is argued that this is rooted in one group, whose deracinated identity was already stripped by the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the institution of slavery in Barbados, wanting to fit within the only system they knew, whereas Indigenous people in Canada continue to resist the process of active colonization to return to a way of life—and Indigenous culture of education—that the colonial liberal state delegitimizes to appropriate their land and resources. This diachronic legacy of enslavement of Black Barbadians, coupled by the on-going colonization of Indigenous peoples in Canada, is a tension that has not been sufficiently explored or problematized. Scholars such as Nandita Sharma, Cynthia Wright, Zainab Amadahy, Bonita Lawrence, and Enakshi Dua, particularly in the latter two authors’ article, “Decolonizing Anti-Racism,” have created a space and call to action (Lawrence and Dua 2009; Amadahy et al. 2009). Scholars must challenge epistemologies to rethink and reframe how scholarship engages with the histories of People of Color, particularly Black newcomers.

Lawrence and Dua argued that Black Atlantic identities have been “articulated through the colonisation of Aboriginal peoples, or the ways in which the project of appropriating land shaped the emergence of black/Asian/Hispanic settler formations” (Lawrence and Dua 2009). The authors stated that People of Color in this country have “multiple projects of settlement,” and there is a (mis)understanding of racialized people as being “innocent in the colonization of Aboriginal peoples” (Lawrence and Dua 2009). Nevertheless, this is a complex relationship as People of Color, and as reference to the case study of this article, Black Barbadians, “are marginalized by a white settler nationalist project...[but] as citizens are invited to take part in ongoing colonialism” (Lawrence and Dua 2009). In relation to the Black/Indigenous intersections of this article, Lawrence and Dua stated, “in speaking of histories of settlement, there is a need for an explicit awareness and articulation of the intersection of specific settlement policies with policies controlling “Indians”” (Lawrence and Dua 2009). However, in response, Sharma and Wright contested that is a far too simplistic argument to position “all migrants as settler colonists.” They state that within this framework, “the only way not (authors’ emphasis) to be a “colonizer” is to remain on the land with which one is associated,” and that “migration is also a response to being “decolonized”” (Sharma and Wright 2009). Amadahy and Lawrence concluded that within the Canadian geopolitical context, “Black struggles for freedom required (and continues to require) ongoing colonization of Indigenous land” (Amadahy et al. 2009).

One must interrogate the Black Barbadian’s status an as agent that aided in the attempted colonization of Indigenous peoples. However, this must be framed within the global system of British hegemonic domination, whereby West Indians were used as colonial subjects within a colonial system, to act as unwitting agents in a white supremacist system designed to annihilate Indigenous peoples in Canada. Identity formation in the Americas “cannot be studied in isolation from each other” (Lawrence and Dua 2009). Nor can we resign to “pitting one racialized, ethnicized, nationalized, and gendered group of expropriated commoners against another” (Sharma and Wright 2009). One paradigm to rethink, or begin to frame, our Black Canadian history within the understanding of our relationship as legal “Canadian” citizens with Indigenous peoples, is through the framework of the Two Row Wampum, often referred to as “the agreement that sets out how settlers and Indigenous people are supposed to coexist on Turtle Island” (Amadahy et al. 2009). It is an agreement of mutual respect and parallel progress between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. However, Black people must also be cognizant of their (devalued) constitutional equality as Black Canadians; Black people collectively have “no power or even validity in the Canadian nation state” (Amadahy et al. 2009).

Are Black people, and specifically Black Barbadians, willing settler colonists complicit in the colonization of Indigenous peoples and the appropriation of their land? Or as allies—straddling both rows of the wampum belt—in an ambiguous and conflicted state as the oppressed oppressor? Black-Indigenous epistemological work in Canada is a relatively unexplored area of scholarship and more comparative case studies of colonialism within the British White supremacist state must be undertaken. The present scholarship (albeit a limited historiography) problematizes a limited scope of Black settlers in Canada or applies a paradigm derived from Black-Indigenous history in the USA. It is advantageous to examine parallel relationships through individual colonial or “Indigenous” institutions—religious, political, identity, and education—to contextualize the complex histories of the British subjugation of Africans and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. In the case of Black Barbadians (and other Black West Indians), the British used similar tactics of a cultural and intellectual genocide to create a Black British subject. This “subject” did not have the same rights as other British subjects, and unwittingly used as pawns in the Canadian colonialization project once their colonized Black bodies were valued to dispossess Indigenous peoples. Once one understands that dynamic, epistemological parallels are created within seemingly disparate colonizations. They can then push forward an agenda of disrupting a white supremacist state. Scholarly work must not fall in the reductionist trap of an “Oppression Olympics” of lateral violence; scholarship must compare and contrast, to see how one dominant structure was able to use institutions, and for the sake of this article—education—to uplift one group and oppress another through the same means of cultural genocide. One must contextualize this Barbadian culture of education or culture of academic success within the historical framework of how the purpose of Residential Schools in Canada was one to destroy the Indigenous Self: a phenomenon that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission rightly labeled the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a).

This cultural genocide was always the foundation of Canada’s Indigenous Policy. In 1920, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, stated to a parliamentary committee “our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b). JS Dennis, Deputy Minister of the Department of the Interior reiterated it would be “the end of a separate Aboriginal and government,” through the “establishment of industrial schools” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). The Residential Schools were the agents of genocide, where the Canadian government could complete its colonization of Indigenous peoples and the appropriation of their land. The French and English colonization of eastern Canada “had been undertaken in a relatively slow fashion, without widespread use of residential schools.” Prior to the Canadian government’s formal involvement in residential schooling, Egerton Ryerson, the superintendent of schools for Upper Canada, recommended in the 1840s for the “establishment of residential schools” for Indigenous children (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b).

As with the proliferation of schools in Barbados, churches were the foundation for the (mis)education of Indigenous children in this country during the mid-nineteenth century with a particular drive following Confederation until the mid-twentieth century. The major denominations that administered the Residential School system included Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). Prior to 1867, churches had already established and were operating boarding schools for Indigenous children. In 1870s with the continued movement to colonize the Western regions of Canada, Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries established small boarding schools in the Prairies, northern Canada, and in British Columbia. The first government funded, but church-run Residential School, Battleford School, opened on December 1, 1883, in the North-West (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b).

However, the schools, from their outset, were positioned to continue to not only colonize but also marginalize and annihilate Indigenous peoples and culture. Languages and cultures were outlawed and subsequently died within the walls of these institutions. The foundation for disparities in health, education, employment outcomes, and the roots of the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in welfare and correctional facilities was consolidated in classrooms across this country (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). Death rates were exceptionally high within these institutions, especially compared with non-Indigenous students. Government “failure to provide adequate funding, medical treatment, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and clothing contributed to this elevated death rate” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b). This malicious neglect, and physical genocide was deliberate; the government had been advised of the implications of its policies and presented with options—which it chose to ignore—that would have reduced the school death rates” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). The stated educational goals of the schools were “limited and confused…reflected a low regard for the intellectual capabilities of Aboriginal people,” where the Canadian government “essentially declared Aboriginal people to be unfit parents” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b). In July 1883, Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald did not see the benefit of providing quality instruction nor the proper infrastructure for success and stated that the two Roman Catholic Residential Schools were to be “of the simplest and cheapest construction.” The federal government’s education policy and its disregard for the positive outcomes and human rights for Indigenous peoples were present in a number of areas. These included a lack of vision and clear educational goals for the schools; a racist curriculum that reflected the White supremacist belief of the inferiority of Indigenous people; a lack of standardized teacher qualifications, exacerbated by “under-qualified, poorly paid, and overworked” teachers; and culturally incongruent and inappropriate curriculum (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). The Residential School system was “based on a racist assumption that European civilization and the Christian religion were superior to Aboriginal culture, which was seen as being savage and brutal” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b).

The Barbadian education system operated under similar, but not analogous, nefarious purposes to destroy the “Blackness” and create “Black Brits.” It must also be noted that Residential Schools, or Industrials schools, were used as tools of colonization and the proliferation of European empires across the globe. Canada’s Residential School system did not work in isolation; it was “part of a global imperial process that brought states and Christian churches together in a complex and powerful fashion” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b). During the nineteenth century, industrial, “Indian Boarding,” mission, and reformatory schools, were established in areas such as Britain, France, the USA, Australia, and Nigeria. While their geographical and linguistic contexts differed, the common goal was to “regulate” or “civilize” Indigenous subalterns and those deemed “less desirable” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). There was a similar process in colonial Barbados. As previously stated in this article, many Barbadians during the mid-twentieth century believed themselves to be, and rightfully so, legal British colonial citizens. The education curriculum during this period was not rooted in African or indigenous creolized Afro-centric epistemologies or pedagogies, but defined by indoctrinating White supremacist beliefs of the superiority of (White) British institutions, culture, and hegemonic history. As the late Clarke stated, Black Barbadians wrote the same exams with the same content as supposedly equal to their British peers in the metropole; the Barbadian culture of education was measured through the prism of White supremacy.

It was during the mid-twentieth century that Canada began to see the confrontation of colonized peoples on the stolen land of Turtle Island, specifically of Black Barbadians and Indigenous peoples. Following the deracialization of Canadian immigration policy in 1962 and the introduction of the Points System in 1967, more Emigrant Ambassadors could emigrate from the Island to the Great White North. However, during this period of growth of People of Color in this settler state and the introduction of Multiculturalism Policy in 1971, the Canadian Government was effectively using the physical presence of colonial subjects to perpetuate the further colonization of Indigenous peoples. The 1960s paradox of hypocrisy came during a “period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity” in Canada, as Indigenous children “who attended residential schools continued to be poorly housed, poorly fed, poorly clothes, and poorly educated” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015a). This was most apparent in 1969’s “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,” or better known as the “White Paper” (Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy 1969).

The ostensibly benevolent rhetoric surrounding the White Paper was one of an inclusive framework of multiculturalism ideology of equity and belonging as Canadians. Policy rhetoric shifted from one of segregation and extinction, to integration and the assimilation of Indigenous peoples (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015b). The proposed policy promised that “if Indian people are to become full members of Canadian society they must be warmly welcomed by that society,” and “to be an Indian must be to be free—free to develop an Indian culture in an environment of legal, social and economic equality with other Canadians” (Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy 1969). This mirrors the language of Multiculturalism Policy that stated to “promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society and assist them in the elimination of any barrier to that participation” (Canadian Multiculturalism Act 1985). Mirroring the language of inclusion and effectively designating Indigenous peoples in this country as special interest groups, negating their constitutional and legal status, the White Paper argued that “the treatment resulting from their different status has been often worse, sometimes equal and occasionally better than that accorded to their fellow citizens,” and “the discrimination which affects the poor Indian and non-Indian alike, when compounded with a legal status that sets the Indian apart, provides dangerously fertile ground for social and cultural discrimination” (Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy 1969).

It is within this paradigm that we can begin to question the current environment of Blacks, specifically those of Barbadian (and generally West Indian) descent, in the Ontario education system. We can no longer solely position the debate within the context of Black student achievement versus an institutional system that does not cater to the needs of Black students. While this is true, this does not capture the varied nuances of the historical legacies and current realities of academic excellence in Barbados. Yes, there are the realities of institutional racism in the education system, supported by the (unconscious, and oftentimes conscious) White supremacist agents of the said system, to perpetuate and maintain the collective marginalization of Black students. Nevertheless, we must begin to problematize and disaggregate homogenized monolithic solutions to the Black “problem,” and begin to situate and understand the racism affecting these Black students is framed within the colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands, their cultural genocide, the devaluing of their Indigenous pedagogies and knowledge, and the transnational habitus of colonized mental slavery from Barbados and the West Indies. The Canadian state is an active colonizer, and while it is contentiously debated of the role that People of Color play in said colonization, we must frame the complexity of the agency within oppressive structures that Black Barbadians were able to adopt, and capitalize on a colonial education to succeed as subalterns at home and abroad.

This complexity becomes much more apparent once one begins to analyze how the outcomes for academic achievement fall from first-generation Black newcomers to those of the third generation. There are many reasons for this disparity, particularly the reality of systemic anti-Black racism in Canada; however, first-generation Blacks, and in this case Black Barbadians, faired exceptionally well as it related to their educational achievements. This was mainly due to anti-Black racism embedded within the pre- and post-official deracialization of the Canadian immigration policy in 1962, the Points System in 1967, and the Immigration Act of 1976, that only allowed those of “exceptional merit”—Emigrant Ambassadors—entry to this country. Nevertheless, once we give voice to the silenced narrative of Black history in this country and position the subaltern as agentic autonomous beings, we add another dimension to possible ways of improving outcomes for present day Blacks in Canada.

Anti-Blackness in the Greater Toronto Area: The Current Landscape

The children and grandchildren of newcomers are the true measure of integration and acceptance in Canadian society; they reveal the state’s willingness to incorporate difference as an innate Canadian value. Second- and even third-generation Barbadian-Canadians should experience a higher level of acceptance and social gains as compared with their newcomer parents. However, institutionalized barriers and racial discrimination at every level of Canadian society continue to inhibit the integration and recognition of an influential Black class. Second- and third-generation West Indian- and Barbadian-Canadians should be equal partners within the Canadian mosaic; however, due to their skin color, they are treated as second-class citizens. Canadians construct their identity in response to how they are treated by the wider society. People of Color are defined by who they think they are, how others see them, and most importantly how they react to who the dominant society would like them to be.

The Government’s rhetorical confusion of the ideals of Canadian multiculturalism and its conflation with negative codifiers have created a stratified hierarchy of acceptance for newcomers, Blacks, and all People of Color. Stratification exists on all levels of society and incorporates socio-economic factors, but class or generational status masks the racist overtones associated with the hierarchy of acceptance in Canadian society. Race is a fundamental organizing principle of Canadian society. In Canada, the political and social construction, negative and ignorant in its origins and usage, of Black identity, is a legislated identifier. Blackness has represented and continues to represent negativity and negative outcomes for Black youth in many institutions in the province of Ontario, particularly in the education and justice sectors. This section of the paper will be using the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), specifically Toronto, as a highlighted example of the Black condition in Canada.

The groundbreaking “Black Experience Project” (BEP), released in July 2017, outlined several key factors in the current landscape of Black communities in the GTA. The project recorded the heterogeneity of the over 400,000 Black people in this area and its “cultural variation”; however, participants of the survey agreed that “being Black”—tying their identities within a homogenous social construct—“is important to their identity and their social relationships” (Black Experience Project 2017). It must be noted that unlike the negative codifiers originally defined within the structures of Black identity during slavery, in the twenty-first century, Black people in the GTA have drawn on their homogenous “Black identity” as a sense of strength, community engagement, and a unified tool in combatting anti-Black racism. Anti-Black racism has been experienced by two-thirds of survey respondents, either “frequently or occasionally…because they are Black,” and “eight in ten report experiencing one of several forms of day-to-day micro-aggressions, such as having others expect their work to be inferior or being treated in a condescending or superficial way.” This was irrespective of one’s class survey respondents with “higher socio-economic status are just as likely as those with lower socio-economic status to be arbitrarily stopped in public by the police” (Black Experience Project 2017).

This survey recognizes that most young Blacks of this generation in the GTA are Canadian-born. This creates an intriguing scenario as the BEP survey respondents have “higher levels of educational attainment than their older counterparts,” yet seem to be “more, rather than less, affected by racism.” Black youth, born in Canada, are “more likely to identify racism as an obstacle they face; more likely to say they experience some forms of unfair treatment because they are Black; and more likely to be adversely affected by these experiences.” The survey concluded that it is possible that “young Black adults are more impatient with the failure of Canadian society to deliver on the country’s promise of equality” (Black Experience Project 2017). This perception of inferiority, rooted in a history of debasement and denigration within a British liberal racial order and a reified positioning of Blackness, has a profound effect on the way Black youth are treated within the education system. Study participants revealed that among common stereotypes of non-Blacks of Black people were the idea that they are “uneducated, lazy, and lack ambition.” These perceptions have a profoundly negative impact on Black youth; moreover, it can lead to significant barriers in adulthood (Black Experience Project 2017).

Blacks did not perform as well in all areas of the Education Quality and Accountability (EQAO) examination, with a particular gap in mathematics (TDSB 2015a). This cohort of students also performed below the provincial average on the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) and had accumulated fewer grade 10 credits (TDSB 2015a). It must be noted that Black students of “Caribbean or Canadian-born parents” performed even lower than those who identified as “Eastern and Western African” (African Canadian Legal Clinic 2017). In 2008, it was reported that there was a 42% drop-out rate among Black students (Dei 2008). In “Making Real Change Happen for African Canadians: Report of the African Canadian Legal Clinic to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (93rd Session, 2017),” the African Canadian Legal Clinic (ACLC 2017) argued that the “major concerns for Black youth in the Canadian education system are both quantitative (test scores, graduation/drop-out rates, suspensions, expulsions, etc.) and qualitative (hostile learning environments, low teacher expectations, etc.). It is difficult to learn educational and behavioral principles when your teachers and principals do not believe you have the ability to learn (African Canadian Legal Clinic 2017). This statement underscores the fact that anti-Black racism is rooted in a historical fallacy supported and maintained by White supremacist structures and ideologies.

How do we reconcile the fact that Black Barbadian students, the progeny of highly educated, socially mobile, Emigrant Ambassadors, born of a culture of education and culture of academic success have lower than average educational outcomes, and have the lowest achievement rates even within the Black population? A number of in-depth disaggregated studies of Black ethnic group achievement must be done. A study conducted by the renowned Dr. Carl E. James (2017) argued that the “longer the [Black] family has been in Canada, the worse the outcomes.” Between 2006 and 2011, third-generation Black students have a 59% graduation rate, and their drop-out rate is 28%. This number is worse than both first- and second-generation Black students (African Canadian Legal Clinic 2017). White students’ graduation rate during this period was 84% and the drop-out rate was 11%. Non-Black racialized students graduated at a rate of 89% with a drop-out rate of 9%. Overall, Black students’ graduation rate was 69%, and the drop-out rate was 20% (African Canadian Legal Clinic 2017). The ACLC submission concluded the following:

This goes beyond simply being problematic. Black students are performing worse in education than their parents, who recently immigrated here and often had to overcome cultural and language barriers. Despite being born and raised in Canada, Black students are performing progressively worse than their parents. Canadian education (among other socio-economic factors) is causing this failure, and consequently, Canada is failing its young Black citizens. Action must be taken to rectify this failure.

Comparatively, the Ontario Government created the Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework that aims to “improve the academic achievement of the estimated 50,312 Aboriginal students who attend provincially funded elementary and secondary schools in Ontario” (Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework 2007). Similar to the contemporary marginalization of Black children in the province, Indigenous children face issues such as “a lack of awareness among teachers of the learning styles of [Indigenous] students and a lack of understanding within schools and school boards of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit cultures, histories, and perspectives” (Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework 2007). There is a “significant gap between the educational attainment” of the Indigenous population compared with non-Indigenous children in the province; notwithstanding the significantly lower secondary graduation rates and post-secondary enrollment, many Indigenous youth must leave their communities to attend secondary school. As reported in such documents and reports as the Verdict of Coroner’s Jury (2016) in the deaths of Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Paul Panacheese, Robyn Harper, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morrisseau, and Jordan Wasasse (Seven First Nations Youth), Indigenous youth face a number of perilous, and often deadly, circumstances when they have to leave their communities to receive their education. The Government knows, and acknowledges, this fact; however, the response has been restricted by the structures of anti-Indigenous racism in this province and the country as a whole.

Government initiatives such as the creation of Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate and its Anti-Black Racism Strategy, supported by the Anti-Racism Act, 2017 (a Canadian first), are designed and tasked to address these systemic barriers. It is a well-needed foundational step for change. However, I argue that outside of system changes, we need to go back to this culture of education of indoctrinating positive ethnic and racial identities in the face of an oppressive hegemony of negativity. This is of particular importance as racial identity has been proven to “play a crucial role in one’s motivation and sense of belonging in the school setting” due to the fact that the experiences of Black students in the school setting are unique “because of their awareness of stereotypes and uncertainty of their groups’ value in mainstream settings” (Verdict of Coroner’s Jury 2016). We need to support the historical knowledge of academic success associated with Black Barbadians and find avenues to translate positive identities, oftentimes incongruent with the White supremacist society in which we live, for the betterment of Black children in the Canadian education system. This review of how we educate Black children, and in this case Black Barbadian children, acknowledges the structural disadvantages and systemic barriers designed to fail Black children. Yes, I do believe that we need more Black teachers; we need to make changes in how we systematically stream Black children into non-academic courses; we need to enforce mandatory anti-Black racism and cultural competency capacity building for educators; and we need to review the continued “Whitening” of our curriculums and Canadian history.

It is also crucial to inform the school environment (teachers, students, and Black students) on the role of Emigrant Ambassadors and how this can positively impact the intersectional identities and treatment of Black girls within the Canadian education system. The groundbreaking study, “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls; Childhood,” from the Georgetown Law Center for Poverty and Inequality (2017), provided data showing that “adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers (authors’ emphasis), especially in the age range of 5–14,” or the “adultification” of Black girls. In comparison with White girls in the same age category, Girlhood Interrupted survey respondents perceived that Black girls “need less nurturing,” “need less protection,” “need to be supported less,” “need to be comforted less,” that Black girls “are more independent,” “know more about adult topics,” and “know more about sex” (Epstein et al. 2017). The study argued that these perceptions could be a “potential contributing factor to the disproportionate rates of punitive treatment in the education and juvenile justice systems for Black girls” (Epstein et al. 2017). Moreover, Black girls may receive “harsher punishment” and fewer “leadership and mentorship opportunities” while they are in school. It must be noted that “most teachers do not consider themselves to be racist and do not perceive themselves to be treating Black children any worse than they do children of other races and ethnicities”; however, within the paradigm of a White supremacist society, “when we learn how to think within spaces that are created and influenced by one particular culture, historical discriminatory biases persist in the structural assessment models of our brains—even if we may not be, or may not perceive ourselves to be, explicitly racist or prejudiced” (African Canadian Legal Clinic 2017). Adults who have control over children in the school setting—teachers, resource officers, and administrators—must receive capacity and competency building on not only the adultification of Black girls but also a history of Black women in Canada and throughout the Americas. One firm foundational learning piece for educators and students alike can be that of the history of Emigrant Ambassadors and their legacy in the Canadian education system. As previously stated in this article, I am not dismissing the necessity for systemic change with a neo-liberal argument of Black individualism and meritocracy. Targeting White and non-Black teachers with learning on the positive histories of Blacks, particularly Black Barbadians as it relates to education, can influence some of the bias and misinformed stereotypes that can be a detriment to the well-being and future of all Black children.

“So what?” That is the question we always ask when it comes to pushing against the constraints of established systems. That is the question we always come back to. This article has argued that one avenue for the liberation of Black children in this country, particularly those of Barbadian or West Indian decent, is to educate them about the culture of education that their ancestors fought so dearly to build. While I argue that this does not dissolve the permanent structures of systemic racism, it does give our youth another tool in how to combat, or simply navigate, the oppressive state of anti-Black racism, the very same environment that their Emigrant Ambassador trailblazers successfully navigated. I must reiterate that this is only a small, but crucial step, to reorient our children to see the positivity in education, which for generations in this country has been used as tool to segregate; a tool to denigrate; and a tool to eliminate the very existence of People of Color and Indigenous peoples in this country.

It is important to frame our thinking on the utility of this argument of a culture of education and our anti-Black racism within a decolonization framework. Yes, scholars, such as Lawrence, Dua, Sharma, and Wright, have begun to position Black people, newcomers, and People of Color within the historical and active colonization of Indigenous people; however, this paper begins to shed light on how one small community and its reverence for (a colonial) education as a tool for social mobility and settlement on Indigenous land, intersects with the very same institution that was used as a mechanism to displace and destroy Indigenous culture and peoples. More studies are needed on how colonial institutions, particularly systems of education in Barbados and Residential Schools, simultaneously consolidated the cultural genocide of emancipated Black slaves and created the “Black Brit,” and perpetuated the cultural genocide and displacement of Indigenous Peoples in Turtle Island. Moreover, the intriguing piece to this line of thinking is when these two worlds collided in the 1960s, we can see how a singular system of oppression was used to displace one oppressed group in favor of another. Once the Emigrant Ambassadors landed and utilized their Barbadian education capital, it becomes most apparent that the Canadian education system was, and is, designed to fail Black students, like how it is failing Indigenous youth.

During this age of Truth and Reconciliation and the Indigenization of classrooms and lecture halls across the province of Ontario and the teaching of Indigenous and colonial history, to support our Black children, particularly those of Barbadian and West Indian descent, it is crucial to teach them the true value of education that their ancestors “back home” fought so hard to achieve. Not only that, but we must learn how this very same system was a factor in the on-going colonization efforts of this host country we call Canada. With that knowledge, we can move forward on parallel journeys for racial equity and sovereignty. Education is the key to prosperity.