NEW: Check this story out at the Halifax Media Co-op:
Cornwallis: What's in a Name?
http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/cornwallis-%E2%80%93-whats-name/7597
NEWER: Check out Ben Sichel's cogent point-by-point rebuttal of the backlash against the school renaming in the Chronicle-Herald: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1250924.html.
Two interesting stories in Halifax's Chronicle Herald today.
On the bright side, the Halifax Regional School Board voted unanimously last night to change the name of Cornwallis Junior High. Named after the city's founder, Mi'Kmaq activists have long sought to have the name changed and Cornwallis's participation in the colonization of the province publically recognized. Among other things, Cornwallis, who founded Halifax in 1749 (with colonists mostly culled from London's abject poor - most of whom died), placed a bounty on Mi'Kmaq scalps (see Ursula Johnson's phenomenal performance at last fall's Nocturne arts festival in Halifax). But more broadly Cornwallis is iconic of the sort of dispicable colonialist attitudes and actions that led to the decimation of Mi'Kmaq populations and cultures throughout the province over the next 250 years. For more information, see this page by author Daniel Paul, author of the excellent book We Were Not the Savages (3rd ed., Fernwood).
On the dark side, the RCMP are now investigating a string of organized racist incidents in Shelburne and at the high-school there. While the police investigator is quick to assure readers that "we are dealing with young people," Shelburne has a old and sordid history of racist violence. Many will be familiar with the town (once a thriving port) from Lawrence Hill's acclaimed historical novel The Book of Negroes as a site where many loyalists, both black and white, were evacuated in the waning days of the American War of Independence. Hill outlines the horrific conditions endured by the Black Loyalists in Shelburne and Birchtown (accross the river from Shelburne, on poorer soil) but a visit to the Birchtown Black Loyalist Heritage Centre revealts the truly horrific conditions of life as the Black population struggled to make a life amidst material privation and intense racism and racial violence. Indeed, a year after the landing of the Black Loyalists, British soldiers led the townspeople of Shelburne in a notorious race riot. Historic legacies have not been addressed. In 2006, the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre was burned down by arson (see also this). This compunds an ongoing legacy of anti-Black racism in the province.
Nova Scotia is a racist province. We need to admit this fact and begin to work through its implications and consequences. Unfortunately, the province and its leaders are in serious denial, and even bringing racism up produces howls of protest from the majority of the white population. While the renaming of Cornwallis Junior High is an excellent step forward, it is only a very small part of the cultural transformation that needs to occur. Indeed, the renaming of the school invites those who would downplay the province's racist past and present to believe that they have "accomodated" or "tolerated" the "oversenstive" demands of "special interest groups" through tokenistic change.
But the future of the province is at stake. The NDP government intends to double international immigration to the province by 2020 to make up for "natural" population decline. But without a fundamental strategy and real leadership in confronting the legacies and contemporary manifestations of racism, non-white immigrants (and many "white" immigrants) will find themselves officially welcomed into an hostile cultural atmosphere.
The change that needs to come is not merely cultural. It will not be enough to merely have more multi-cultural festivals and minor changes to school curricula (although that would be a good start, and many inspiring people have been working on these things for years). It will require immediate work to end the social and economic marginalization of racialized communities in the province, including monetary reparations for past wrongs.
But it will also require a fundamental restructuring of the province's economy to eliminate the forms of poverty, unemployment, insecurity and bitterness that are the resevoir of racist attitudes among the "white" populations. Without a fundamental redistribution of wealth and reengineering of the province's economy, racism will continue to be symptomatic of a sick society.