From Santo Domingo to Ferguson

Today, Aug. 23, is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. For 400 years — not four years, not 40 years, but 400 years: 146,000 days and nights! — from the 15th century to the 19th century, Caucasians took Africans and brought them to their home countries to make slaves of them.

Forty-two million human beings were ripped from their homes, from their families, confined in ships and sold in markets like animals. They became the property of their masters.

This human horror cannot be blamed on one man. We can’t say that this happened because of a mad man or a bloodthirsty tyrant. Millions of men, from generation to generation, were guilty of or accomplices to this crime against humanity. Many good people, many admired people profited from this human commerce or profited by allowing it to take place.

Let us not even try to justify ourselves by saying, “This is a European and an American matter. Here in Quebec, we never did that!” Wrong. Aug. 23 also marks the day when the last slave was sold at public auction in Montreal. Yes, our beautiful city. It was 1797. His name was Emanuel Allen.

All Caucasians are descendants of people who tolerated the intolerable. We cannot wash our hands of this. For racism to end, we have to eradicate it from [within] ourselves. We have to recognize its vile stupidity. There is no white race or black race, no red race or yellow race; we are all the same race, the human race.

Africa is the cradle of civilization. When the first human beings shed their fur because of the heat, their skin darkened to protect itself from ultraviolet rays. It was a question of survival. If human beings hadn’t become black, they would no longer exist. It’s simple.

Then, when certain populations left to colonize Asia and Europe, their skin lost its pigment to adapt to the environment. It was again a question of survival. Essentially, we are all black. Some of us are pale, others not. Whether the Ku Klux Klan likes it or not, that’s how it is.

Our skin color is the result of the adaptation of our line of descent to its environment. That’s it. It’s superficial, a surface matter. Everything inside us is the same — our blood, our soul, our strength, our weakness, our joy, our pain. As Marc Dupré said, “We are the same.”

So by what right have pale brothers treated their dark-skinned brothers inhumanely for centuries? None. It’s a monstrosity that must never be forgotten and never cease to be denounced.

There are those who are scandalized by humanitarian aid for Africa. Canada should keep her cash for herself. Honestly, it’s really nothing, after everything we have done to this continent. The riches of the West rest in great part on the shameless exploitation of Africa. Our moral debt toward Africans is infinitely greater than their economic debt. They are not even comparable. And we won’t pay off the debt with three crates of vaccines.

If Aug. 23 was chosen by UNESCO to remember the slave trade and its abolition, perhaps this is because during the night of Aug. 22, 1791, the slave uprising began in Santo Domingo, present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The African slaves revolted against their white masters, destroying the sugarcane and coffee plantations. After a long and bloody war against the French colonists, the island finally proclaimed its independence, and dark-skinned men obtained the same rights as light-skinned men.

Today, it is written in the laws of all reasonable countries that all men are equal. But is it written on men’s hearts?

On Aug. 9 of this year, in Ferguson, Missouri, a white police officer killed Michael Brown, a young black man who was walking in the streets unarmed. Why? Perhaps the investigation will reveal an answer. Outraged citizens are demanding justice. Several protests have ended in riots. Similar cases are common in the United States. Did the white police officer draw his gun more quickly because the young man he tried to arrest was black? Unfortunately, centuries of history make it reasonable to believe, or at least to consider, that the answer is yes.

Those in power are still predominantly white, and the poor are still predominantly black. It’s going to take more than an Obama to change that. The powerful are afraid of the poor, and the poor are afraid of the powerful. Except that the powerful have the right to shoot at the poor, not the other way around.

In 2014, skin color is still an excuse that allows certain people to mistreat others. The cruel always have an excuse for being cruel; it’s up to good people to act. Let the remembrance of the African slave trade motivate us to open our hearts. We owe it to our brothers.

In our daily lives, we must never tolerate racist words or behavior. They are insults to intelligence. If racism is still present, it’s because we are not trying hard enough to make it a thing of the past.

To have a clear conscience, it’s not enough to like P.K.*

*Editor’s note: P.K. refers to Canadian hockey player P.K. Subban, who has recently been the target of racial slurs on the Internet.