I’m tired.

I’m tired. Physically, as I write this, because I didn’t get enough sleep. I got up around 4am and stared at my door for ten minutes wondering: Could it happen to me? I sat  in complete fear, each minute becoming more painfully aware that it probably could happen to me. That if it did, they would find a way to justify it.  I could be gone in a second because of some false  information, or because someone knew that a black man lived over there. Do you understand how terrifying that realization is? Dafonte Miller was beaten to a pulp just for existing outside. He lost an eye at the hands of a person  who took an oath to protect and serve him. That happened in Toronto, by the way, not faraway America where racism is supposed to live. Breonna Taylor was killed by four white men who decided that they could end her life. Who decided that whoever was in that bedroom that night was no longer going to live. Without warning, without authority, without any knowledge of the situation. They ended two lives: one physically in the killing of Breonna, and one in every other way possible in the incarceration of Kenneth Walker. Those four white men are free today. But that’s America right? Need Canadian equivalents to understand that this is our reality too? Orlando Brown, Nicholas Gibbs, Machuar Madut, D’Andre Campbell, Regis Korchinski-Paquet. This is the world I woke up to at 4am. 

It’s safe to say I didn’t get anymore sleep after that. Instead I find myself here, trying to make sense of my thoughts and to understand how these tragedies correlate to the life I live. I’ve been sheltered far too long by a society that won’t wake up to its own injustice. As horrible and perhaps more overt as the situation is in America we need to understand that we are battling the same systemic roots in Canada. The same awful tree that our southern neighbours cannot neglect is the tree no wants to look at here and therefore we see as non-existent. That tree has borne the fruit of injustice and since the tree is bad ALL the fruit are bad. There aren’t a few bad apples in that tree; it is rotten to its core because it was planted and rooted in bad soil. That is the same tree that not only produced those apples but once had some strange fruit swinging from its branches. Take off the rose-coloured glasses; we have problems and issues that need to be discussed  and addressed. Idealism won’t serve us in our efforts to dismantle the systemic issues we have specifically with our Black and Indigenous communities. While the fight is happening for Black people in Amerirca, Canada surrounds itself in a blanket of diversity that takes the voice away from the central focus of Black and Indigenous issues and cheapens the experiences and issues of other oppressed voices. All marginalized voices need a platform, all of them need a space, but why are we so afraid to acknowledge that we need to focus on the Black and the Indigenous ones right now? I am not saying that other oppressed communities do not have issues that need to be addressed. I am saying though that putting a “one-size-fits-all” view on racism and tying a nice bow of diversity around it, is dangerous to the work we could be doing to help really achieve that diversity authentically. 

How does this relate to art? What can we do about it? We are in a era where dismantling the systemic roots of oppression has to be at the forefront of issues within our industry. Money, theatre, programming, COVID, are all secondary to the very real notion that a new generation of Canadian is not going to care about the art we create if it isn’t coming from a place that is representative of the society they live in. The pandemic won’t kill the arts industry, but a collective ignorance to the cultural and mental shift happening in the minds of Canadians, specifically the next generation of Canadians, will. If you are a member of the arts community in any capacity it is time for you to start advocating for Black and Indigenous voices. Speak out to your local arts organizations, start programs in your schools, hire Indigenous and Black artists and not as one-offs and tokens in your seasons, and program works by Black and Indegineous artists because they are a part of the Canadian fabric. Equity, authenticity and inclusion need to be at the forefront of your minds for all oppressed groups but  specific voices are being amplified  now, and they deserve specific attention. We have the good fortune of living in provinces and cities that are echelons of culture and multiculturalism. We haven’t worked for that however, and that convenience of surface-level multiculturalism does not replace the work that authenticity in diversity takes. Aside from physically allowing people into the country, we have done nothing to prove Canada is multicultural.  Let’s do everything we can to try to get this right this time. I will  do my small part but I also need all of you because I’m tired. And I’m tired of being tired.