| Writer George Elliott Clarke says Canada has to do a better job of helping new immigrants succeed economically or else there will be an increasing number of people who feel disenfranchised, leading to social unrest.
"At the same time as our population is becoming increasingly diverse, we do not see enough economic integration," says the poet, playwright and novelist. "We haven’t given enough thought yet to how we receive people, how we allow different communities to prosper."
Clarke will be delivering the annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium lecture on Friday, March 10. The lecture is jointly organized by the Dominion Institute and John Ralston Saul to stimulate debate about the future of Canada’s democracy. Clarke will speak about the future of democracy in Canadian cities.
Clarke says statistics show that visible minorities are still "falling behind" other Canadians economically, and as the number of visible minorities grows, it will become an increasingly important social issue.
If it remains unchanged, Clarke foresees "social unrest, cars being burned in the streets like we saw in Paris."
"I’m not being dramatic. I really do think that’s what will unfold because people are not going to accept being denied a place at the table forever. I don’t mean just economically, but politically," he says.
He points to recent gun violence committed by black men in Toronto as an example of what can happen when a group is denied equal opportunities.
"What we’ve become focused on in Toronto is problems of crime as opposed to fixing on how we can make sure that people really have equality of opportunity in order to move themselves and their communities forward," he says.
However, he adds, instead of that discussion occurring, what’s happened is a "criminalization of a community."
Clarke wants to see various levels of government taking more action to ensure that immigrants succeed in their new country. There also has to be a recognition that Canada is now a highly urbanized country where most people live in cities, he says.
"As Canadians, we don’t seem to realize we live in cities. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with celebrating wilderness…. I understand wilderness and nature and countryside is a crucial part of our identity and that’s never going to disappear, but we also have to start recognizing as part of our consciousness that we are a highly urbanized people. We have to stop thinking of cities as citadels of sin," says Clarke.
He says wilderness is often seen as pristine and pure and "untainted by humanity." However, he says it’s time that the Canadian identity is updated, so diversity and cities are celebrated along with our vast wilderness.
"Part of the sort of unstated but cultural attack on cities has to do with cities being places of many different kinds of people. Basically being oases of multiculturalism. There’s a little bit of xenophobia that drives anti-city anti-urban attitudes," he says.
"Cities are problematic because they’re places where you have a large group of people who are ‘foreign’ …. I think that in terms of our popular conceptions of ourselves, our popular culture, there’s still this sense that a real Canadian is someone who’s out there doing something in the woods or mines."
When asked how he sees cities, Clarke says, "I see cities as centres of possibility, as places where people can go and remake themselves, where they can escape the restraints of family and culture and try out new identities."
Clarke has recently published a book of poetry called Illuminated Verses. The book includes photography by Ricardo Scipio, which celebrates the beauty of black women. All of Clarke’s poems correspond to individual photos in the book.
Clarke says he’s taken some flak due to the fact that all the women photographed are nude, but he says the book isn’t about objectification or exploitation. He describes all the photos as "beautific."
"They deserve to be seen by a very large audience. Some may say it’s objectification, so let them say that if that’s what they really think. Some might say it’s not correct or righteous to do this," says Clarke. "Keeping in mind the nude as an art form has been around for how many millennia, I don’t think these nudes are going to disrupt society.
"The fact that these nudes are of African ancestry and heritage should not make a huge difference either, but we all know this kind of art is very unusual for our society because when we do show the female nude, we only want to show one kind of female."
It took Clarke more than 11 years to find a publisher for his book. In the book’s introduction, he writes, "Maybe the idea of the unclothed black feminine seems too brazen, or just too dark a concept for a society addicted to depictions of elect whiteness."
He describes the book as both an "objet d’art and a political work."
"I think the poetry and the photographs are about celebrating, lauding, about saying this is good, this is beautiful. And if you read the poetry, some of the poems also talk about history of struggle, which that beautiful black body has been so integral to," he says.
Clarke says he was extremely touched by the comments he received from a couple of black women, who said to him, "I never understood how beautiful we were until we saw these photographs."
"That is a powerful and a disturbing statement," he says. " But the book was worth it for me just for that kind of reaction."
Clarke will speak at the Jack Singer Concert Hall on March 10 at 7 p.m. For more information go to www.lafontaine-baldwin.com. |
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