#IdentityMatters | Here’s Why

Doesn’t matter any item or object; seen or unseen, they all have an identity. So should we!

Last year was quite the year for us all to witness.

Who would have ever thought we’d get here; wearing face masks just about everywhere we go. As a mandatory!

If that wasn’t enough, we had the stay-at-home order as well social distancing 6 feet.

The tragic deaths of many elders, along with families having to experience the financial, economic or social effects of having to adjust in order to combat COVID can be overwhelming.

Urban communities have become exposed to being at high-risk of COVID for numerous reasons, many of which point directly to structural racism in the form of poor environmental care in marginalized communities.

Much of this can be traced to the 1600s where a system was set in place to categorize dark skinned peoples separate from those of a different race and colour, white.

It was in 1680, when the term “white” was introduced to give free white slaves, or Europeans an economic advantage was its purpose and those African or dark skinned Negroes were assigned “Black” to represent economic inferiority always in life.

As we fast forward to present, 2020 was the year to really uproot some long buried history after the careless murder of George Floyd by police during an arrest that was aired globally-

It opened the flood gates of complaints and sparked leaders to respond with answers regarding structural racism.

Many came up with solutions they deemed appropriate for a group of people that their ancestors set up as a system to dehumanize and degrade.

Here in Canada our Federal government announced the Anti-Racism strategy.

In addition, our Canadian government signed on to the recent Great Reset announced by the World Economic Forum in June of 2020 which calls for an end to inequality, poverty and social injustices.

The Great Reset is also going to be renewing the social contract. We have an opportunity to reset right, this time!

For our communities, the social contract always meant guilty until proven innocent. Since there is a great reset, The Reset Community is also about changing the social contract as it relates to our race and group of nations.

In addition our identity, families, culture, religion, economics and more – was taken away and replaced with an identity not our own.

Malcolm X spoke about this in an interview during the sixties where he was against the word Negroes, as it was used the same way as Black was used today. To be an identity in the economic and political world in which we exist, we are to be degraded or treated less than and certainly not equal to White person.

Due to the fact that at the time the English became dominant in the slave trade taking over from the Portuguese, where the word Negroes come from, as they were the first to use this system of type casting within that era of slave trade.; there was no word for Black in English. Somewhere between there Black came to represent black the colour and Black the race. This was assigned by colonizers to dark skinned peoples or Africans to represent legal inequality.

That being said, as we fast forward to present, in acknowledging there is structural racism and the reason it began in the first place was to uplift White populations and degrade Black populations, it would seem most fitting to also reset our identity as a nation.

Just as everything, object or item; seen or unseen; known or unknown; tangible or intangible; living or not living all have an identity; this reset and the anti-racism strategies provides an opportunity for us to be reset – right!

#Identitymatters #ResetRight #EndStructuralRacism ##GetToKnowUs