Gail Nyoka | Gail Nyoka Stories

Book Review: How to be an Antiracist

Ibram X. Kendi recounts the time he was in a third grade classroom. A small, shy black-skinned girl raises her had in response to a question from the teacher. The teacher ignores the girl and waits for the raised hand of one of her white students.

Even as a child, Kendi notices that this girl’s spirit is crushed, he sees how she bows her head. Here is a powerful story that resonates with my own experience. How many times does this type of incident happen? How many black-skinned girls and boys are destroyed in classrooms? Far too many. It has been happening for generations.

The effects of racism on individuals who fall under its influence are numerous: depression, distress, suicide.

There’s no such thing as casual racism, there’s no micro in the aggression that dark-skinned people face on an almost daily basis. This is what Kendi describes as “the persistent daily hum of racist abuse.” (Page 47) He uses a strong, more accurate vocabulary: Racist abuse. Not institutionalized racism: Racist policies.

Racism is part of life in North America. It has affected the psyche of every person who lives within it. Kendi examines his own life, thoughts and behaviors throughout the book. He states, “No one becomes racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other.” (Page 23)

We need awareness every day of how much racist attitudes have seeped into our unconscious ideas, and how these shape our actions and way of thinking.

How do we move into a better way of living? It’s a long and difficult process that involves focusing, not just on individuals, but on the forces of power, and the policies that uphold racism.

Chapter One begins with definitions of racist and antiracist. The chapters that follow start with a definition to draw our attention to the racism in our perceptions of the body ethnicity, the language we use, and the weave of beliefs that underlie our attitudes.

Here’s a book that can help every one of us to live more thoughtfully. It shows us how we can actively joins the fight against the racism that permeates our everyday lives.

Memories of Egypt

It’s been a long time since I visited Egypt; Mubarak was still in power, but I still have strong memories. I noticed the huge posters with Mubarak’s face. They were all in a line on the median of one of the streets. This seems to be a trademark of dictators. In Baby Doc’s Haiti, I noticed billboards with pictures of ‘the Haitian family’ on them.

But, back to Egypt. at the time of my visit, there were armed guards at the hotels, and on the trains, presumably to protect tourists, but there might have been other reasons. In any case, I felt safe, even as a solo female traveler. I noticed that Egyptian women (at least in the places I visited) did not go out alone. They were either with a man, or with one or two other women. Although few wore the hijab, they were dressed conservatively, with their arms and legs covered. Not wishing to make myself too conspicuous, I kept my legs covered to below the knees, and my arms covered to the elbows. I was still pretty conspicuous. Cairo has a subway system with carriages especially for women. I preferred to travel in the women-only carriages; the women eyed me as I stood in the crowded carriage.

The reason for my visit was twofold. I wanted to conduct research for my novel Star’s Reflection, and I was on a personal pilgrimage to the old temples. My fiance and I had planned to go to Egypt, and after he died, I decided that I would go solo, a ritual of mourning. He and I had wanted to walk in the footsteps of the priests and priestesses of the ancient temples. The temples were breathtaking. I was in awe of their grandeur, the colours of the paints still clinging to the walls after thousands of years. The statues pulsed with the accumulation of those years.

I went to Luxor, not only to visit the famed temple of Karnak but because, from there, I could travel to the temple at Dendera, the temple of Hathor (or Het Heru, the name I use in the novel). The temple that now stands was built in the time when the Greeks had taken over control of Egypt. The ancient kings of Egypt would sometimes build their temples using the materials and site of a previously erected temple, and this is the case at Dendera, modeled on the temple that was even older. The temple’s mud-brick encircling walls had crumbled, but the temple structure was well preserved, although emptied of its altars and statues. Still, I kneeled before the place where the altar would once have been. The guide/guard respected my moment of privacy in that place.

Date palms grow at the bottom of the pool

At Karnak, the temple’s sacred pool was filled with water, but at Dendera, the pool was dry; palm trees reached skyward from the floor of the former pool, which would have been filled by a system of channels.

On the train to Cairo, I looked from the window at the passing scenes. It seemed that the countryside must have changed little from ancient times: women beat carpets outdoors; donkeys carried loads; the sun rose hot and red on the horizon. In Cairo, the museum pool grew the blue lotus flowers that were prized in ancient times, and the Nile, though now dammed, is as important as ever.

In may ways, it was the museums that gave me a better idea of the artifacts and lives of the ancients. I made inexpert drawings of the tools and household items that would have been used. But the old temples, teeming with groups of tourists, gave me a true feel for the scale and glory of these places, the care, work and love that went into erecting them, the incredible knowledge of those ancient architects and builders.

My time in Egypt was too short. I would have liked to have visited the temple of Seti I in Abydos, and the temple in Abu Simbel, built by Ramesses II (which I mention briefly in the novel as the temple that he planned to build). I felt something from that land had formed a permanent part of myself. Perhaps, one day, I will get a chance to visit it again.

Harriet Tubman the Storyteller

Harriet Tubman could not read or write, yet she used the strength of the oral tradition to make sure that history lived on for generation after generation. Over a hundred years after her death, we know many details of her life because she told them to audiences, friends, family and biographers.

Harriet Tubman was one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. There is argument about the number of trips she made south and the number of slaves she personally brought to freedom. But whatever the number, her achievements were remarkable, and there is no doubt that she planned and directed the escapes of hundreds of enslaved people.

Although her work on the Underground Railroad is well known, not so many people know that Harriet Tubman was an accomplished storyteller. She told the story of her life, performing in the salons of supporters and anti-slavery activists, and the halls of women’s rights activists. She was reported to hold her listeners spellbound with the tales of her life in slavery, her escape, the trips she took back to the south to guide other escapees to freedom, and her work as a nurse, spy and fighter in the American Civil War. Her storytelling came from the tradition of the African-American subculture, taking elements from her African ancestry, integrated into the clandestine passing of information that was born from the experience of slavery. She was a strong singer and this, too, was part of her storytelling, and her life story.

In describing her memories of Tubman, her grand-niece, Alice Clifford Larson, said Tubman’s stories never varied in the details. She was passing on an oral history – it had to be right.

Tubman’s story has often been told but, in my telling, I highlight aspects of her story that have been neglected. I do not attempt to capture the accent and phrasing of Harriet Tubman in this rendition of her story, but my aim is to capture her voice through the spirit of her powerful personality and how it was expressed in the achievements of her deeds.