Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Being Black in Toronto: Toronto Mike'd #656

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Mike listens to Donnovan Bennett and Garvia Bailey discuss what it's like to be black in Toronto and their hope for the future.

Welcome to episode 656 of Toronto Mic'd. I'd like to introduce my two special guests tonight. I'm joined by Garvia Bailey, a journalist, interviewer, educator, and pundit who can be heard on JazzCast. Hi, Garvia. Hi, Mike. How's it going today? It's going pretty well. Thanks for having me on today on a Sunday night. What a treat. What a rare Sunday night episode of Toronto Mic'd. I'm not sure I've done

one of these before, but it's a different vibe on a Sunday night. I've noticed. I like it. It's kind of chill. I like it. Maybe I'll do more of these, maybe. I'm also joined this evening by Donovan Bennett, a Sportsnet broadcaster and producer who recently made his Toronto Mike debut. Hello, Donovan. Hello. Thank you for having me and thank you for your patience. As full disclosure, I made you both wait for a while, so I hope no one was trying to listen live and left. But my bad. And thank you for having me once again.

Well, since we're doing the full disclosure real talk here, three different instances of Donovan Bennett appeared in the Zoom chat. I took a screen grab. Just so I could show it to him later. I'm not tech friendly. Let's just say that much. I'm happy this is working.

No, I'm happy you're here. I'm just happy you're here. And there was a brief moment when Gervie and I thought maybe you cloned yourself, which we would have been very pleased with. That would be very cool. Well, only one third of the things I say on this podcast will probably make any sense. Only one third of the things I say on this podcast will probably make sense. I'm just trying to play law of averages and give myself as many opportunities as possible.

No, you're a clever man. Very clever. So again, thank you both for joining me on a Sunday evening. And let me briefly tell the origin story of how this special episode came to be. But on Thursday, so what are we on? Sunday, so this is a few days ago, Garvia Bailey tweeted this. I'm only going to be on here today to say one thing. Dear everyone who is not black, the people you work with interact with,

your neighborhood, the UPS your neighborhood the ups guy from nigeria your night uh the nigerian girl your cousin married things are so far from okay with us so far far from okay we are functioning and going through the motions of living and surviving and getting shit done but underneath our good nature at you, not seeing color or not really thinking it's about race or worse, thinking it's not about us at all. We are in a state of existential panic. We've been well trained to hide it and some of us will keep hiding it. Just know that for many, every second day is not business as usual.

It's trying to maintain sanity do what you will with that information now i saw this on twitter i follow garvia i love it when garvia i love it when you tweet and donovan you're a great tweeter too but garvia you're a great amen to that that was that was a sermon right and i read it so, and I'm going to pass this mic to you very shortly, except just, I did reply to that right away. Like right away, my fingers just started going and I,

I read it and Garvia, I hope you know this, but I, I care about you. I mean, like I have a lawyer, this is a true story. I have a lawyer today for the Toronto mic podcast because of a cease and

desist order I received because of how much I care about you. Like this is this is a fact. Donovan's probably looking for the deeper story. I'll give it to him later via DM. But I replied to that that tweet that sermon you tweeted and I wrote Garvia sincere question from someone who gives a shit. wrote Garvia. Sincere question from someone who gives a shit. Other than acknowledging my privilege and appreciating your plight and raising my four kids the very best I can to not tolerate such bullshit, what should I be doing? So that's the origin story of how this episode came to be. I decided I do have this channel, you know, be it what it is.

I have this forum and I'm just eager to have an open and honest discussion about this with, with you, Garvia, who, who wrote the sermon and Donovan, because I highly respect your perspective. And I,

I've read some of your thoughts on Twitter and they were equally profound and inspiring. So I was wondering, how are you feeling now, Garvia, a few days removed from that tweet? Worse. More angry, probably. A little bit more discouraged. a little bit more discouraged. Um, but also, um, today felt a little bit better because I think people are finally getting it. You know, I feel like, like, not just, not just Black folks, because Black, like, I mean, Black people, we, we get it, like, because we're living, we're in it.

But I do feel like outside of, all of those the frustrations of um that brought the um tweet out on thursday um i feel like a lot of the those frustrations are they're a little bit less today because i think people are really getting it because things are so crazy uh because it's it's so impossible to ignore at this point that um you you can only feel like you're being gaslighted for so long like it feels like the last little while it's been like people are telling you that things aren't as bad as they are now it's quite obvious to everybody that things are worse than even we imagined. That's how I'm feeling. Okay.

So firstly, I'm eager to hear what Donovan has to say about both your, that tweet I read from you. And then also, Donovan, how are you feeling in light of this, what's happening in the world? Yeah, so ebbs and flows, I would say. I'm generally an upbeat, optimistic person, at least I think I am. My wife might differ. But I try to be optimistic because it costs the same, right? So might as well see the glass half full and not half empty. And, you know, when everything started to go down, and we have to go back, you know, like this is not just, you know, Mr. Floyd in the last seconds of his life. It's, it's Amy Cooper. It's Ahmaud

Arbery. It's again and again and again, hashtag after hashtag after hashtag. And so to me, I was just like, okay, this is the next one, right? There's a cycle to this. It happens. It's in the news cycle. Talk about it. We're outraged. We tweet prayers and thoughts with the little emoji with the hands together. You know, people try and get some justice. There's protests and they become militarized and then they become riots. And then the conversation changes from what we were actually talking about to the riots and looting and cities being burnt down. And then something else happens and the news cycle changes and the lead changes. And what's left is those communities are left with small businesses that no longer exist.

People who are still hurting still have answers. small businesses that no longer exist, people who are still hurting still have answers. And often, more often than not, no penalty paid in terms of the judicial system. And I don't want to say more importantly, because certainly that is important. But from a macro level, no greater conversation of how do we get to this place where you could see a lack of humanity in another human? How did we get to this place where the systemic pressures and a detailed system that's been designed over years and years and years has people feeling less than? Has some people who are playing the same game and some start on

third base and others start with two strikes. That conversation is not really had in a real way. And we'll just wait for the next video. And in fact, now in the last, you know, 10 or so years, we have these conversations more readily because there is video.

This is not happening more. We're seeing it. We thought Rodney King was going to be this awakening because finally there happened to is video. This is not happening anymore. We're seeing it now. We thought Rodney King was going to be this awakening because finally there happened to be video. And we know what that outcome was. And so to be honest, to start, this was like, okay, this is just happening in a pandemic. And so the protests and the riots are going to be super spreaders

for more pain as people are not socially distancing. I didn't think this was any different, but I became optimistic because I felt more people were starting to reach out. More people were trying to be allies, trying to understand. more people were trying to be allies trying to understand i've never gotten when these things have happened before i've never gotten a text or an email saying how are you doing are you okay what can i do never my phone is blowing up in the last three four five days um and so it's almost as like did like steve jobs you know send like the white mailing list and email being like, yeah, we got to check up on people because everyone all of a sudden is, is, is interested. So that is good. And that gives me hope. And I do have hope in general for two reasons. One,

because this generation coming up underneath us, that's young, that's educated, that is fighting for things like climate change and gun reform. They grew up with an internet. So I'm hoping, again, optimistic that they see more than what's in their bubble, what's in their echo chamber. They have access to comport themselves into other places of the world, have some understanding. And maybe there's more humanity that way. That's the one reason why I have hope. And the other is just like, it's just that, just Matt, there are many more interracial relationships, interracial children. So you just extrapolate that over two, three, four generations. It's not like we're going to have town halls on caramel on caramel crime. Hating someone else is going to be tough when you have to parse through, well,

how different are they than me? And so again, I'm hoping that things will get better as we have more shared understanding. But then I just watch riots being covered night after night after night like it's a sporting event and um you know people who had nothing to do with george floyd's death losing their businesses having to to protect themselves and on the flip side you know police officers arresting media members live on television before uh the police officer who kneeled on someone's neck for eight plus minutes was arrested. And I'm like, man, like, why was I optimistic again? So it, it, it, and it, and it flows. I'm hoping because people are seemingly for the first time willing to have a conversation now,

things will change, but really for things to change, it has to have a conversation now, things will change. But really for things to change, it has to be a sustained conversation. But more importantly, it can't just be a conversation from Black people talking to Black people. Black people are acutely aware of racism. They've been talking about it for their entire existence, literally. Racism is not something that Black people create, although if you tweet about it, you're racist. Racism is something that is a cost for Black people, that is put on them, that they have to deal with. Racism is an issue largely amongst white people. And so in the same way that you would never ask sexual assault survivors on themselves to only talk about and solve sexual assault, or you wouldn't solely ask women by themselves to solve sexism, you can't ask black people to just solve racism.

themselves to solve sexism. You can't ask Black people to just solve racism. And so I'm hoping that it's a sustained conversation, but it's a conversation that is amongst white people, that they are calling themselves out. And so I challenge you, Mike, that the next time you have a podcast with someone in power, an executive, an artist with a huge following, and they happen to be Caucasian, have the conversation with them because I think that's where change needs to start. I mean, flat out racist is going to be tough to change their mind, but there's also bias that needs to be changed that shapes how things in our society happens, that people sometimes are not aware of. And there's also a complacency that if it doesn't impact me, it's not my place, I'm not comfortable, or I'm just going to focus on things that do impact me.

You're either helping or you're hurting, as far as I am concerned. Garvey, what do you have to say about that? I feel like Donovan just dropped the mic on all of it. I think that is precisely it. Like we do, when Donovan said that it is, racism is not something for Black folks to solve at this point, at this, at this juncture, it never has been. And it is those conversations that you have in amongst your, your peers, your people, that is really, that's where change is going to happen, because this is

something that we're, we're dealing with is, what we're dealing with is something that's deeply systemic. You know, it's built in within all of the systems. do with the fact that I was still working within a system that wasn't overtly racist towards me, but at the same time was very much exercising its own privilege and exercising living in a way that, you know, thinking about this stuff was kind of optional, you know, to the people that I work with. Like if I have, you know, all white colleagues, I, my insides are being torn out one morning, you know, I wake up in the morning and I see, you know, I see the litany of, of racists and horrific violence that's being enacted upon people with that just happen to have the same

color skin as me. And that is, that's what I call it an existential panic. It gets inside you. And then but still, because we are Donovan is a professional, I am a professional, we go and we do the job that we do, we we make the sausages, we do. We, we make the sausages. We, you know, we make sure that the wheels are still turning. We still are cordial to our workmates. We're still getting the work done, working at a very high level, I think both of us, but inside you're, you're, you're dying. That's something like that is, and just being seen in that way by just the people that you see every day or work with every day, that's where I'm getting kind of hitched up. Like the people that are overtly racist, I can deal with that. It's when I'm not, we're not being

seen in this. A lot of people like to take it like, this is just something that's happening over there. This is happening over there. It is happening actually inside my body. It's not over there. It's actually within my DNA that all of this aggression and violence and hatred, I can feel every ounce of it. And I can't, and because we work in media, it's impossible to shut it off. I can't just shut it off and, you know, go up to my parents' house in the country. I can't do that because I have to engage with it. So, you know, optimism is, I do share that same bit of optimism and that people are seeing now. But I also know that this is a conversation that is cyclical, it just keeps happening. That tweet that I put out, I think I put out a similar one a year ago. And then the year before, if I go back, I can see that I have said this more than once before. What's so what's sorry, go ahead, Donovan. Sorry, Mike, about it being physical.

Like, that's not a play on words. That's an actual fact. Like it is. And so if we want to take the listeners into the mindset, you're going to work in your predominantly whatever industry you work in. For us, media is certainly the case, probably white workspace. And you constantly have to think, OK, how am I presenting myself? My hair, my face, my facial expression. I don't want to be the angry black person in the office. I need to compart myself. I need to be disarming. I need to speak in a certain way that garners understanding to make sure that it doesn't seem like I'm different, even though I actually am different. And I can't just actually bring my authentic self to the workplace. Okay, on my way to work, I hear a police siren, hands at 10 and 2. I get

on the GO train. I got to have my ticket ready so everyone understood that I paid to be on this GO train. I'm in a tight scenario. Something happens. Where are my exit strategies? How am I leaving? You're constantly thinking of this all of the time. So not only are you losing your life quickly if you're George Floyd and something happens? You're losing your life in a way slowly because some of the pre-existing conditions that you hear, that Black people have when you hear about the news coverage of COVID-19 and how it is disproportionately impacting the Black community and how many respiratory issues

black people have. That is because longitudinally over time, you have an increased blood pressure, you have increased heart rate, you are constantly on edge. Think of a muscle that is always being stretched, always. You can't turn that off. So literally, even if you are a law-abiding citizen in a free country, you are never free. You are never free. Just leave your door and think I'm going to go on a nice walk and enjoy the birds chirping. You can't you can't do that. You do not have the benefit of the doubt to do that. You are always black, no matter what your resume says or your degrees say, you are Black first and foremost. So there is a level of contemplation that you constantly have to have. And that takes a toll both mentally and physically. And it's something that you often do without even knowing. So let's multiply that after generation, after generation, after generation of people, that takes a massive toll. And so even when you don't understand what you're doing, it has an impact. I remember vividly my grandparents saying when I was with them

as a young child and we were watching the news, and they would say on the newscast, you know, there's a suspect for such and such crime. And as soon, like before that, that pregnant pause, before the description came out, my grandparents verbatim said, please, Lord, let it not be. Don't let him be black. Right. Yeah. So unique to me, this, this is a shared experience. Those are my grandparents, immigrants to this country from Jamaica to England shortly and then to Canada, who left to provide citizens, and they're stressed for someone else to not commit a crime and happen to be Black. Not as if this heinous crime, whatever it would be, it would be better if the person was another race. But they understand that their children and their children's children are going to be judged, not based off of our best, but based off

our worst. That's a level of stress that they probably didn't understand that they had, but they had it. And they passed that on to me. And I will, out of a protective measure, probably pass it on to my child. And so that's something that I don't think people truly understand when they say, well, I don't see race. I don't see color. Congratulations. You're telling me you're privileged because I don't have that privilege. And so I have to make a conscious choice as not just protecting myself. I have to make a conscious choice. At what age am I going to add that burden, that stress to my child and rob them of their innocence. Because at this point, when I see George Floyd on the ground, or when I see Ahmaud Arbery running, I don't see myself in those scenes anymore. I see my child. And so when people say you are adding to the racial issues because you're dividing us by talking about, no, no, no, no. By default, we are divided. I'm trying to make us closer by giving you a level of understanding of what it is I go through.

Yeah. Now, Garvia, your daughter is a great deal older than Donovan's son. Donovan's son just arrived. Oh, congratulations. Thank you thank you thank you can i tell you something donovan that you are from the bennetts in jamaica yes bennett is my mother's maiden name okay and a part of her family moved to england okay okay So we have some talking to do later. We do, we do, we do actually my, so the maiden side of my family moved to England. That would be the Bryans. But, but I mean, at some point, you know, we all kind of moved to England and then moved to Canada. So, um, so shout out to the Commonwealth, but, um, but yes, uh, I'm, I'm sure But yes, I'm sure the Venn diagram is not that far off. It's not that far off.

Yeah, my daughter is 19. You are a new father of a son? Of a son who is 13 months, just turned one. Congratulations. That's lovely. Thank you very much. I would love to learn from you about what these conversations are like with your daughter. I mean, my son isn't having rational thoughts other than give me more cheese. That's basically the type of decision he's making every day.

But you have a daughter who is seeing this through her own eyes. What are those conversations like? She is, it's interesting because a few years ago, like a few years ago when she was in high school and she was still living here full-time, now she's back after going to university and living with us again full-time. But it was interesting because that generation, like she would be telling stories to me about her friends and say, you know, mom, you know, that girl that has like,

she, she, you know, she reads this and she, and her, her mom works at so-and-so and her, and she's trying to explain this, this friend of hers to me. And I was like, is she black or is she white? Like, but to my daughter at, you know, and her generation and the people that she was hanging out with, that was the last thing that she would use to describe her friend. It's like, it didn't even occur to her to say, oh, you know, black Emily, like she, like, you know, and that's something that's very, that was something that was very different. I think over the course of the last year or so,

or maybe since the election of Donald Trump, where race and also, you know, like you said, being able to see like these videos popping up on your feeds, race. And, and also, you know, like you said, being able to see like these videos popping up on your, on your feeds, the celebrities and the musicians that she loves talking about race in a real way. It means that the conversations with her are just a lot more new nuance now, but she still has that kind of naive innocence of, I don't understand why, like, you know, her thing is like, I don't understand why everybody's freaking out.

But right now she's like, I understand why everybody's freaking out. Like, I get it. And with her, like, usually I don't have conversations with her. The conversations come to me generally at this, at this age. But when we were growing up, she, when she was growing up, her dad and I were very aware of letting her know that she has to walk through the world a little bit differently. Because that's just, that's just like the generational thing that we teach our kids. Like you just have to go through the world in a different way. You have to, and a part of it, and what you were explaining earlier, a part of it is making other people feel comfortable. How exhausting is that

when your first inclination is, I need to make sure that whoever I'm interacting with in this shoppers drug mart in Bancroft, Ontario up in the north, feels comfortable with me in the store. So here I am picking out the nail polish and kind of saying, well, here's the nail polish. I'm looking at it now. I'm very conscious of these things. And that is all, it doesn't have anything to do with, with me. It has everything to do with making whomever I'm in an environment with comfortable, you know, and those things are, I think they're genetically kind of passed on. I don't think I've ever had that real conversation with my daughter, but I think she, she has to see it and feel it and know it. So that's what, you know, it's hard. Let me tell you like these lessons,

like we're living through it. And because we have this wild west of social media that they can engage with, you know, most of the teaching is wading through all of that and saying, this is what you need to concentrate for later. Like right now, I'm, I, my thing is for her to concentrate on where power sits, like where she sees power and her relationship with those that wield power, the police officers, those in authority, you know, where do you sit within that? How does one comport themselves? And what are the tools that you need going out into the world when you have to engage? Because it might happen. It will happen. So those are the conversations we're having. They're not easy. They're not fun. But they are so necessary and that's the other thing I feel really robbed of the fact that I don't have that privilege to not have to have those conversations like I feel pissed off like that pisses me off so like so very like I get pissed man like I'm just

like why do I have to talk about this? Like why do I, like even when Mike was like, hey, let's do this show. I actually, I think the story was Mike, that I went on your DM, like after you put that message under my thing, I snuck into your DMs, slid in there and was like, hey, you know what?

Well, first of all, there was a young woman who jumped on that was like, Garvey's tired. She shouldn't have to answer your questions right now. Here's the things that you can do. And I was like, thank you, young lady. Thank you very much. Because it's true. I don't want to have to tell people. I don't want to do the work anymore. Like the work is, is not my work. It is, but it's, it's like, I take it on, but I don't want to take it on because it's exhausting. So when I went into your DMs, like, I was like, you know what, you have this huge, wonderful platform of interesting people that listen to your show, that respect you.

Why don't you have someone on to talk about this? And you did that. Within a second, you were like, why don't you come on? I said, I know somebody who would be a good person to talk about this. And I'll be very frank. I only invited three people on this Zoom. There were three names that popped out right away. And two of the said yes and you're here and i won't i won't name the third but uh felt uh his emotions were so like he just was worried about what he might say live on a forum like this because he's he's quite angry and quite emotional right now and i man do i ever

respect that i i would have you know if donovan said the same thing or yourself, Garvey, I would totally understand. But to get more basic, I don't know how to say this. I guess, to be quite blunt, I'm so glad that you're telling us what it's like to be black. This is going to sound silly, but I think a lot of white people listening to us right now don't completely appreciate the trauma that comes with having black skin. Like just hearing you talk, I can tell you, I never had a conversation with my 18-year-old son about what to do with the police other than the basic,

make sure they can, you know, there's a much lighter version, if you will. But Donovan, did somebody, did a parent have that, like that chat with you? So you have your birds and the bees, and then you have you, you're okay. Here's how you survive an encounter with the police. That I don't even know if I had the birds and the bees to be honest. Like, I think I just, you know, it was like awkward. And then

I think randomly there was like a box of condoms in my room. You know, just be safe, right? But that talk, like there was no ambiguity about that talk, like the talk that we're talking about like that was intentional and had and reinforced and it wasn't just about um you know interactions with the police that was wrapped and framed in a greater conversation of you have uh my last name this is obviously my father and so so bennett in this case but basically we're talking about legacy. I've given it to you in good standing. I've done everything I could to further our legacy as a family, work multiple jobs, move to this country, so on and so forth. Take care of you, giving you what you've asked. Don't ruin it, one, by doing X, Y, and Z. And two, you don't have the ability for mulligans in life, whether that's in

school, whether that's with the legal system, whether that's the police. I've navigated that without issue. So there's a standard with which that you have to reach to do the same. It's an obligation for you to do it for your son or daughter, and so on and so forth. And this has been, again, a burden for our family, for our people, for an appreciable amount of time. So it wasn't just like, you know, 10 things to do when pulled over conversation. It was this world that you live in is not necessarily fair yet. I've been

able to manage it. You can too, but understand that in every avenue in life, you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt. And we're going to have to be twice as good, three times as good to get, to get equal. So understand that. That's the rules of engagement. It's not changing. This is what it is, right? And so that's basically the conversation, the larger conversation that I had

and something that I still think about to this day. If your son weren't 13 months, but were instead 13 years old, what kind of a conversation would you be having with your son today? Well, I said, I was talking about this on Tim and Sid earlier in the week. And I said to them the first time, and it's inevitable, it will happen. The first time that he's racially profiled, I'm going to ball like a baby. Like I'm just going to be broken. And I joke often that I don't have tear ducts. I didn't cry at my own wedding.

I couldn't tell you the last time that I cried, but that for some reason will hit me differently. I think that it's funny, you find out how much you're like your parents when you have kids, right? You don't realize it or know it or can't believe it. And so I think the conversation, it will be very similar to the one my dad had with me. And, you know, I was kind of raised by the community. So my uncles and my aunts and grandparents reinforced with me. But I will say it is tiring. It is exasperating. It is frustrating. It is painful. But I can't tell you the amount of pride I have in being Black, the amount of pride I have in people who I see in our field and others who have overcome to do great things, the connection I feel

with other people that are black, that sense of community, that sense of fellowship, that sense of shared understanding. So I will pass on to him, as well as he has to navigate many things for his own security insurance, I will pass on to him that it is also a privilege that he is, in many ways, a king, that he is literally, literally the dream of a slave, and that he should not take that lightly. He should walk and carry himself with pride and a head held high in an open big chest. I do think, honestly, though, as proud as I am,

one of the things that has made the last couple years so difficult for me is the juxtaposition from the symbolism we had before. So if we're using the United States as an example, Barack Obama being the first Black president and what that stood for. My grandparents have a bunch of framed photos in their house. Like, it might as well be a black store. There's so many framed pictures on the wall. And it's weddings of the family. It is all of the grandkids. And it's Barack Obama.

Like, those are the photos that are framed, right? And that's not unique to me. That's, again, something that's shared for people of their age. And so to go from that point where, like, at the highest level, there was a Black person who was able to overcome and succeed. And so that was a high watermark for everyone to see that no matter, there are still certainly inequities and there are still things that are not fair. Like that was something to strive for. And then like just for the country to be like, okay, that was cool. We're going to totally reject that.

We're going to go the exact opposite way. That was like really, really disheartening. That's something that has, as I watch, you know, the scenes now and I watch the president openly, you know, inciting hate and telling people who are is wrapping rap bars about what he's going to do to citizens of the United States. That part of it is tough to reconcile. You know what? That brings up something interesting as well, because we're framing so much of some of this around the American experience, but we are talking about the Canadian experience, individually, that there is, there is, because I know that people are thinking, well, you guys are talking about the States. And, you know, I had a friend who is a, who is a broadcaster, and, you know, her, her producer in the week was like, oh, nothing.

It's everything's fine. This is Canada. Everything is great here. You don't have to worry about stuff here. And you get that a lot. Like you hear that a lot, that Canada is fine. Canada is not okay. You know, what we're dealing with, like right here in Toronto, every day this week,

I mean, we were, we had to march in the streets for our sister this week, who, you know, we still don't know what exactly what happened, but we know that at the end of the day, there was an interaction and she ended up dead in the streets. This is not new. You know, the death of Regis is not new. It's just another, it's, you know, so, and I still, when I go out of town, I'm still looking around me. Like if I'm not in downtown Toronto, I am very aware of, you know, who is around me and what's around me and how people look at me as I, as we interact. This is in Canada. This has been all my life. When my family came to, to, um, from Jamaica to Stratford, Ontario,

my brothers as little boys going to school for a year straight, they had to fight someone every day after school. This is not hyperbole. This is not, you know, I'm not making this up. They fought every single day until everyone got it out of their system and knew that they would get their asses kicked by the two black kids, these Jamaican kids or whatever, and that you could leave them alone now. But it had to go through that. Now, through my growing up in that environment,

the N-word was thrown around all the time. There was always time when people would say things with amongst friends. And can my point being that Canada is not immune to any of this. It's a little bit, almost easier to think about it in terms of the U S because it's so in your face, but Canada is full of micro aggressions.

in your face, but Canada is full of microaggressions. Canada is full of people that say, I don't see color, but I would hate for you to date my daughter. You know, like it's still, and there are the systems in place. You don't know when you go to the bank teller, if she's telling you that, no, you cannot cash that check because x or y but you know for a fact that you've been banking there for a long time and she's new and she's looking at you a certain way this is the way there are so many systems that are in place here in our own beautiful lovely Canada that make it quite obvious that we're not as far behind as we think we are. Like we need to stop with that swagger because that's not a thing. We need to start to confront who we are as Canadians as well.

It's a thing. It's a great point. I mean, like Meanwhile in Canada was trending. Yes. That weekend. And it started as people trying to act like, oh, Meanwhile in Canada, look, you know, everything is so rosy over here. And people took over that hashtag and made a trend because they're like, no, actually, Meanwhile in Canada, there are real issues. issues. We just had an election where the now, well still prime minister, a big talking point was the fact that the prime minister not that long ago, multiple times,

was wearing black and brown face. So to act like there are racial issues in Canada, I'm sorry, mosques weren't shot in Canada, right? Our Indigenous and First Nations communities are often not without running water in Canada. They struggle to get healthy food, but they somehow don't struggle to get alcohol in Canada. There weren't residential schools and internment camps in Canada. Akeem Alou in Canada's fork didn't suffer terrible racist treatment time and time again in Canada. Akima Liu in Canada's fork didn't suffer terrible racist treatment time and time again

in Canada, and yet still people don't want to listen to that story. And in terms of the police brutality piece, you mentioned Regis, Andrew Loku, Jermaine Carlin, right, the DeAndre Campbell, the names

go on and on and on. Now, the US is better at branding it. They're better at hashtagging it, to your point, putting it in their face. And so we act like it doesn't happen because it's not leading the news all the time. But certainly the people in those communities are well aware that it happens and continues to happen. So we love to celebrate. Yeah, Viola Desmond's on our bill. That's good. She was still thrown out of a theater in this country. Yeah.

Let's be clear. We have race issues in this country. We just don't often talk about it the same way. And we don't have the same spaces in many ways to talk about it. We don't have historically Black colleges in Canada. We don't have a BET in Canada. So in many ways, the conversation is not as broad or as loud, but to the people that it impacts, they're well aware that there are racial issues in Canada.

I do believe that we strive to be better, that our ceiling at times is higher, but that doesn't mean our floor is any higher. It isn't any of the issues that our friends south of the border have, we have here. It's not like racism exists because of this invisible border.

We consume the same culture in many ways. We were spoken to by the same advertisers. We in many ways have a similar political structure and the minorities in this country continue to suffer in the same way. I believe it's a statistical fact that in Canada, black people are 20 times more likely to be shot by the police. Yeah, so I'm glad you're pointing out that this is not a U.S. problem. Absolutely, there's a wealth of racism here in our own backyard here. Go ahead. our own backyard here. May I go ahead? It are carded in many communities and it's still a deemed acceptable practice to stop a Canadian tax paying Canadian,

stop them based off of where they happen to live or what they look like. Target policing is still something that happens. And so, yeah, we have work to do. I'm going to read a quote from something I read the other day from Kathleen Newman Bremang. I hope I'm saying that last name right. She's amazing. She's incredible.

I was going to bring her up. She's so great. I beat you to it, Garvia. I actually tweeted at her. I read this and i tweeted at her asked her if she would please follow me so i could send her a dm and i because i wanted to put her on the zoom call unfortunately i didn't i didn't hear back but i want to read just read one paragraph from this piece that she wrote that i think is really appropriate considering our

subject matter tonight so i'll read it from Kathleen. For black people in the U.S. and in Canada, our trauma is its own pandemic. Just look at the past week. On Monday, a white woman named Amy Cooper went viral for threatening the life of a black man, Christian Cooper, no relation, who was just trying to birdwatch in Central Park in peace. By Tuesday, a video out of Minnesota depicting George Floyd gasping for air,

pleading, I can't breathe, while a white cop suffocated him with unrelenting cruelty was flooding the news cycle, showing us in real time what Amy Cooper wanted to happen to Christian. On Wednesday night, hashtag justice for Regis was trending, referring to Regis Korchinski-Paquette, a black woman who fell 24 floors to her death after police were called to her home in Toronto. Her family says she was pushed by the police. Now this, I believe that actually is, I believe they've changed that story, but I'll finish the quote and then we'll discuss, but,

and revealed in a statement to, to buy blacks that her last words were mom help by Thursday, the exhaustion of witnessing these brutal acts towards black people, people who look like me and could be me felt like too much to bear. And I read this after you, I read your tweets, Garvia, and I couldn't get your tweets out of my mind. Like I was thinking I would go on a bike ride and be thinking about it. And then I read your tweets, Garvia, and I couldn't get your tweets out of my mind. I would go on a bike ride and be thinking about it. And then I read this piece and she speaks of the trauma of being Black. And I really do think

maybe it's naivety, but I really do think there's a lot of people listening, and I know I myself was a little naive to this, of what it is like to be a Black person in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think that whole piece, if anyone gets a chance to read it,

it's on therefinery.com is where she publishes from. But Kathleen is published all over the place. publishes from, but Kathleen is published all over the place. And it's always, she always brings such a crystal clarity to any issue and speak so eloquently and clearly and with such passion, but also smart as a whip. Anyway, I would read that. I would go out and read that piece because I think one of the problems is that like at the end of the day, like you, you're facing all this trauma. And then with the interaction that you and I had, Mike, it, it feels, it feels like that, that empathy piece seems to really be missing, even with the people that are closest to us,

like really getting through to people through, um, to our white friends and neighbors and compatriots and, um, the people that we work with making that jump into the shoes of black Canadians and black Americans and black folks worldwide seems to be, I mean, I felt a certain way when in the, in the Cooper case in the, in Central Park,

when so many people felt so much empathy and pain for the dog that was being strangled. I mean, that hurt my heart because A, I have a dog, I love my dog. But it hurt my heart. It was so painful to me to see that the empathy was towards the pet towards the pet and kind of glossing over the fact that this, this man was, she was setting him up for murder. What she was hoping would be an outcome that would be well beyond what the situation warranted because she had that power. So, you know, it's just finding that place of empathy, like, what can you do to find that place of understanding of being able to see very clearly that I am in pain, Donovan is in pain, we are suffering trauma. You need to do something because it's on you at this point. Because it is.

It just is. You know, we're doing the work. We're writing the pieces. We're coming out and talking and we're marching and we're doing the work. Someone else has to start doing the work i can almost hear listeners speaking into their airpods as they're listening to this episode they're probably saying something like please tell us what we can do like uh like would you mind articulating what can we do to help? I think it's such a kind of interesting question in that it's all around you. Like if, if it's too much to, um,

like, you know, if, if the idea of read this article, like educate yourself on what's happened no more of the history of this country no more of the current history and the and um the current everyday occurrences and statistics around things like the COVID-19 pandemic why it's hitting Regent Park why it's hitting um a Rexdale why it's hitting Parkdale harder than it's hitting the rest of this city. Like just get to know what is actually happening. And at that, in the same token, like that empathy piece is so huge. You have people that you work with every day. Are they okay? Are you asking? Do you care? Are you even referring to the fact that this kind of trauma is being dealt out to them? And we're eating that food every single day. We're eating

this poison every day and it's exhausting and physically trying. Look at the systemic, trying? Look at the systemic, the systems that are in place. How do you dismantle them? Who are you voting for? What are the things that you're pushing your MP to do? How are you looking at your political footprint? Where are you spending your money and your time and your resources? All of those things. When you're having conversations with each other, what are the conversations that you're having? What jokes are you laughing at? How do you push back? You know, how do you talk to that person in your circle of friends who consistently, since the time you guys were boys, has talked a certain way about a certain thing that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Get into that discomfort and make it even more uncomfortable

for yourself. Because we're uncomfortable all the time. We're bending over backwards for your comfort. So the least you can do is get a little uncomfortable within your own circles of people. Ask those questions. Be just a little more active in your allyship. And don't even call it allyship. We're all in this together. Like it's not even, I don't even, I don't need an ally. this together. Like it's not even, I don't even, I don't need an ally. What I need is people to just recognize that if all the blonde people on the planet, all of a sudden we're being brutalized.

And every time you woke up and you looked in the mirror and you were blonde and blue eyed, and you knew that everyone would be looking at you because blonde people ain't shit. How are you going to react to that? Like what's, you know, like shift your focus just a little bit. Like shift it and then do something. Look it up. There is a million things that you could be reading. When people say we don't know what to do, I think it's more like we haven't thought enough deeply about what is happening to come up with the solutions or to come up with exactly what we should be doing. Get uncomfortable. I'm talking a lot. Sorry. No, are you kidding me? I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm listening a lot, which is what I need to do. And honestly, I just,

I'm just so grateful that you're bringing the real talk here today. Uh, honestly, thank you. And Donovan, uh, same question. Uh there something else we can do if we're listening right now and we hate racism and we've raised our kids to stand up against racism? What more can we do? Please just share your feelings on that. Yeah, I mean, it was eloquently just described. You got to get in the fight. And before you even get in the fight, you have to acknowledge that there is a fight. You talked about the fact that, you know, if you were black in Toronto, you were 20 times more likely to die by the hands of the police than your white counterpart

So let's not try and parse about is race an issue How much is it a race you like what's that? What's the what's the hurdle? We need to clear something 30 times more likely 40 times more likely And let's not have the conversation of oh well Is it was it because they're black or is it because of where they lived or do they have any priors in crimes? Listen, if in the example of dogs was brought up, if 20 dogs died for some reason and then one cat died for the same reason, we wouldn't be saying, oh, this is an animal death issue.

We'd be like, no, it's a dog death issue, right? So for you to say, well, all lives matter, and there's other deaths, and it's not a black issue, no, no, no. It is a racial issue. We have 400 years of data, right? Multiple studies, right? We have a big enough sample to understand exactly what it is. So either acknowledge it and get in the fight, because if you're not acknowledging it, you're normalizing it.

And that's part of the problem. Maybe not as active as being a blatant racist, but it's still part of the problem. And in terms of getting into the fight, I'll use sexism as an example, and we're certainly not where we need to be there with women making three quarters to the dollar that a man makes. But as a male, I don't walk around my workplace and be like, hey, Jen and Susie, I'm going to be your ally today. Like you just live that way. You just see them as equal. And so as a male, I understand I have some bias, some blind spots, so I actively think about it because I care.

But I also understand that I have privilege. So how can I use that privilege? Can I support and encourage my fellow female employees? Can I try to help put them in opportunities where they can be successful? Can I eradicate any language or conversations that are dismissive to females? That's not my lived experience. I will never understand what it's like to walk in a woman's shoes in my workplace or in the world. But I can still have empathy and try.

And so for many white people, the thing is, well, I mean, I just don't get it. It's not my fight. I don't want to tweet because I might say something wrong or because I want to lead the conversation to you. No, no, this is a conversation that we all need to have. lead the conversation to you. No, no, this is a conversation that we all need to have. And so I use that example as a way that we can help. And even sometimes when you're trying to help, you can hurt. And so if you are only wanting to have these conversations for the allotted 28 days in February during Black History Month, that's not helping. That's putting a Band-Aid on what is a bigger problem. We need to have sustained conversations for us to have sustained success. And if you only want to have these conversations when it's

trending and when something terrible happens, in a way you're profiting off of that pain. You're not really sticking around to find the solutions. And it would be akin to someone saying, hey, I'm calling you. A terrible thing happened. Do you want to come on my show and talk about it? And I'm not going to talk to you again until another terrible thing happens. No, you have to have that conversation all of the time, not just with the person that the terrible thing happened to. And so, again, if we were trying to eradicate cancer, we wouldn't have panels on TV with just people who currently

have cancer. We would have panels with doctors, with researchers, with scientists, and we'd have some cancer survivors and patients to humanize the issue, but the conversation would be a holistic one. And it's the same here. You cannot continue to ask the aggrieved party to grieve at the same time, litigate why they're grieving, but then also educate you on the same reason that they're grieving. Preach. Oh my goodness yes donovan do you have hope like do you have hope that we can i i do and again maybe i'm naive um but i do have hope um i i do have hope if we're using um my industry because it's what i see every day what i know best um i i see some of those structures slowly coming down i see some of the old boys club slowly being moved from the executive suite. And so I, listen, let's be clear.

I don't see black people in those spaces, not readily, not enough, not enough to represent either the audience with which we're speaking to and or the members with which we're covering. and or the members with which we're covering. So let's not get that mistaken. But I do start to see more people in those spaces who grew up with a little bit more understanding and at the very least understand that they don't understand. And sometimes the way that they try to fix these problems might be clumsy or inefficient. There's a level of understanding that there is a problem. At the very least,

optically, there's a problem, even if they don't actually want to solve it. Maybe I'm settling for too much progress, but I think we all agree that is a stark contrast from the situation that we had 10, 15 years ago, where the people in the executive suites were happy and willing to keep the power structure the way it is. So I can't give you a timeline. And in fact, you know, progress is not linear. Sometimes we'll take steps back. Sometimes we'll take steps to the side. I think this week in many ways has been a massive step back. But I'm hoping that it will propel us forward because we're having conversations like this. So I am hopeful. I am hopeful that a generation that has access to more, that has already shown that they're more

compassionate, that they'll be able to change some of these things that have built up over time. But even still, that's generations and generations from now. We still have to do the real hard work right now to make being a person of color and a minority in this country, in North America in general, such a difficult thing to get up and do every day. We need to take steps to lessen that burden right now. Garvia, same question. Do you have hope? hope right now i'm too tired to feel a great degree of like i really i when i talk about being tired i'm really i really feel physically exhausted like really tired um so i don't know i think my hope is is that these conversations keep like hope in the whole situation being changed. I don't know.

Like I feel like there is such a huge hole that has, that we dug for ourselves as just humanity that, that it's, that it's hard to talk about hope in everything's going to turn around and change one day. And one day I'm going to wake up as maybe, you know, an 85 year old woman, and it will all be equality. And, you know, and I don't have that sort of kind of hope. I have hope that, you know, around my, my community, that, you know, that these conversations are going to elicit more conversation. You know, that's what I hope for. I, if I didn't have hope, I wouldn't have said yes to coming on and talking about this. You know,

if I didn't have hope, I wouldn't still open up Twitter or even have Twitter on any of my devices or any social media. I would just, I would just go up, up North and just hunker down up there and trap some beaver or something. I don't know, do something. But I, I do, I live in this city and so, and I'm interacting and I'm going out and being you know a contributing member of my community and society in general so that means I do have hope for sure because I wouldn't just go on but I think I think I'd rather know more about the hope and the change that you see in the world, Mike. We've had this conversation. I'm wondering if you have been changed by this week or if anything has shifted in you and where your hope might come from?

Well, that's a great question. What I do recognize more than ever before, I thought I did recognize this, but what I truly recognize is the immense privilege that I've been taking for granted for four decades that I never had to have these conversations with my kids about the police and the color of their skin and that how you know how many doors have been all have just been by default have been open because I uh white skin and blue eyes and I really you'd mentioned empathy really feel, and this is why I wanted to have this conversation. And I do thank you both for carving out over an hour of your Sunday night for me, which was amazing. And being so, so open and honest with me, but just to try to better understand this, this trauma of being a black person in this city and you you mentioned you're tired like i i'm trying very hard to put myself in your shoes as you describe it and you both you two donovan you both described it so well over this past hour that i'm tired from an hour of hearing what it's like to be a black person. And I can only imagine if that was 24 hours a day,

every single day of your life. So I, again, I have this forum, Be What It Is, Toronto Mic'd. And if I can use it to share your perspective and your stories with those who i'm you know blessed to have subscribed to the feed uh that at least there's more people who can do what i i've done here and can put themselves in your shoes and understand and better understand that what it's like to be black i'm gonna say this to you thank you for that when this goes up on your uh website and your you know thousands of people start to listen to it

and people start jumping on my twitter feed and talking and being upset because I said the word white people or whatever it is that people are going to be upset about because they will be upset. I am not going to jump on there and defend myself. But my expectation is that you and the people that really want to change will be all over it to come gather your folks. If you know what I mean? Like that's, that's the kind of, I promise. Yes. That's the kind of promise. Are you kidding me? I'm ready. I'm ready. I know you're good for it.

Absolutely. So thank you Garvia for doing this. So thanks for saying yes to the invitation and doing this and Donovan, thanks for jumping in. I love your perspective on Twitter and whenever I hear it on Tim and Sid or other Sportsnet properties. And I really appreciate this. we leave, because I think this is a piece of the conversation that gets left out, because we've spent the bulk of this conversation speaking directly to, for the most part, white people about this experience. And some of your listeners, I suppose, I assume a large amount of them are Black people. And there's part of the conversation, and Garvey, please weigh in with your perspective and thoughts, we talked about this trauma and this burden, and Garvey explained it eloquently. Because we have to get through and be conditioned,

we are, in a way, programmed to not address it, to not acknowledge it, certainly not everyone else, but not even with ourselves. And to that end, not to seek help for it, seek counseling, especially with all of this happening during a global pandemic, when people are quarantined in their house, away from their loved ones and family. This is all heavy. It's tough to deal with. You know, Tyrone, you know, T-Rex, One Love T.O. on CTV talked about it and literally broke down. And it was beautiful.

TV talked about it and literally broke down. And it was beautiful, but it's a stark contrast of how in our community we see the Black West Indian people, but certainly Black West Indian male who are not supposed to break, who are not supposed to show emotion. I'll give you something to cry for is something we often hear because you're not supposed to cry unless there's a real, real reason. And so I want to say, I don't want to have this come off as I am telling people who are victims that they are to blame and that they have some piece of work to do. But I do feel that Black people going through all this need to recognize it, acknowledge it, and then whatever that is, however that way is for you, try to heal through it

because, again, it does take a toll. And in our culture, seeking counseling therapy, having honest conversations is not something we readily do absolutely thanks for uh thanks for pointing pointing that out absolutely any final words garvia before i uh shut down the periscope feed no just thank you for um for for reaching out to have the the conversation that's all i just you know i think that i hope that people really sit with what like i feel that um you know i think this was a very honest conversation and i appreciate having being

able to have that honest conversation with with with both of you so yeah just thank you for that thanks Gervia and thanks again Donovan thank you