Pain and Resilience

Being Black has little to do with skin color, it is a mindset. I believe that Black history is about pain and resilience. First of all, let us dive into the pain we have been experiencing since the beginning of the slavery. 400 years of slavery, not 400 days. The Black body has been objectified and used as a tool by colonizers to satisfy their own desires. They brought us from Africa to America by putting us in some boats as if we were animals. During those long sea voyages, some of us dropped into the sea because we did not want to experience such hardships. When the boats arrived in the Americas, they put us on the seaside and sold us as if we were fish. They then sent some of us amid sugar cane fields. Some of us were placed into cotton fields. We worked all day long. when hungry, they refused us a seat at the table. Colonizers kept looking at us without any compassion even though they saw the tears in our eyes and the sweat in our brows. At times, we tried to revolt and when we were caught, our people were hanged in the poplar trees. Keeping other slaves fidgeting and biting their nails, at the site of the horror scenes. Revolting could not have been any more difficult for us. However, in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), there was a slave called Toussaint Louverture. He organized a revolt and tried to unite slaves with a common goal: freedom or die trying. Colonizers have noticed that Toussaint Louverture was building a great revolution, he was then arrested and sent to France, where he spent the rest of his days in prison. Not to mention that before he left Haiti, he declared: “ they have me struck down but the truck of the tree; the roots are many and deep- they will shoot up again!” this sentence resonates every time I see Black people come together to accomplish something impactful.

Without resilience we would have been exterminated, our community has been put on the ground for more than 400 years. we walked, we stood up, we protest, and we fought back. Personally, I have known that I was Black ever since primary school, as a youth in Haiti. I remember being in one of my history classes in primary school, my teacher kept saying that Blacks are very resilient, I then began reading more about the history to notice resilience in every place in the world where Black communities were prominent. Once arriving to Montreal in 2012, I started experiencing this by visiting highly disadvantaged communities and saw the wealth gap between white communities and the Black ones. Some Black people thrive even though they have very low resources. I started a tutoring company in 2014 with the hope to tackle these disparities. I have been tutoring disadvantaged children. I have seen mothers work three jobs in order to send their send their children to private schools and merely put food on the table. I see a lot of Black people with university diplomas that struggle to find jobs because of systemic racism. Although some of them still succeed in opening their own business with missions to hire other Black people. I see young people in my community that have been incarcerated and now become social organizers and try to motivate Black youth to stay in school. I see some Black professionals quit their job in big law firms and come back to the community in order to help the youth staying in the right path. Black history is about all those characters. Black history is a perfect example for all mankind because we have shown to the world that we can thrive regardless of Black people struggling to find jobs in 2021. Even though our community is so poor, we are proud to call ourselves Black. Black is what we are, Black is what we’ll be, and Black is how we’ll die. After all, we are inventors and innovators. It was us who invented blood plasma bags that contributed to some of the most groundbreaking medical advances in the history of mankind. It was us who invented the electric lamp in order to enlighten the world. Our resilience has been key and continues to be the key to the numerous lives saved. The fact is we are all genius in our own ways. Thank you.

By Max Kerby Henry Edmond