DUNBARTON HIGH SCHOOL . . . 12:00 p.m.

THE CONVERSATION

DJ’s daughter has asked him why they don’t just go and live in Jamaica. It is his other daughter who explains that the opportunities in Canada are important, especially with regards to education. DJ himself was not much older than his girls when his family decided he would come to Canada.

He begins our conversation with a simple statement.  DJ says, “Everything is racism for me.” He grew up in Lachine, Quebec where he encountered white people in the flesh for the first time. The racism of his childhood was “blatant and in your face. We weren’t thinking of language. We were thinking of race.” 

He notes that his family is from the same place as Bob Marley, while explaining that when he was a child only great singers, elite track athletes and children of very affluent parents had any hope of leaving Jamaica. DJ’s father was a Civil Engineer educated at Concordia University. He was the family’s first university graduate and recognized the opportunities education created.

While education was the attraction to Canada, DJ has no illusions about his parents’ motivation. He says, “Reality is my parents’ view is they needed to move me out of the ghetto or out of the shanty town before I became a gangsta.” He was six years old when he left Jamaica.

As his youngest children approach the same age, DJ teaches them that “it is good to be a part of society and blend in with the norms because we are in a place where we should share. It is important after that to experience your culture and understand what it is and what it has done for you.”

While it is hard for his children to believe, slavery is a more recent part of history than many like to admit. And many children grow up without any understanding of the cultural history that began in the great civilizations of Africa.

“Our kids are so confused about who they are personally, spiritually, socially, culturally as well. We have a cultural crisis that is going on. The system has failed black children all over the world”   DJ explains that the segregation that was in place in America is a problem that Americans are still trying to solve. He sees the legacy of Brazil’s assimilation policies as a problem that society grapples with.

DJ dreams of afterschool or weekend programs where young people can learn about their culture. He stresses the importance of parents and teachers. While he acknowledges that it is more easily said than done, he wonders, “What are we working towards? If we aren’t working together, what are we working on?”

Though religion can be divisive, DJ considers spirituality to be a defining characteristic of what it means to be black. He talks of a connection to forefathers and grandfathers that emphasizes nurturing, a sharp contrast to the media images that promote violence. This violence DJ stresses is a contradiction of the proud history too few understand.

He asks, “What positive stereotypes? What role models? Other cultures came in and took our ideas, improved them and called them their own. I had to learn these things on my own. If you weren’t taught these things, how would you know?”

The turning point for DJ was at college. He was away from home living with many different nationalities. He was also excelling in sport, eventually playing professionally for a year in the Canadian Football League (CFL).

Growing up, sport had given him an outlet for his aggression and he credits it with teaching him both obedience and teamwork. He says, “When you have a win, there’s harmony amongst the group. It teaches you a different life lesson than the one you’re living.”

It was his passion for sport and physical fitness that carried him through one of the more challenging times in his adult life. A Child and Youth Worker with expertise working with youth in the school setting, he also has his own gym where he trains elite athletes. 

Again, his explanation is direct. He says, “There is a reason why I have my gym. 1995/1996 was the year of the gun. Six of my students died. I took some time to put myself back to peace. I took some time to do something I wanted to do.”

DJ certainly wants to be doing the work he continues as a Child and Youth Worker, recognizing the courage it takes for those who work with troubled youth to put aside their pride to try to make something better for others.

Despite a very full schedule running his gym and working fulltime as a Child and Youth Worker, DJ plans to return to Jamaica as a volunteer working on programs for youth. He dreams of writing a book and sees the need to take up a greater advocacy role.

DJ will also help his daughters with their school work, be it for English or French. He delights in the singing of their voices when they speak their mother’s Barbadian Creole and smiles at their giggles when they speak his more aggressive Jamaican Patois.

Not only does he hope that the rest of his daughter’s generation will have the same opportunities to understand and enjoy all of the parts of their identity, he will do everything he can to make it so.

STILL DIGESTING

DJ’s optimism that his daughter’s experience less racism than he did from his classmates is hard earned. He talks about the physical fights that finally taught the white guys in his neighbourhood not to use racial slurs.

He has followed his mother’s advice to work twice as hard academically and physically to succeed and has lived up to the heavy responsibility of being the eldest of 13 brothers and 2 sisters in a family where his parents spent most of the time away from home working to support them. And he knows what it feels like to watch women clutch their purses and cross the street when they see him coming.

He says that he knows too much. He agonizes about the cultural crisis he sees around him as young people have no understanding of their own history and cultural identities.  He shares the Ma’at principles with me and they sound like as profound a plan as I have heard. He lists truth, justice, order, reciprocity, balance and harmony as the fundamentals. It is just the antidote to the chaos and confusion he sees young people struggling with daily, and yet another idea from Africa that other cultures might do well to adapt.

DJ lives by his philosophy professor’s advice that if you really want to know someone, you need to close your eyes and listen to them speak. It is an exercise worth repeating. We probably need close our eyes to the current reality to really hear what truth, justice, order, reciprocity, balance and harmony might look like. And all of us need to be working at least twice as hard to bring that vision to life.