• Blue Notes

Monday, June 8, 2009

Thoughts on seeing The National Civil Rights Museum

posted by Rick Blue at 12h25

Last week I was in Memphis, Tennessee. While I was there, I saw the National Civil Rights Museum, built on the spot where Martin Luther King died. It is very moving. It tells the tale of an oppressed people who eventually achieve equal rights.

As I flew back to Quebec I couldn’t help but notice similarities.

One of the major hurdles to equal rights was segregated schools. Southern states didn’t allow blacks and whites to send their children to the same schools. When schools were integrated, it was a major step forward.

Here in Quebec, we have segregated schools. They are differentiated by language rather than colour. But the choice of which school you can attend is not up to the student or the parent. It’s up to the government. Like back in the segregationist southern U.S.

Because I went to school in Toronto, from kindergarten to Grade 5, my son is allowed to attend English school. In other words, his genetic lineage is what gives him the right to attend English school. Others are not so lucky. They don’t have the right DNA.

The problem in the United States was that the majority whites wanted to make the minority black feel like second-class citizens. So they denied them rights that would seem to apply to all humans. And by doing so, directly contradicted the ideals of the American constitution which starts with that wonderful phrase: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”

Black literature is part of the civil rights story. The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, is a novel that explored how human identity can be destroyed by living in a regime that treats you as second class and renders you invisible.

Here in Quebec, the purpose of laws of the state, specifically Bill 101, is to make the minority English community invisible, by disallowing public displays of English.

Much of the black struggle for legal human rights in the United States was one of state laws versus federal laws. We can see that at work here. Federal Canadian laws give both languages equal rights. Quebec laws consistently deny the equality of English.

There is a famous historical moment portrayed in the museum when a governor of a southern state stood on the steps of a college to deny the entrance of black students. He was pushed aside by federal marshals.

Last week, Gilles Duceppe tried to pass a law in the House of Commons to force federal crown corporations operating in Quebec to comply with Bill 101, the provincial law, and not the federal Official Languages Act. This would have denied the federal government the right to observe the equality of languages here in Quebec. I could not help but see in  Duceppe the ghost of George Wallace.

The interesting thing is that in the National Civil Rights Museum the end of segregation, second-class citizenry and laws making a minority invisible is seen as progress. In Quebec, second-class citizenry, segregated schools and laws making a minority invisible is seen as progress.

In the long march of human history which jurisdiction is going forwards? And which one is going backwards?