The Impact of Black History Month with Prof. Lorne Foster

Recorded audio interview with Professor Lorne Foster, completed by Blessing Ogunyemi for the Harriet Tubman Institute, York University. 

TRANSCRIPT: 

Professor Lorne Foster: What are the things that come to my mind in Black History Month? Well, first of all, there’s a sense of pride for me. I’ve been building a sense of pride in the Black community and a sense of belonging. As someone who was, you know, Black and born in Canada, one of the things that I look back on, almost with disdain, almost with sadness, is that I didn’t learn about Black people in school. I didn’t have a history class that talked about Black people’s migration to Canada, the Underground Railroad, for instance, I didn’t read a Black author until I got to university, if you can believe that; that wasn’t part of our education system. I didn’t have Black heroes on television or in any other endeavour in my life until I was a teenager. And you know, those heroes came as athletes. So, my life was very narrow, and it was to… not to my… I think it was to my disadvantage, and it certainly was nothing that I would have wanted for myself. I would like to have celebrated, and I’ve liked to have believed and honored myself and my community more. 

For some, that kind of existence growing up creates a kind of lack of self-worth, maybe even self-hatred. You internalize your own inferiority if you don’t have writers, if you don’t have, you know, that cultural capital to rely on; those heroes that you can stand on their shoulders, whether they’re in literature, whether they’re in sports, or whether in education, it’s very detrimental to your life. And basically, Black History Month is the redress of that for me. It is a statement about… it is cultural capital. It’s a statement about self-worth, and it’s a statement that needs to be told over and over, not just in one month, but the entire year, because there are children like me growing up that can move in wrong directions if they don’t believe in themselves, if they don’t see people like them in high places, if they’re not able to read the richness of Black literature.  

Do you know that… Well, I think you do know. There were Black writers when I was a kid who were Nobel Prize winners, but I’d never heard even their names, of Soyinka and others, and yet, I lived that life. I look back on it now and see how deprived I was. And for me, Black History Month is a… well, it’s an event, if you will. It is a happening. It is a cultural celebration that actually just not only denies, but it actually condemns the kind of existence that is not… well, let me put this another way. What it does is celebrate a community in a way that’s healthy for all of us, as individuals and as a collective. And I think that is the purpose that it serves, and the impetus it has for people learning or actually acquiring self-worth, and a sense of belonging, and pride in their community.