Author: N Oji

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Racism And Enduring Hatred

Donald Sterling and the endless list of bigots that color our world

RACISM AND ENDURING HATRED

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 09 May 1, 2014

Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
— Mahatma Ghandi

After a lifetime of unpunished bigotry in words and actions, 80-year-old Donald Sterling, the son of Jewish immigrants, and owner of Los Angeles Clippers basketball team finally received his comeuppance.

Racist comments recorded by V. Stiviana, Sterling’s mixed-race girlfriend that was leaked to the media created such toxicity; the National Basketball Association had to act…

 

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The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”

The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”

By N Oji Mzilikazi

April 28, 2014

A “Rallye and Petition” email from an ad-hoc group of concerned citizens interested in preserving the Negro Community Centre (NCC) building in Little Burgundy, and soliciting input and support for a monster rally on Saturday May 24, 2014, is currently in circulation.

As much as I would like to see the NCC preserved, I find the desire and intent to make the NCC a cause célèbre to mobilise the community around to be ill-conceived, a knee-jerk reaction, and misdirected.

Are we never going to accept ownership for our self-oppression through organizational infighting, incompetence, sins of omission and commission, and our penchant to recruit, empower, and recycle egotistical, selfish, poorly-educated, visionless, and untrained soldier-leaders to lead troops on the front line of a war in which Blacks are attacked on all fronts, and we are perennially victims?

No wonder we  die from self-inflicted wounds.

There were no calls for a rally or petition when Centraide withdrew its funding from the NCC over issues of accountability and transparency. There were no calls for a rally or petition when the door of the NCC was locked in 1989. But now that bricks are on the street…

 

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To Rectify Damage, Reverse Paralysis

To Rectify Damage, Reverse Paralysis

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 08 April 17, 2014

The partial collapse of the historic Negro Community Centre in Little Burgundy on Sunday, April 13, 2014, accurately reflects the state of Montreal’s English speaking Black Canadian and Black West Indian/Caribbean community.  It shows that in spite of personal achievements and individual successes of many, there is an underlining rot in our community…

 

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I’m Voting PQ. Our Community Should. Here’s Why

I’m Voting PQ. Our Community Should. Here’s Why

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 07 April 3, 2014

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny
And in this judgement there is no partiality
Brother, you’re right, you’re right
You’re right, you’re right, you’re so right!

— Zimbabwe

— Bob Marley

Even amidst anti-immigrant and anti-Black sentiments, I voted Yes, for the Parti Québécois (PQ) in the 1980 referendum. My rational was simple: Every man/every country has a right to determine its own destiny, and like in a healthy organization and healthy democracy, the majority vote wins the day.

Therefore, if the French Québécois majority want Sovereignty; separation from Canada, the establishment and maintenance of a linguistic majority population, a true francophone province where the French language, French culture, French-Canadian history and its French speaking citizens would never again be subjected to second class status and discriminated against, why should I, a member of a race with a shared history and collective memory of racial hatred and their attendant evils by white skin persons, irrespective of language, and one that is mindful of the effects of colonialism and oppression, oppose their desire for self-determination?…

 

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Charting Success In This Racist Matrix

Charting Success In This Racist Matrix

Black History Month Musings, Part III

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 06 March 20, 2014

Don’t be fooled or tempted to confuse fortuity, sacrifice and hard work that have Blacks in positions of authority with racial progress/racial advance, or buy into the same. Racism is more virulent than ever, just more subtle — brandishing smiles and with an abundance of changing code words that require the conscious to be forever on their P’s and Q’s…