Black History 2023 - I have a story to tell.

Happy February. Happy Black History Month. February is cold month, but it is one of my favourites because it is my birth month. Happy Birthday to me. Happy birthday to my dad, my sister, three of my cousins, my uncle, and my aunt – all born in February. Bob Marley and Audre Lorde were also born in February. February is all about celebrating Black joy.?

As a Black public servant, February also brings a long list of invites to be a speaker on panels, sharing my lived experiences as a Black public servant or to deliver workshops on tackling anti-Black racism. Each year, I remind those sending the invites that these conversations can take place and should take place during the other eleven months of the year. Eventually if you repeat the message often enough it will be heard; well, that’s the hope. Happily, there are some that have committed to having Black speakers outside of Black History Month but not enough have done so yet so the message will have to continue being repeated.

Starting tomorrow, February 9th (my birthday) and for the rest of the month, I have at least 10 speaking engagements and during the week of Feb 13 to 17, I will be either on a panel or a leading a workshop every day. It’s a busy time, but I am not complaining because I have decided that for 2023, my talks will not be about Black suffering or providing the white gaze with trauma porn (even though they seem to prefer hearing about suffering rather than taking action to prevent it or examining their direct and indirect complicity in the suffering). Rather, I will use the opportunities to flip the script and to ask others why it is taking so long for positive change to happen? I will challenge them to show up start doing work to dismantle the harmful structures and put in place enabling structures so Black talent can flourish as defined by Black talent. And when they say, “I don’t know what to do,” I will respond with we have already told you what to do so please stop making excuses and give space and support to those who do know what needs to be done.

I will be as Audre Lorde has instructed us to be – “deliberate and afraid of nothing ,” as I provide instructions one more time on how to get past the performative allyship.

In Canada, the theme for Black History Month 2023 is “Ours to tell ” ?and in the United States it is “Black Resistance .” For me, these two themes remind all of us, as Black people, to take space and create new spaces, to define ourselves according to ourselves and tell our stories boldly, to take care of our well-being, to strengthen our communities, and celebrate all the magic that makes us as Nina Simone sang, “young, gifted and Black, oh what a lovely precious dream .” ???

The story I wish to tell is just a few years in the future, somewhere between 2024 and 2027. Discussions about Black talent in the federal public service is no longer about the career stagnation and gross underrepresentation of Black executive talent (currently only 1.9% when it should be at least 4%). We are no longer counting the number of Black senior leaders on one hand (only 3 deputy ministers) or celebrating the firsts (appointed in 2020). Rather we are talking about successive and ongoing Black achievements, experiences of Black joy and how the public service is delivering true excellence because no talent is left behind. A federal public service with Black voices and Black perspectives meaningfully engaged and included in all discussions and decision-making in the policy development and program delivery cycles.

It is a story where Black mental health outcomes have improved because Black public servants are experiencing less incidents of anti-Black racism that contribute to complex racial trauma and when harm does happen the perpetrators regardless of their level in the organization are held accountable and face consequences for behaving contrary to public service values and ethics.

In that not-too-distant future, the story we tell will be those that fully appreciate the lived experiences of Black talent, their joys, and their challenges. And when there are challenges, we have systems and Black centric mental health services in place to ensure they can be overcome and that everything is informed by a do no harm ethos.

A story about recognition, development, and justice.?

A story about organizational cultures that no longer produce so many rotten fruits who keep failing forward and upwards. In that not-so-distant future, I imagine organizational cultures that celebrate leadership that is courageous, vulnerable, and anti-racist. An organizational culture where people who call out anti-Black racism are not characterized as problematic or being a difficult person to work with. In that future the problematic person is the one who demonstrates anti-Blackness and the one who is protected is the one who was principled enough to speak truth to power and demanded better because they knew as we should all know by now, that when anti-Black racism persists it harms not just Black talent, but it harms the entire organization. ?

That is story that I wish to tell. It is a story of resistance. The story of strength and celebration. A story of joy, well-being, and flourishing. A story where we finally have Black inclusion.

I believe the work we do today will help us accelerate that future.?

I hope you will join me in this work. But if you don’t that’s okay, just stay out my way because as the Black feminists in the Combahee River Collective , I am “actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression,” and as they have taught me to “realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy .”

Happy Black History Month 2023

P.S: The quote for this post comes from bell hooks

“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.”

If it resonates with you, please let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading this post and I hope you return for future ones.