Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey Transcript

My name is Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey. My kinsmen and kinswomen also call me Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè. I am William Dawson Associate Professor of History in the Department of History and Classical Studies of McGill University.

Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: the Making of a Pan-African North America looks at the 20th century, the whole span of the 20th century, of the ways that Black people — in Canada, in the United States, and the Caribbean Basin, as well as Black people on the African continent — the ways that they navigated systems of colonization, systems of imperialism, various systems of inequality, the instruments of warfare directed at ensuring that Black people were kept in a subordinated and subjugated class, and this is a history in many ways that is central to understanding the Canadian experience over the course of the 20th century, but also the US experience as well.

One of the most important takeaways from Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is that to understand — but not simply to understand — to appreciate the history of the 20th century, to understand the ways of the global order, the world order, North America is integral — and not merely North America but also Canada is integral in terms of understanding how the United States manoeuvred as an empire over the course of the 20th century, how Canada assisted the United States and sometimes Canada stood in contradistinction to the United States. And while this major history is unfolding over the course of the 20th century we see ordinary men and women, sometimes children, people of African descent, Black people who are navigating the various systems of the United States, the Canadian society, the Caribbean Basin, as well as their transatlantic connections on the African continent, how they are negotiating forms of anti-Black racism, forms of colonization, the ways that capitalism is used to exploit Black people's standing.

Equally important is this dance of sorts, this cat-and-mouse play of ordinary citizens, activists striving for better opportunities, striving for a sense of dignity in a place they call home — that is dear to them — whether it's Canada, it's the Caribbean, it's the United States, et cetera, brought out in some ways the worst of the Canadian government, brought out the worst in terms of the US government in terms of what we call clandestine operations or counterintelligence or forms of counterinsurgency.

This is a history and a book that sheds light on a chapter of Canada's past that is very seldom acknowledged or in fact even documented. For starters, what drew me to this research — I would have to give attribution to my dad who's an excellent storyteller, although a man who didn't have the privilege of obtaining a formal education. When I was in my early to mid 20s I was doing a lot of community-based work — community development, work in north Toronto, mostly gang intervention work — and this work was very racialized, very gendered, meaning most if not all of the young men whom I supported and worked with and advocated for in the courts, et cetera, et cetera, were young Black men who had been to jail or sometimes to prison. The questions that I asked of the elders in the community to get a better grasp of what is happening and why is it that certain issues afflict Black people in — sort of — metropolitan Toronto more than any other group.

They gave me some good answers but not the totality of responses that I desired, and so this is really and truly why I went to the United States to pursue my doctorate, because I could see some very strong parallels between what was happening in inner city Toronto communities and inner city USA. And so over the course of my research and accessing classified documents from the US federal government with FBI, CIA, et cetera, and counterparts RCMP, CSIS here in Canada, I learned over the course of my research that the — what some sociologists refer to as social pathologies, or the inequities that seemed so pronounced in Black communities in fact stem from a post-World War II strategy of the National Security State trying to keep the lid down on Black protests — on militant Black protests. This knocked my socks off because I had not seen or encountered anything like that in the Canadian context. I'd seen bits and pieces in the US context and so this is how I was able to integrate the two histories over the course of the 20th century, but especially after World War II.

So in terms of what inspires me today for future work I would say this book Cross-Border Cosmopolitans has provided a foundation of sorts — a scholarly foundation, but also the elders in the community, men and women, children, and — in Canadian Society — Black men and women who have sacrificed a lot, endured a lot, and in so many ways I feel indebted to their sacrifices. As a historian part of that indebtedness means to do very diligent work to articulate the contributions of Black people to this great society and their struggles as well. So it's not all sunshine and lollipops, there's a lot of hard-hitting stuff and in a free society we should confront the hard-hitting stuff because that's what makes and will make Canadian society better.

I tell my students all the time that history is everything — whether you're in medical sciences, whether you're a lawyer, whether you're an economist, public health specialist, sociologist — whatever it is that you do you generally need to have context and history is what provides context. History is everything not simply because of context but because as human beings, as social beings, our desire for dignity, our desire for certain rights, our desire to affirm who we are, from whence we came, is all rooted in our ability or our capacity to tell the world who we are and to articulate our experiences. And that means our claims in terms of justice, our claims in terms of our land or our waterways, our fisheries, natural resources, all of this goes back to a people's capacity or government's capacity to articulate its past and its claims on certain things.

And so history in that sense to me is arguably the most profound of assets and we can describe this in terms of a national sense, and my book speaks to a national context, but it also speaks to the various levels in between the national and the person, and that's part of what I wanted to do in terms of illustrating the significance of of the Canadian past, how it's connected to the American experience, how it's connected to the Caribbean experience, but also to the continental African experience and these are experiences in the 20th century that would in so many ways shape the trajectory of the world order as we know it today.