June Festival-representing the day when blacks who were enslaved in Texas in 1865 learned that they were free and thus celebrated the effective end of slavery in the United States-were recognized as Americans Federal holiday June 17.

Meanwhile, in Canada, on March 24, the House of Commons Official recognition August 1 is Liberation Day, celebrating the end of slavery in the colonies of the British Empire, dating back to 1834.

do you know? If your answer is no, then you may not be the only one. To learn history, you must teach history.

Before the death of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in 2020, and the “black life is also a fate” movement firmly dragged into mainstream consciousness, few people knew about June Festival—despite its long history. Has been celebrated by African Americans since.

Likewise, most Canadians do not know the history of slavery in their country.This is mainly due to the unwillingness of the school teach This history.

Many Canadians probably learned about the Underground Railroad in elementary school: a well-designed network of routes established in the early to mid-1800s brought freedom-seeking African slaves to the northern free states of the United States and British North America (now Canada). But the same Canadians may not know that owning slaves—including blacks and aboriginals—was legal and common in Canada.

Yes, the same Canada is often described as a free place for fugitive African Americans.

This blind spot in education is an example of the kind of erasure ingrained in the Canadian cultural environment. Canada has taken multiculturalism and racial harmony as the key to the international representation of a country, and the notion that despite a certain culture, no citizen is Canadian.

Within this ideological framework, culture becomes a question of individualism; a kind of ownership, completely separated from political power, sovereignty, and hierarchy.

Official multiculturalism requires us not to ask why some Canadians are just Canadians while others are black Canadians, Asian Canadians, or similar hyphens.

It requires us not to consider the following facts too deeply Pierre Trudeau’s Multicultural Policy In the 1970s, two white colonial languages-French and English-were established as official languages, while implicitly subordinate all races to the core of Canadian English.

The most insidious thing is that it asks us not to consider the connection between the myth of Canada as a multicultural bastion of freedom and the country’s elimination of its violent colonial history.

For a long time, mainstream society has given priority to maintaining Canada’s fantasy, rather than recognizing the country’s ethnic history and solving its systemic social problems. In addition, when no one knows the true historical background behind this injustice, it is much easier to ignore the current injustices against racialized Canadians.

As Robin Maynard wrote Regulating the lives of blacks: from slavery to current state violence in Canada, “The widespread elimination of Canadian black experiences from the public sphere (including elementary school, middle school and post-secondary education), coupled with Canada’s tendency to ignore racial differences, continues to influence the nation’s mainstream view of black reality.”

In other words, a lack of understanding of black history leads to a lack of sympathy for the problems facing the black community.

Canadian educator Nadia L. Hohn teaches kindergarten at Africentric Alternative School in Toronto. In her view, there is no reason why education about the history of slavery in Canada should not start sooner.

“I think it should start in elementary school,” she said. “And there are different ways to teach it. There are many resources. Ontario Black History Association This is a great start, and a great picture book. “

In the U.S, Recent right-wing attack Critical racial studies — aiming to reconstruct historical narratives and admit that racism shapes public policy — prove that education can challenge the power system. Telling history truthfully can break the hierarchical status quo.

The creation of Liberation Day and other federal holidays that recognize the suffering of blacks Important step Towards equality-but only if there is a real will to combine recognition with action and justice.

This column is part of CBC’s opinion section. For more information about this section, please read our FAQ.

For more stories about the experience of black Canadians—from anti-black racism to success stories in the black community—check out Black Canadians, a CBC project that Canadian blacks can be proud of. You can read more stories here.