I am black

Friday I went to a conference-spectacle at Cegep Ahuntsic. The show was helmed by the KEPKAA group and was basically a play interspersed with PowerPoint presentations giving background information on what they were talking about. The story of the play was that of a professors teaching members of his family about the story of a slave girl named Americana. It begins in the 19^th century where she managed to escape slavery in the US and come to Canada and ends in the early 20^th century at her death. The most interesting "character" in my opinion was the PowerPoint presenting computer named Historika. It was truly a wealth of information and opened your eyes on how the world had changed in the last 200 years. We had presentations about the life of escaped slaves, about the first black people in Canada, those who managed to carve their places in society and about the daily lives of others. We also had one about black inventors which leads me to think that, as it has been the case with students, a lot of discoveries and inventions were awarded to the one that had the money or authority to publish it rather than the actual discoverer.

There was also a presentation about how the white occidental world demeaned black people in order to keep their economic system viable. Before the industrial revolution, the only way to get the "massive" amounts of food and materials needed for cities, wars and the like was to use slaves. Only with the advances of technology were people actually able to look at what they were doing with objective eyes and say "What the hell is wrong with us?" (or maybe "Those slaves could drive the economy if they were paid and could buy the stuff our machines produce").

To conclude, for those who didn't click the link, KEPKAA is basically a school that teaches people to write and speak Haitian Creole. They did an awesome job in creating an informative play with Friday's event. I just wish the room wasn't 99% black and sold on their ideas. It is my firm belief that we can all learn from the struggles others have endured. At any rate, the evening ended with some pictures of Barack Obama which received a standing ovation so loud that he probably heard it in Washington.