Kike Ojo-Thompson: “I do not feel Canadian”

a look at Ojo-Thompson’s Master’s Thesis

In her 1999 Master Thesis, FINDING A PLACE IN THE SUN:YOUNG BLACK WOMEN NEGOTIATE THEIR IDENTITIES IN OPPOSITIONAL SPACES Kike Ojo-Thompson wrote Identifying with Trinidad and Tobago appears to solve the problem of not belonging anywhere. Despite the fact that I was born and raised in Canada, I do not feel Canadian.

In her thesis Ojo-Thompson writes about feeling othered because of her mixed race status — being the daughter of a divorce parents, a Nigerian dad and a Trini mum, and living with her Trini mother in the Caribbean-dominant Toronto, Ojo-Thompson felt alien, like living on the outside looking in. She describes the tribalism in diaspora communities — not all black people are the same, black people from Trini are not like black people from Nigeria — culture + class differ. Ojo-Thompson felt what all mixed race kids feel. She describes the feeling of liminality — neither here nor there, a bit of both and necessarily neither and feeling disconnected from the land of her birth—Canada.

In her masters thesis Ojo-Thompson describes negotiating two cultures and divorced parents and she writes about her Nigerian dad teaching her about the American civil rights movement as well as about slavery. She became an anti-racist advocate, and joined in with the second generation Caribbean kids, who had immigrated west in with the Windrush cohort of Caribbean immigrants.

Interestingly, Kojo had choice between her Nigerian roots and her Trini roots and she chose the Trini narrative of black oppression rather than the Nigeria one, which differs significantly from the plantation narrative of Caribbean immigrants. I notice this choice of a victim-centred identity because I remember my own feelings when I learned about my own Guyanese plantation heritage after my dad’s death.

I saw my great great grandmother’s name on a list of babies born at sea to identured slaves travelling from India to Guyana. Sumondaria was her name and she as born February 14, 1880 on The Foyle, at sea. The victimhood story proved powerfully seductive to me, in my seeking for something about my dad to sink my teeth into and know him, as I came to grips with losing a man who defined me and who also remained mostly a mystery to me. That is the second generation experience — feeling your parent’s detachment from their homeland and thinking that what they left behind you can somehow pick through and salvage and string together pieces of lost treasure to conjure up the thing you feel missing from you. Let go of that fantasy — be here now. As I write this, I can only see triumph in the history where I once saw defeat.

Many of us for whom Canada is home, have opted to seek an alternate 'home'. In my case, that home is Trinidad and Tobago. Because Trinidad and Tobago has never actually been my 'home', I create an imagined Trinidad and Tobago that meets my need for belonging. Creating an imagined Trinidad and Tobago is my creative response to the violence of racism and sexism that I face in Canada. Through this imagining, I manage to survive. The Trinidad and Tobago that I imagine embraces me despite the fact that I was not born there. The Trinidad and Tobago that I imagine is free of discrimination, sexism and classism. It is paradise; it is my place in the sun; it is home. — Ojo-Thompson

That’s a lovely fantasy story Ojo-Thompson created about a place that never was her home except in her wish to belong to somewhere and maybe be elsewhere. Trinidad has, like all countries in the Caribbean, deeply traditional and patriarchal roots, severe misogyny and violent homophobia, rigid classism, not to mention indigenous rights issues that all South American nations face. The Caribbean suffers from poverty and wealth disparity, far from the heavenly paradise described Ojo-Thompson’s master’s thesis fantasy. Also the experience of blackness as black immigrant from Trini will differ than that of a black immigrant from Nigeria.

Why did Ojo-Thompson seek an ‘alternate’ home to Canada? What’s wrong with Canada? Why aren’t we good enough for her? What does Trini offer in the way of diversity and inclusivity that Canada does not?

At the time of the writing of Ojo-Thompson’s thesis, Trinidad had laws criminalising homosexuality, which the country only lifted in 2018. A quick search reveals that 1 in 5 women report non-partner sexual violence and 1 in 10 report child sexual abuse. Incest and child sexual abuse have reached such high rates the country has an emergent situation. This is the reality of Ojo-Thompson’s inclusive Trini that is perfect + wonderful + where she can belong. Writes Ojo-Thompson, it is my hypothesis that the production of 'feelings of identity and exclusiveness, as mentioned by Rousseau¹, are a part of the experiences of second generation Caribbean women in Canada.

Ok, well I’m a “second generation Caribbean woman” and I have absolutely zero idea what identity + exclusiveness I could possibly share with her as the experience of second generation Caribbean women. Dude, we are not even the same race. To reduce Caribbean racial identity to this ridiculous fantastical kumbaya narrative where everyone magically gets along and One Love reigns supreme is not gonna fly for Indo-Caribbean women, sweetie. I’m going to be that reality based grown-up asshole who reminds the class that the racial battle in the Caribbean is not between white people and any other race. You’re uninformed.

Black versus Brown is the race war happening the Caribbean.

You have to be kidding me if you think your racial empyrean is the Caribbean. I will be right back as soon as I can stop laughing so hard that I bust a gut muscle. And so this is the person behind the Canada is more racist that America Antiracist Workshops for professionals — someone who feels innately left out of “being Canadian”. Does the naster’s thesis add some needed psychological context to this story for you? Can I ask out loud about the ethics of having someone with such a disturbing cognitive distortion regarding race + belonging and her own Canadian identity presuming to teach others acceptance in Canada?

When I look at the antiracist diatribe Ojo-Thompson gives during her sessions, I have to ask how much of the denigrating originates from her own feelings of not belonging in Canada. Maybe Ojo-Thompson’s insistence that Canada is more racist than America is really Ojo-Thompson telling us she does not feel like she belongs here? Maybe Ojo-Thompson wants to punish white people in her sessions for her feeling of not being Canadian?

What does it mean to belong? Why do the children of immigrants pine away for the thing their parents chose to leave behind? Do we do this thing as a way to know the unknowable about the life our parents lived before they came to Canada? Because I remember spinning my own fantasy about my dad’s homeland and I remember enjoying the noble savage third world scenario I was creating in my head. My dad told me very little about the oppression of our people and told me quite a bit about stories of triumph from our heritage, he told me about strong women, and ethical men. He made a point to steer me away from the victimhood narrative, even though we lived in the most racist city in Canada, Winnipeg.

So, Kike Ojo-Thompson is a heterosexual female business owner with a graduate level education who is listed as one of the top 100 black women and who has lucrative DEI contracts with levels of government. Ojo-Thompson bullied a gay elder in one of her diversity and inclusivity sessions when he tried to tell his story of race as an educator in both Canada and America, a narrative based on professional experience which contradicted the one Ojo-Thompson advanced in her session. The elder educator she bullied was Richard Bilkszto, and he had to take time away from work because of a mental health crisis precipitated by the workplace bullying that took place.

To repeat my question. Could it be that Ojo-Thompson expresses resentment toward white people in her antiracist sessions because she sees them as an embodiment of her own feeling of not belonging to Canada?

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“We are here to talk about anti-black racism but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for black people?” [Ojo-Thompson] lectured [Bilkszto].

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I put in big bold lettering the abusive + rude remarks that Ojo-Thompson made to Richard Bilkszto because they deserve to be seen for all their ugliness and never ever forgotten. We must take responsibility for ourselves and use the tools at our disposable to learn to train our brain to connect in healthy ways — that is the path to diversity + inclusivity. Fortunately Amy Banks, MD, has made this easy with her C.A.R.E relational assessment tool that you can use on yourself. Anyone who is really serious about promoting the most inclusive society we can do will want to lead by example + with love. Projecting onto white people your own inability to accept that you do in fact belong, in an antiracist workplace session the Department of Education hired you to lead, seems like professional bullying and not anything else worth the significant amounts of public funding it cost.

Stop and think about this for a moment. Richard and his family, being Ontario tax payers, paid for that Antiracist Struggle Session which caused him so much suffering. That seems twisted to me, that a man paid for his own punishment, that a mother and other loved ones paid through their tax dollars for this punishment, which became theirs also.

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The C.A.R.E. Relational Assessment Tool :: Calm as in the smart vagus, Accepted as in the dACC, Resonant as in mirror neurons, Energetic as in the dopamine reward circuitry. C for feeling calm and not in a threat state, A for feeling accepted and not ostracised, R for understanding + being understood by others, E for the connections that drive your reward system in your brain.

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Before you can engage in a healthy manner, before you can position yourself to teach anyone tolerance or inclusivity, you must first have a nervous system and relational brain that can facilitate this behaviour. You cannot teach a skill you don’t have — it’s clear Ms Ojo-Thompson has passion + drive + that she lacks the skill to teach anyone tolerance. I don’t think anyone who reports I don’t feel Canadian, and then makes up a fictitious background story about a country in which she was neither born nor made her home, has an objective, resilient, or sufficiently balanced psychological terrain to conduct diversity + inclusivity training for anyone, let alone public educators.

Readers, remember yesterday I wrote at length about social exclusion? Remember I wrote about how social pain drove me to view my social connections through a broken self lens of cognitive distortions? Here’s the post below to remind you or if you haven’t yet read it.

Ms Ojo-Thompson, here’s some food for thought. Maybe the whole country is not racist simply because you don’t feel like you can related to it enough to belong in it with us? Hey, guess what, Ms Ojo-Thompson? You do not get to lecture me about race or privilege or oppression because I am not white and I come from the same region of the world that you claim as back home. Where you and I are concerned, Ms Ojo-Thompson, you the oppressor and I am the oppressed. On multiple levels, actually. I won’t get into that right now because this is not a race to the bottom and this is not about me.

Suffice it to say that, in Guyana, where my dad comes from, blacks are not the majority oppressed they are the minority ruling class. So, that pulling victimhood rank thing doesn’t always work, and it won’t get you an asshole pass with me. So, miss me with that, okay, Ms Ojo-Thompson? I understand being mixed race and not being either-or and therefore feeling like you are nothing. I so get that, you have no idea. I have always been the only one. I hated it for so long. I felt alien for a long time and thought marrying a bloke with an English name would make me belong.

You know what, though? I learned that I can call myself anything and I am still me. The English name didn’t make me belong more. That belonging stuff doesn’t come from a label you take for yourself because you joined your life to some white bloke.

After my husband killed himself and my father began slowly dying, I gave up my European married name to take back my Hindu maiden name—I made a choice to belong to me. Because belonging to me meant I would stop running from who I am. Being a Canadian means I belong to me. It means I have that weird Hindu name and I am still Canadian, without any qualifier. Not Guyanese-Canadian or Indo-Canadian. Just Canadian. I grew up and left the nostalgic fairy-story behind me when I realised my dad left the old world behind — he sailed out on the Windrush ship and embraced what Canada offered him. He never looked back, he leaned in and loved his home, Canada. A church filled with Canadians helped me to say goodbye to him one cold January day in 2017.

Life is what you make it, Ms. Ojo-Thompson. Racial belonging comes from you, it comes from your conception + perception of yourself. It doesn’t come from bullying Richard Bilkszto and it doesn’t come from bullying Bill Dennis. Seeing the thing you think you want because you conjured up some silly girl’s racial essentialist fantasy — that’s distraction. Be here now, in Canada, where we are free + tolerant, and where there is no big bad whypipo-baddie boogeyman.

There is no Derek Chauvin here in Canada, Ms Ojo-Thompson.

A man is dead, please stop the hyperbole and acting out now.

1. According to Rousseau as cited by Gilroy as cited by Ojo-Thompson in her thesis: “Work must be done, institutions built, customs and usages devised to produce that particularity and the feelings of identity and exclusiveness which bind people together, though these are so often experienced as though they were either natural and spontaneous or the products of an automatic tradition …”