The operation of whiteness and forgetting in Africville, a geography of racism

Abstract

In the 1960s the City of Halifax dismantled the black community of Africville under a program of urban renewal and 'slum clearance'. Africville's 400 residents were evicted from their homes, in many cases receiving insufficient financial compensation. From that time on, the City has defended its actions by citing the deplorable living conditions in Africville, obscuring its own creation of these conditions through years of neglect and the refusal of essential services. In the 1980s, the space of Africville was made into a public park, which remains a site of contestation, protest and commemoration. The City of Halifax continues to deny financial compensation to former residents, has never issued a public admission of wrongdoing and has actively maneuvered to silence protest. This dissertation traces the events around this history as a chain of evictions of Africville from its own space. The regulatory measures taken by the city of Halifax are theorized as a series of choices--rather than inevitably necessary moves--which constituted Africville in various ways: as a slum, then as a 'problem' which was solved, and more recently as a white communal space in which past violence is rendered invisible. The aim of my analysis in this work is not an explication of the experiences of Africville residents, or of the experience of African Canadians in general, but rather a critical mapping of the actions of the white municipality of Halifax in Africville's history. I argue that these acts of regulation of black spaces and bodies logically follow one another in creating a 'geography of racism'. In tracing the continuing management of space over time, I demonstrate how whites in positions of privilege and authority come to know themselves as legitimately dominant. In critiquing the effective erasure of racism and violence in the white story of Africville, I illustrate how these dominant social actors construct their innocence through particular forms of commemoration.