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Shades of black (THE MUCHIE FAMILY)
Nicholas Keung, Staff Reporter

Feb. 27, 2006 (Toronto Star)

When we speak of a “black community” in Toronto or across the country, we’re not talking about a defined demographic group but rather a dubious social construct.

For “blackness” is a tricky notion, one applied to a wide variety of people with different skin colours and different cultures, from diverse parts of the world.
Varying Often, the only thing these individuals have in common is the fact that, to varying degrees, they share African roots. While many people of African descent understandably embrace the idea of a black community as a common front against those who would discriminate against them, they also recognize that in our increasingly global world, no ethnic and/or racial group is monolithic.

To illustrate the diversity within our African-Canadian population, the Star looks at three different families — descendants of an American-born free black, a Jamaican-Canadian clan and a refugee from Ethiopia and his household.
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THE MUCHIE FAMILY
Feb. 26, 2006. 01:00 AM

Muluken Muchie is an Ethiopian Canadian, proud of his native country's culture, traditions and history.

He speaks of the glorious 1896 Battle of Adwa, in which Ethiopian forces under Emperor Menelik II united to defeat an invading force of Italian troops. The victory made it clear to European colonialists that they couldn't simply tromp all over Africa, and that Ethiopia was not only a sovereign state but a force to be reckoned with. With such a heritage, Muchie was stunned when, in 1986, he arrived in Toronto, discovering that his Ethiopian identity was subsumed in Canada by the perception that he was just another black man.
Muchie had come from a Sudanese camp as a government-sponsored refugee. Before landing in Canada, he'd been blissfully unaware of Western racism.

"Yes, there are many problems in the continent (of Africa)," says Muchie, now 44. "But we don't blame it on the black people, because almost everyone is black there." Muchie was a first-year science major at the University of Addis Ababa when political instability forced him to flee his homeland. Now, he's publisher of the Ethiopian newspaper Hawarya (the word means "disciple" in English), which he founded 10 years ago and which has a monthly circulation across Canada of 7,000.

Upon his arrival in Canada, Muchie spent a year learning English while completing Grade 13. He then attended York University, getting a degree in economics in 1991. While at York, he sponsored his fiancée, Bizuayehu Ajigu, to join him in Canada. Today, she is a full-time homemaker who looks after their two children at the home they own in Brampton.
Like other newcomers, Muchie worked at odd jobs in factories and on campus to support himself through school. After graduating, Muchie became an outreach worker at two different African Canadian community agencies. It didn't take the young man long to learn about all the negative connotations of being black in Canada — and to realize that many people see the black community as a homogeneous group.

"When something bad happens, others are not going to care whether you are Caribbean or African, it's a black person who did it," Muchie says. "Somehow, it just reflects on all of us who are black." He adds that he's "uncomfortable being labeled as black because of its social stigmatization. Where I came from, we had black doctors, engineers and all kinds of professionals. Here, being black means that you're in a lower class." Muchie believes there's a lot of ignorance here about Africa. "People in Canada only know about our slavery history; no one knows about our contributions to human civilization." While his Caribbean peers have a longer history in North America and are arguably more integrated, Muchie says the African community is comparatively younger and still adapting to the New World.

He observes that the African community is no exception in being riven by biases and prejudices based on differences among countries and cultures. And despite Muchie's longing to help build a stronger collective voice for black Canadians, he notes that there's no escaping how the community is divided into subsets based on nationality and ethnicity, each with its own language, culture and religions. It's telling, he argues, that there are no large celebrations involving all segments of the black population. Caribbean, he says, is for people in the Caribbean community. Muchie's Ethiopian background remains very important for him, and that affects how he's parenting son Iyob, 8, and daughter Wubalem, 5.

"I want to raise them as Ethiopian-Canadians and I'd like them to know all three languages and heritages," Muchie says. But it's a struggle to give his children a sense of their heritage. Despite his efforts to encourage them to learn his mother tongue, Amharic, they show little interest. They're keener, he says, on the French they're learning as immersion students at Folkstone Public School. But as both of his children run around playing with a neighborhood friend, a white boy named John, he also observes: "They're both born and raised in Canada. They are just like any other Canadian kids."