Standing on the shoulders of giants

Have we lost our way when it comes to our history?

BY: Rosemary Sadlier

I like a lot of space, both physical and personal. So when I pass someone on a sidewalk, I keep plenty of distance. One winter night last year, upon passing a black man in his thirties, I heard him say something that stopped me dead in my tracks: �Scared of getting mugged by a black man, eh? Afraid I�ll rob you if you get too close?� Feeling as though I�d been slapped, I waited for him to catch up. When he stood only inches away, I looked him in the eyes, and said, �You have got to be kidding me.�?That was it. He shrugged. I glared. We went our separate ways.

Within minutes, I regretted not telling him about my father, who started the Ontario Human Rights Commission and was the first black ombudsman of the province. I also regretted not telling him about my brother, Lawrence Hill, who with one brave novel, The Book of Negroes, dispelled the condescending notion in publishing that black fiction does not sell.

The truth is, there have been many times when people have darted across the street to avoid me. Since I don�t look white, people assume I must be dangerous or, if not dangerous, poor. Once, in L.A., a man mustered up the nerve to ask me to help push his stalled, decrepit car up a hill. When we got to the top, he glanced sympathetically at my beige skin, bushy hair and torn-up jeans and murmured, �Here�s a couple bucks, man. Looks like you could use it.� Not wanting to embarrass him, I pocketed the dough.

How did I get to such a surreal place � hopscotching the world, quietly banging out dozens of hit songs, while being regarded throughout my travels as an indigent person of unknown (read �threatening�) racial origins? Well, I was raised in the �60s in Toronto�s Don Mills neighbourhood, in what can be fairly described as a typical middle-class family � albeit one with a charismatic, black activist father and a brilliant, feisty Caucasian mother. Back then, children in black middle-class families like mine were raised with one overarching mantra: Achieve. Get the best marks and be the smartest kid. Because you will need to be better, tougher, more accomplished and street-savvy than the white kids if you want to succeed. In an ironic twist, my brother, Larry, earned such high marks in Grade 3 that his teachers were convinced he had a rare, psycho-emotional disorder: �Overachieving.� (�Daggum,� my dad thundered back, �you wouldn�t say my boy was overachieving if he?were blond and blue-eyed.�)

Admittedly, the Hill family had a history of aiming rather high. My dad�s dad, Daniel Hill II,?had a PhD in theology. As assistant dean at the Howard University School of Religion, he brought people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he corresponded regularly, to speak at his school. Because hotels refused to rent rooms to blacks at that time, my dad�s family � like many other black families in America � put up touring entertainers and intellectuals, such as writer Langston Hughes and tenor Roland Hayes. The black sociologist W.E.B. DuBois might have considered such people among the �Talented Tenth�� comprising the top 10 per cent of black movers and shakers who made it their mission to educate, inspire and lead. The notion of the �Talented Tenth� galvanized my dad as a young man writing his PhD thesis, �Blacks in Toronto� (the paper is still a must-read in university sociology classes). Whenever his spirits flagged, he let the example of his family carry him through one more sentence, paragraph, or page, as he catalogued the triumphs of the blacks in his city in the mid-20th century.

Growing up in Toronto, I found plenty of black people, all equally driven, to inspire me too. They seemed to share two things with my siblings and me: powerful mentors and parents who would not tolerate mediocrity. Our neighbours, the Gandys, had a PhD-toting father and a brilliant son, Alan, who grew up to be a pediatrician and was the only kid I knew who could whip me in chess. Jazz great Molly Johnson was also a member of �the black driven class.� Her family was accomplished in so many fields that, as a kid picnicking with them, the Gandyses, and the Richmonds (whose son, Billy, aced IQ tests on Friday night, just for fun), I always felt like a slacker. But all of us understood that the key to making our mark was basic: work, practise, study, repeat.

And, so, the tradition continues. Even today, my brothers and sisters are stepping up, as our parents did, to mentor our children positively, creatively. We well understand that the younger generations are watching, soaking up everything we do. Alas, our efforts to lead by example need to be publicized more by the media, not for the sake of our own individual careers, but to let the world know that anything is possible and that we are the gatekeepers to our future.
�Education is everything,� Juno award-winning Haydain Neale once declared to me over dinner. While his statement resounded loudly with ideas of the �Talented Tenth,� he was speaking of schooling his daughter, Yasmin. For, despite Haydain�s superlative musical talent, when we talked we rarely discussed music. We spoke, instead, of our children, their challenges and triumphs, and our responsibility to be much more than recording artists. Haydain�s understated power and eloquence, his utter selflessness, reminded me of my paternal grandfather.

�Tell your son, David, not to let racism break him,� Haydain also advised, when I recounted how a gang of white thugs had attacked my son only a mile from home. �He can turn his anger at prejudice to his advantage. Let it fire up his ambition, prove those thugs wrong.�

Yes, we have a choice. We can succumb to anger, letting other people�s ignorance bring us down, or we can answer adversity with our gifts rather than our fists. For me, creativity has always been the best revenge.

Shortly after Haydain died of lung cancer, I was privileged to be part of a tribute concert held in his honour, at Toronto�s Phoenix Theatre. As I shared the stage during the encore with other artists such as Divine Brown, k-os, Nelly Furtado and Keshia Chant�, I felt chills run through my body. I saw an audience of all ages, all colours, squeezed together as though part of the same Toronto tribe, singing and swaying and weeping along to jacksoul�s One Song. The smiling sea of faces, mouthing Haydain�s lyrics, conjured up his spirit, rocked me with love and hope and the power of possibility. I sent out a prayer of celebration then, to Haydain and to black leaders, past and present. Through their lives, their triumphs and sacrifices they move us to achieve, to love, and, as my grandfather used to preach, �to prop each other up from every leaning side.�