The African Diaspora in Canada: Negotiating Identity and Belonging.(Book review)

The African Diaspora in Canada: Negotiating Identity and Belonging. Wisdom J. Tettey and Korbla P. Puplampu, eds. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005. 256 pp. $39.95 sc.

Recent social studies on refugee and immigrant groups from Africa have offered insight into the differences within and among African communities in Canada. Even so, the experiences of continental Africans in Canada and their transformative influence on Canadian society have been largely overlooked in academic research and public policy analyses. Wisdom J. Tettey and Korbla P. Puplampu have undertaken a tremendous task to highlight and address some of these gaps in the research. Through a combination of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical studies, The African Diaspora in Canada brings to the fore critical analyses of the vast complexity of continental African experiences in Canada. Each chapter in the four sections of this edited volume contributes to the discourses about the social construction of continental Africans in Canada.

In the first section, Tettey and Puplampu analyze concepts of "diaspora," "Black," and "African Canadian" and the confounded and contested meanings of these terms. The authors want readers to gain a better understanding of the complex history of Africans in Canada, the social construction of Africa and Africans in shaping Canada, and the differences among Africans in their settlement within Canada. Ali A. Abdi's chapter offering a history of the socio-economic exclusion of continental Africans in Canada and explaining some of the systemic factors contributing to the current marginalization of continental Africans caps off the first section. The analyses in this first section underpin the structure of the entire book and provide the context for the chapters that follow.

Section two takes a closer look at the denigration, de-valorization, and de-legitimization of Africa and African Canadians and how this is manifest in schools and universities. Henry M. Codjoe illustrates how an "invisible curriculum," that is, the lack of presence of Black Studies and Black history in schools, contributes to a virtual erasure of Black experiences in schools and pedagogy. Through the insights of African students currently in or recently graduated from Edmonton secondary schools, Codjoe illustrates how school curricula and "dominant paradigms" are implicated in stigmatizing Africans and perpetuating notions of Western superiority. George S. Dei's personal and professional insights into institutional racism in education systems derive from his location as a university scholar and educator. Both Codjoe's and Dei's respective chapters show how knowledge that is created in classrooms by and with students provides a more accurate picture of what it means to live among peoples of Canada.

Both chapters in the ...