Champion of race harmony speaks out

Dr. George J. Sefa Dei, winner of a major civic award for his work in race relations, is quick to share his honour with others.

"A lot of people have been working very, very hard to make the city better for everybody," he says. "If some of us receive awards today, it is because we stand on the shoulders of others."

Dei, a 49-year-old professor and chair of the department of sociology and equity studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), was awarded the 2003 William P. Hubbard Race Relations Award in December of last year.

The award, presented by the City of Toronto, is especially important to Dei because it represents "official recognition that there is racism that needs to be dealt with, and if people are working around it and acknowledging it, it is a step in the right direction," he said in an interview.

"We spend a lot of our time in denial," he says.

"To me, rather than say there's no problem, I think we have to look deep down within ourselves and see what it is we can do collectively to make our city really liveable for every member of our society.

"Rather than denial, let's find ways to concretely and honestly talk about the issues and deal with them."


Dei balks at blaming anyone or any one group for the problems, such as racial profiling, which have troubled Toronto.


"I don't like calling names, and saying this is racist or not racist," he says. "It becomes so defeatist and people withdraw into themselves. Let's go beyond that and get to the issues.


"If there is a kid in school who feels marginalized, I don't really care if his teacher is racist or not. I look at the results, at the effect. So if the kid is feeling marginalized, that is the issue that needs to be addressed," he says.


"We must take responsibility when there is a problem: We can't just turn around and point our finger to place blame elsewhere and say, `Oh well, that's the fault of the community, or it's because of the kid's family or his home environment.'"

But our collective responsibility goes further than recognizing the problem, Dei says.


"I think we all have good intentions: I don't think anybody gets up in the morning and says `I'm going to be this or that, or I'm going to be a bad person today,'" he says.


"But the point is how we respond to the challenges that face our community: It's one thing to acknowledge diversity, but it's a harder thing to respond to the reality of what it means to live in the midst of diversity," Dei says.


"The community is as good as we collectively work to make it: In other words, to recognize that there is strength that comes with diversity and that is its beauty."


It's important for people to take credit for the positive changes they're part of, he says. But there is no room for complacency.

"Our work is never done," he says. "There are people who wake up in the morning and don't know whether there will be food on the table that day. There is a child who has to wonder whether he will be teased or bullied when he goes to school or whether he will learn anything."


To learn, and to be open to learning, a person has to feel very comfortable, Dei says. "And one's comfort is not defined by making others feel uncomfortable."


Dei says people need to ask themselves how they see their responsibility to the larger society.


"And this is not about asking `what can I get from society,'" he says. "We start with ourselves; by looking within ourselves, and finding the courage to take on the issues and ask the questions that are not being asked."


The William P. Hubbard Award was established in 1989 and is given to a person or to people whose outstanding achievement and commitment to race relations has made a distinct difference in Toronto.

Hubbard, who was born in Toronto in 1842 and died in 1935 at the age of 93, was Toronto's first African Canadian city councillor. A baker by trade, he also served as acting mayor and was elected to the city's board of control. (Hubbard Blvd. in the Beaches is named in his honour.)


Dei is the first president of the Ghanaian-Canadian Union and is on the boards of many Ontario community organizations, including Central Neighbourhood House, the Black Secretariat, Tractors for Our Daily Bread, and is on the board of trustees of the Harry Jerome Scholarship Awards of Canada.


He has won many awards, including the 2003 African Community Building Award and the 2003 Community Builder Award from the continuing education department of the Toronto District Catholic School Board and the 2003 African-Canadian Outstanding Achievement in Education Award from Pride Magazine.