Africville

Surviving former residents of Africville have recently held another reunion to demand compensation from the government for the leveling of that community back in 1964.

But the anger over Africville today seems odd to those of us who were around when it was demolished.

For we remember this as a triumph for civil rights. No more would Halifax’s negroes (as they called themselves then) live in a squalid ghetto, without electricity or running water. No, now we were enlightened; we understood that we were all one community. There would be no more separate and unequal. We believed in integration, in desegregation.

It seems that blacks, or African-Canadians (as they call themselves now) have changed their mind. Now they actually pine for the days of segregation and apartheid.

That is bad enough: a lot of government money and time and energy wasted.

But it is something else to be actually demanding compensation from their fellow citizens for doing as they asked back in the sixties. That is perpetual victimhood. That is scrounging for handouts. That ought to be beneath any man’s dignity.

Some argue that the $500 each of Africville’s 400 residents was given for resettlement was too little. And it does sound like a small sum today. But was it so small back in 1964? Remembering that the people in Africville were squatters, with no title to their homes? And their homes were shacks with no water or electricity, built on industrially-zoned land? Legally speaking, after all, they were entitled to nothing.

It is well to remember that the whole deal was overseen and approved at the time by a citizen’s panel with majority black representation.

I suppose what is fair, if there are some blacks who today think this was a raw deal, is for the government to build some shacks entirely equivalent to those of Africville, and give them to those former residents who will, in return, pay back the $500 plus accrued interest since 1964.

By my calculation, assuming ten percent interest per annum, they could pay just $27,381.85 to get back their tarpaper shack.

But of course, without a title deed.