The first time I felt the sting of white supremacy was at Dalhousie University. Dalhousie sent out the resumes of its graduating class to make industry leaders aware of the school’s new crop of future business leaders. I thought great, Dalhousie is going to introduce me to companies, and I will have that advantage when I hit the job market. I never got that support because Dalhousie only sent out the resumes of Canadians. Canadians for Dalhousie are white and if they were not white then Canadians do not have African names. My black skin and my African name have made me a lesser, and in many cases like at Dalhousie, an outright non-Canadian.
The next time I felt the sting of white supremacy and white entitlement was when my resume ended up in the office of a CEO and president of a company. The president sent back a rejection that included the words “there is absolutely nothing that you can do here.” Before I internalized his message, my wife took the letter and told me “don’t bother with him; he is an idiot.” In that moment my wife concurred with Stockwell Day, there are idiot racists in Canada. This CEO was from one of Alberta’s premier families; the kind of people who maintain society’s systems. Whether it is the transit system, power system or racism system, those people have a role to play. In sending me that letter, he was playing his role in supporting white supremacy and white entitlement.
My first the real job in corporate Canada was at TransAlta Utilities. At TransAlta, other employees would show up at my office and demand that I explain how TransAlta’s affirmative action program works. They had high school diplomas and I had an undergrad degree in economics and mathematics plus a masters’ degree in business administration and they believed that I am the one, who is not qualified. There were a “few idiot racists hanging around” TransAlta but it goes without saying, that I could handle a “few idiot racists.” What I could not handle is when one of them became my supervisor. Idiot racists do not want black men working on their teams. That’s what happen at TransAlta. A new treasurer just did not believe that I was a good fit for his team and fired me.
A year after TransAlta, I got an interview at IPL Pipelines (now Enbridge). When I went to the interview the guy sitting behind the desk was my son’s soccer coach. Even though I was interviewed by everyone on his team and the senior VP, I did not want to take the job. I did not want to have anything that would throw shade on my qualifications and skills. The impact of a “few idiot racists” at TransAlta almost prevented me from accepting the job. I did not want people at Enbridge to say that I didn’t qualify because of the guy who hired me. Black people are not shareholders in white supremacy; we are not entitled to its residual value. Under it, we don’t only lose economic value, it often causes us to make decisions that are not in our best interest. Fortunately, I took the job and it wasn’t long before I was working on major energy projects. I loved Enbridge. I loved the clear vision the company had, the confidence with which it moved, the yeah, we are doing something great here attitude. I really felt like I was one of them. Enbridge’s leadership and the people who work there are not from out of space. They grew up in the same environment as Stockwell Day and his “few racist idiots”. Their mental culture is the same. When Stockwell Day talked about a “few idiot racists hanging around in Canada” he wasn’t thinking of Enbridge. Here is my experience with white supremacy and white entitlement at Enbridge.
One of the things I did for Enbridge was to build their wind power business. My boss once said, “a good idea has many fathers,” so I am not claiming that wind power was my idea. When we started, it was just me and my boss, which means I did all of the initial work. I had dreams of building Enbridge a big power business. That was the best way for me to move from being a planning analyst to a VP role. So, I looked for ways to add value. I pitched a senior VP the idea of getting into power generation in the elevator. I looked at anything that could be a good fit and accretive to earnings per share. My opportunity came with wind power, I thought if I grow wind power into a significant business unit, I would get a director or VP position in it.
As luck would have it, we won a bid to build one of the first commercial wind farms in Canada. After that project was followed by another in Alberta. I worked hard; I thought I would be rewarded with a senior role in Enbridge Wind. Instead, I got my greatest lesson in how white supremacy rewards its shareholders. The business grew, they celebrated the opening of the first project without me. My next performance evaluation, I would ask to be moved into the wind business unit full-time. Before my performance review, I was introduced to the new Senior Business Developer for Wind (let’s call him “John”). The job I had created for myself was gone. What happened showed how white supremacy and white entitlement operate in corporate Canada. Enbridge did not post a wind job. John met the president of Enbridge at a social event and sent him his resume. I am sure people like Stockwell Day, even with their glasses, will not be able to see the mechanics of white supremacy here. So, I want to spell it out. When my resume, a black man, ended up on the desk of a president, I get told that there is absolutely nothing that I can do at that company. When John’s resume, a white man, a shareholder in white supremacy, landed of the president’s desk, he gets a dream job. If you are wondering, John had no experience in wind power development. I had failed to beat white supremacy that time, but the real sting of that loss would come a few years later, when that wind power business, which I midwifed into existence was sold to the Canada Pension Plan for over a billion dollars.
Every time I started a new job, I was starting over. At EnCana Corp. and Cenovus Energy, I had to overcome the same racist assumptions as I did at TransAlta and Enbridge. EnCana/Cenovus was a completely different animal. I have never been in a place where there were such blatant racists. Two people ran the Marketing floor and those two people (let’s call them “Pat” and “Rick”) made my work life a living hell. They had a simple belief: a black man should not be working for EnCana/Cenovus, period. They first tried to silence me like West Point did to Henry Ossian Flipper. I could not get anyone who reported to Pat or Rick to speak to me about the business. I don’t know if it was a direct order to their staff but just about everyone fell into line.
When silencing did not work, I was still working there, doing well; contributing in ways they didn’t think possible, they started to enlist the help of external consultants to support their claim that a black man should not have a job at EnCana/Cenovus. After nine years of battling them I was fired. Another one of those few racist idiots became my supervisor and she just did not believe that I was a good fit for her team. Instead of just firing me, she first had to try to humiliate me. Then, she tried to convince me that I had no skills. One thing I will say for Pat and Rick, even though they are racists, they recognized my skills. It is probably because I battled them to a draw for nine years. So, when my new supervisor tried to tell me that I have no skills, I knew that I would be starting over again. I don’t know where people like Stockwell Day think the “few idiot racists” in Canada hang out but I can tell him from my experience with white supremacy and white entitlement, a lot of them hang out in corporate Canada.