Speaking in Edmonton on July 31 to an audience of over 500 delegates at the Global Youth Assembly, Governor General Michaëlle Jean was generous in her praise of "urban culture" as a strategy for reaching and serving "at-risk youth" across Canada. While it is unquestionably positive that the Governor General is casting her spotlight on the innovative work being done by often cash-strapped and over-stretched endeavours like Edmonton’s own iHuman and Blue Print for Life, it is also unsettling.
Street dancing, hip hop and graffiti—all art forms which Jean praised by name—have their roots as forms of expression created and used by oppressed people who felt they had no voice. Because of this, organizations around the world have embraced hip-hop culture as a strategy to help lift the spirits and capacity of individuals who, due to a variety of reasons including systemic discrimination, injustice and inequity, find themselves needing assistance.
Why should the Governor General, the Canadian representative of our head of state, be able to, arguably, co-opt the hard work of such organizations and by nature of her highly regarded reputation, stature and celebrity, put their work on the agenda for future leaders to duplicate? It is, after all, the failures of the current and past federal governments, which Jean is the figurehead of, that bear a significant portion of the responsibility for the deficiencies in the system that not only cause a myriad of the issues faced by at-risk youth, but have also reduced the services that are funded and available to meet their needs.
Giving Jean the benefit of the doubt because of her past work, at best her motivation in celebrating urban culture can be seen as a call to use art to rise up and draw attention to the many injustices and inequalities being experienced in Canada. But at worst what the Governor General is doing is institutionalizing the fetishization of urban culture as a strategy, thus moving the onus of the significant work that needs to be done to achieve "positive change" away from government, business and other powerful sectors of society and putting it unfairly and almost solely on the shoulders of artists, cultural workers and social workers.
No comments:
Post a Comment