Author Stephen Dorsey Tackles Racism in Canada and the U.S. in His New Book

Stephen Dorsey is no stranger to racism. The Montréal-born Canadian has experienced his fair share of prejudice in his life due to him being biracial. And now in his new book Black & White: An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective on “White Advantage” & The Paths to Real Change, he explores not only the race-based trauma of his past but also the dark history and struggles of people of color living in both Canada and the US.

“The murder of George Floyd had a major impact on me,” he stated in an interview with QG. “It actually took me more than a week before I could watch the video… My phone started ringing off the hook with friends asking me how I felt about the George Floyd murder, if I was ok, what they should feel, what they should say… And that made me realize that I had something to say and communicate with my expertise in communications and my work in the community and my perspective as a Black and white Canadian.”

Dorsey’s conversations with his friends and family soon led him to write articles and make radio appearances to discuss the issue of race in North America. He spoke on these heavy topics not only from an educated standpoint but from personal experience as well. Because despite being one-half Caucasian, the world only saw the Black in him.

“I was just a happy little Stephen Dorsey. I didn’t think of myself as ‘Stephen Dorsey, the little Black kid.’ It was really other people who reminded me of my blackness back then…

I was a teenager when I began to better understand and become better aware that people did treat me differently because I was Black. And for me, I needed to understand what it meant to be Black because that’s how I was being perceived. And coming from Canada, I grew up in a house full of white people. In a neighborhood made of white people. I went to school with mostly all-white people. When I thought of Black people, they were just the people I saw on TV… It was foreign to me because I didn’t grow up in those communities around those people. So I started trying to define who I was.

And of course, as an adult, as I describe in the book, I had many experiences, some pretty bad, that reminded me that being Black meant that there were going to be some challenges. But I met those challenges and did my best to push through and persevere with resilience.”

In his book, Stephen goes even deeper into the racism he experienced not only in his school and work-life but in his very own home with his abusive step-father as well. However, Dorsey also takes time in his book to closely examine race relations in North America as a whole. Something that he says, many Canadians try to ignore.

“The story of Canada has been told through a white lens, And not much of the fulsome history is taught to people… Canada takes a lot of pride in being this very liberal democracy around the constructs of multiculturalism, and that in some ways, the brand of multiculturalism is what many Canadians would like to believe. Part of it is real, and part of it is mythology. Because we still haven’t dealt with the realities of the past and how those impact today. So people are comfortable with the narrative that they’d like to stick with which is not fulsome.

I say it’s time for people to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and really get to do their own learning around the true history of discrimination and oppression in this country for racialized people and indigenous people… The systems, be it healthcare, education, the judicial system, policing. All of the systems, corporations, and institutions were mainly created by white people for white people. And we’ve never really reformed those to make sure that there’s equity in those systems and that they’re more equal for all people.”

Above all, the desire to educate people on issues of race is what motivated Stephen to write Black & White. Using both the pain from his past and the knowledge he gained from the research, he wrote a book that he hopes will open people’s eyes to the racial injustice around them and start a conversation on how what we can do to fix them.

“Everyone needs to want to learn and be purposeful around the understanding of the ‘truth.’ We know that, especially in the US, the issue around ‘truth’ and what real is nebulas right now. But around the issue of race, people have to understand that the issues and inequalities are still existent in the systems. That’s the work that needs to be done. Many white people need to learn more and reconcile with the fact that there’s a lot of discrimination. And if they can come to that understanding themselves, then maybe they can have their own awakening around how they can be part of the change.”

Stephen Dorsey’s book Black & White: An Intimate, Multicultural Perspective on “White Advantage” & The Paths to Real Change is now available in both Canada and the US in physical and in eBook format.