Why is the sexuality of the modern day Black man a point of obsession for people who are not even of African descent? Seriously. I walk through a mall and I see newspapers talking about AIDs in the Black community, Black women's dating woes and the supposed dearth of available Black men, the struggles Black men in America and Canada face in college and university and of course, the totally mythical more Black guys in prison than in school thing. Um, why can't the white media leave us the fuck alone? Seriously! People, seriously, move along! Ivan Jean-Pierre is the name, and I'm a young Black man living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. I'm twenty five years old, and I'm in the MBA program at Carleton University.
I was born in the City of Cap-Haitien in the island of Haiti, and moved to Canada's Capital region six years ago. I studied business administration at Algonquin College and Carleton University, respectively. I recently became a permanent resident of Canada, and someday hopefully I'll be a citizen. I'm fluent in both English and French, having lived in the U.S. for a couple of years when I was younger. I can honestly tell you that being a young Black man with intelligence and ambition isn't easy in the Confederation of Canada. The white people around here are intimidated by intelligent Black men, and they hate us simply for being who and what we are. The sad thing is that a lot of Black women have been jumping on that bandwagon and that really sucks. I think I'm starting to see why so many of my Black male classmates are dating white women. The Black women don't want us. They believe the crap the white media prints out about us being thugs, deadbeats and jailbirds. That's a sad state of the affairs, ladies and gentlemen.
This past year, I've done really well academically but my social life suffered because I cut away all distractions. I'm that brother you see pounding away at a computer in the second floor of the university library, or reading a book on the quiet third floor. Always trying to get ahead. When you're Black and male, you've got to stay ahead of your competition. Life isn't easy, and I feel that I've got many strikes against me just for being who I am. The other day, I was stopped by a police officer while dressed my security uniform at the parking lot where I do overnight shifts four days a week. The job doesn't pay much, only eleven dollars and seventy five cents per hour, but it allows me to pay for rent and groceries in my five-hundred-a-month apartment. I live in the Vanier sector of Ottawa, not far from the Saint Laurent Mall. My neighborhood is full of minorities, lots of Somalis, Arabs, Asians and of course my fellow Haitians. Crappy as it is, I think rent's about to go up. Yup. Like I said, I don't have an easy life.
Thank God I'm a permanent resident of Canada now. When I first came to Canada, I was an international student. I had a student visa and a work permit. Now I can finally breathe, you know? Carleton University once charged me three times what they would charge Canadian students simply because my Black ass was born and raised in Haiti, though my family and I spent every summer with relatives in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. When I speak English, I've got a fairly thick Boston accent. It's still the only place in the United States that I can really say I knew. It's where I learned to speak English. It's also where I fell in love with the culture of the Western world. I really wanted to study and live in America but when I finished high school in Haiti, my request for a student visa to study in America was denied. Canada was my plan B. They say that in life you always end up where you're supposed to be. I guess I was meant to be in Canada. I wonder if this place will ever start to feel like home.
