BLACK COMMUNITY FRUSTRATED FOLLOWING RACIALLY MOTIVATED INCIDENTS

IN ONE WEEKEND, HARRIET TUBMAN PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE CARIBBEAN EATERY WERE VANDALIZED WITH RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC SLURS

Frustrated, angry and exhausted.

These are words used by some in St. Catharines' Black community after a recent uptick in racially motivated incidents.

St. Catharines resident and Brock University's director of EDI Culture and Education Trecia McLennon said the very public nature of these incidents is what gets to her.

"You want to just kind of have it roll off your back, right?" she said. "But then, on the other hand, the frequency and the very public nature of it, clearly going after Black and LGBTQ and marginalized communities ... honestly, it's chilling."

McLennon said Brock has been offering counselling to people following the May shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo that killed 10 Black people and injured three others.

Officials say the shooter in Buffalo, an 18-year-old white male, researched the local demographics prior to the attack. They say he went out with hopes of killing as many black people as possible.

More locally, on the weekend of June 11, Harriet Tubman Public School, the Caribbean Eatery and a number of vehicles were covered with graffiti that contained racial and homophobic slurs.

Niagara Regional Police described it as "hate vandalism", and have released images of the suspects.

Saleh Waziruddin, a board member of the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association, agreed that these are examples of the worsening situation in the city.

"I think there's a danger that this kind of environment, where there's hate speech and hate signs, it's a precursor to physical violence," he said.

Natasha Bell, founder of BlackOwned905, said the recent attacks made her angry, but she's not totally surprised.

"Racism in this region is so rampant and it often just gets swept under the rug. It happens everywhere in our school systems, workplaces and with our next-door neighbours," she said. "People don't think it's a major problem because it's not being called out or taken as seriously as it should be. People are only seeing what is reported."

Bell said she often doesn't feel safe.

"I do not feel safe in this community as a woman of colour, knowing that people are so freely committing these crimes, knowing that there are little to no consequences," she said. "I've lived in this region for 36 years, and I've experienced racism since I was a child. The only thing now is it's being recorded and spread over the internet."

Rochelle Bush is a trustee and historian at the Salem Chapel British Methodist Episcopal Church on Geneva Street, where Tubman once attended.

She was disheartened by this second attack on the iconic activist, after the statue of Tubman that stood in the courtyard of the church was pushed off of its pedestal and broken in October.

Bush, who has lived in St. Catharines her whole life, expressed similar fears to both McLennon and Bell.

"When I drive, I don't look at white people, especially white males," she said. "It's not that I can't look them in the eye or I lack the courage, you just don't know who they are or what they're going to do. So I stopped doing that because I've had it where I've been driving down the street and you look at a white male and they'll either stick their tongue out or they'll give you that frown or they'll do something nasty."

She agreed that it feels as if the situation is getting worse.

"Before, people were able to play it off as a joke," she said. "Like the chicken wing jokes or the watermelon jokes. There was always laughter behind it. Those are the subtle ones. Now, today, it's just straight up overt racism."

McLennon, who is chair of the city's Inclusion and Equity Committee, said we need to ensure there are wraparound supports and services for the victims.

"Encouraging people to support those businesses and encouraging folks to support other Black businesses and ensuring, for example, the stuff that happened at Harriet Tubman, that those students and those teachers and those staff members have access to supports to make sure that they're OK and have reinforcements to make sure that their sense of community isn't shattered," she said.

She said it's also important to have a co-ordinated community response.

"That means (involving) organizations like municipalities, universities, hospitals, along with some of the umbrella social service organizations that serve historically marginalized communities," she said. "It's like when you have a crisis communication plan and then when something happens, you're not running around trying to build the plane as you fly it, but you distribute everything so that the community can help in trying to identify and hold accountable the perpetrators of these types of crimes."