The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

in si de ha lto n. co m O ak vi lle B ea ve r | T hu rs da y, F eb ru ar y 18 ,2 02 1 | 18 1469 Nottinghill Gate, Oakville 905-825-5292 www.glenabbeyunitedchurch.com PenTACOSTAL UnITeD DIRECTORY If you'd like to advertise your place of worship in this feature please email Fiona udder@starmetrolandmedia.com or call 289-293-0691 PenTACOSTAL fru Worship Oakville PentecOstal aPOstOlic centre 454 Rebecca St (St. Paul's United Church) Oakville ON sunday service 12:30- 3PMWorship service sunday evening: 7:30- 9PM (via Zoom virtual Platform) *cOviD-19 safety Protocols strictly followed.* tel: 416-892-8123 Fax: 1-866-281-5983 Bishop M. Brissett (Pastor) Email: mjbrisse@yahoo.ca Jesus is lOrD GLEN ABBEY UNITED CHURCH REV. TED VANCE In times like these, a Church service can help provide some normalcy and hope! and search Glen Abbey United Church OR Click on www.glenabbeyunitedchurch.com To help your Church survive the pandemic, please send e-transfers to: donations@glenabbeyunitedchurch.com Thank you and God Bless you! In keeping with health recommendations, we are pausing in-person services. FOR ONLINE CHURCH SERVICE available anytime GO TOYOUTUBE.COM This Sunday, February 21st Message: THE TEMPTATIONS! Cut out paying more Your only destination for more coupons, more flyers, more savings. #SavingWithSave save.ca/coupons Save $1.00 on any Pure Protein Product Scan to get coupons Amanda Gorman's recital of 'The Hill We Climb' at the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rightly deserves to be memo- rialized as one of the great or- atorical debuts on a national stage. Akin to an infectious adult contemporary top-20 hit, everyone who listened, it seems, has their favourite line or verse. However, when Gorman referenced her slave ancestry, it invoked an all too familiar dichotomous feeling in this writer: great pride and lingering discomfort. "We the successors of a country at a time when a skinny Black girl descended from slaves ... can dream of becoming president." Her words were powerful, heartbreaking and invoca- tive of some self-examina- tion. Why did the acknowl- edgement of her harrowing lineage make it clear that I, like many Africans living in North America who are not descended from slaves, have never fully understood what the nature and depth of our kinship with our transatlan- tic cousins should be when we coexist with them in the countries they were forced to call home? I have only ever been a Black man in a predominant- ly white country by choice. It has been a fascinating an- thropological study, navigat- ing friendships and allyships within the broad spectrum of Black ethno-cultures here in North America. I believe the fissures be- tween multi-generational and newcomer Black com- munities persist due to a lack of understanding and empa- thy. Using Toronto as a micro- cosm you will encounter multi-generational Black Canadians (who are descen- dants of slaves brought to Canada), Canadians of Afro- Caribbean descent and Ca- nadians of African descent. You also have first- and sec- ond-generation Canadians or newcomers who originate from Africa or the Caribbe- an. One of the first observa- tions I made on my learning curve was how little multi- generational Black Canadi- ans are accorded due recog- nition and pre-eminence among Canada's peoples, even by other groups in the Black community. Black people have been settling in Canada since 1608. Centuries later Black peo- ple are still being categorized monolithically by the domi- nant race group in North America. Sadly, this incor- rect categorization also oc- curs within the Black com- munity. Another teachable mile- stone occurred after the death of George Floyd. It was revealing and sometimes devastating to see how differ- ent factions in the Black community were split by the murder of the posthumous Black Lives Matter (BLM) hero. Many Black newcomers and first-generation friends I spoke to expressed what, un- til then, was a latent disdain for Black Lives Matter and the reality of a recurring part of the African American ex- perience. "Why is it always them? Wasn't he wrong to tender counterfeit bills?" and so on. The absence of ethnocul- tural empathy by Black com- munities who do not have a lifelong experience of racial- ization toward Black North Americans was gutting. As I began to shed some of my own preconceptions and assume greater allyship for BLM, I would remind those I spoke to within the African community that the very freedoms and liberties they enjoy as Black men and women in white spaces was fought and paid for by Afri- can American civil rights leaders -- heroes whose de- scendants they tend to view unfavourably today. Black North Americans, on the other hand, have ex- pressed anger toward Afri- cans who do not appreciate the generational trauma they have endured. They are often hurt that we do not take the time to understand how multi-generational wounds may have distressed their so- cial development. The elimination of misun- derstanding and the normal- ization of ethnocultural em- pathy within Black commu- nities has to be a shared ef- fort. It means breaking out of your "country of origin" so- cial bubble, and reaching across the aisle for Black friends in disparate Black communities with a mindset premised on learning and understanding. It requires intellectual curiosity and being inten- tional about doing the neces- sary self-development to combat the prejudices and suspicions we have been so- cialized with and welded to. This writer is doing the work, weaving a rich tapes- try of friendships, and accu- mulating teachable mo- ments along the way. Akinkunmi Akinnola is the senior manager of marketing and communi- cations at Canadian Cen- tre for Diversity and In- clusion. ETHNOCULTURAL EMPATHY WITHIN BLACK COMMUNITIES NEEDS SHARED EFFORT OPINION IT MEANS 'REACHING ACROSS THE AISLE FOR BLACK FRIENDS IN DISPARATE BLACK COMMUNITIES,' AKINNOLA WRITES AKINKUNMI AKINNOLA Column