It became all clear to me within an instant. The moment I started talking and explaining and struggling to make myself heard, understood and acknowledged, he shut me up. Interrupting me and then going on to contradict everything I just said, all having to do with my reality and personal experiences as an immigrant woman in Montreal. While he talked, all I could think was: “This is a social justice organization aimed to fight for immigrant rights. We have an entire room full of dedicated, knowledgeable migrant activists ready to discuss our issues and yet, we have all been sitting here idly listening to the only white academic with blue eyes in the room talking for the past 45 minutes.”

I have been involved in the social justice community of Montreal for over three years now and have felt that constant constraint throughout my experiences in this community. The feeling of constraint and exhaustion in my ability to express myself and share my feelings and daily realities in this province because I may offend those who do not share my experiences. Those who are privileged enough to call this nation home, feel truly accepted and are accommodated here because of their particular race, class or gender; they cannot or will not acknowledge my reality because it threatens the legitimacy of their membership in the nation they call home. And yet these people are everywhere in the social justice community of Montreal. They are the directors, coordinators, interns and volunteers. They are involved, motivated and ready to fight for the cause. They even make entire careers out other peoples’ struggles. They call for safe space and inclusion for others while they themselves are readily accommodated everywhere they go.

In her book Looking White People in the Eye, Sherene Razack directly confronts this issue of members of the dominant group involved in social justice organizations in stating how: “the daily realities of oppressed groups can only be acknowledged at the cost of the dominant group’s belief in its own natural entitlement.” True social change and the so-called ‘progress’ white activists rant about only comes at a high price for those who benefit from the current system and institutions. Montreal, as a well-known hub for socialist causes, non-profit and social justice organizations and white liberal values, must confront this reality.

This is an issue that I have discussed extensively with fellow migrant activists of color. The moment the topic arises, they understand exactly what I am referring to. And yet, whenever I try to discuss this with white activists, who are everywhere in Montreal’s so-called social justice and radical spaces and, many times run them, they do not seem to want or try to understand. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware that when it comes to oppression, we are all complicit in some form or another to the daily struggles of others. Yet, there is something inherently disconcerting about seeing white, educated, middle class activists who no doubt learned about many of the struggles and oppressions they claim to fight against from an academic book dominating the non-profit and social justice community.

I feel that until members of the dominant group are able and willing to question their own natural entitlement and risk losing the comfort of their home, there will forever be constraints and limits placed on subordinate groups. Our radical potential as the excluded, non-members of this nation will not be reached until white activists either truly acknowledge our experiences and daily realities or leave these social justice spaces to allow us to speak freely and truly develop our causes. Until then, there will be many more activists from subordinate groups who will be silenced, shut down, dismissed and contradicted in their exhausting attempts to make white people understand where they are coming from and their daily struggles. Because, right now, that is half our battle: to make ourselves heard, understood and respected, especially in the so-called social justice community of Montreal.