Emmanuel Songsore is a friend, musician, husband, YouTuber, Research Administrator at Laurier University, he holds a Doctorate of Geography, and he has a personality with a profound mindfulness quality as well as a great sense of humor. Today I have a ‘Black Lives Matter' convo with Emmanuel, who was born in Ghana, West Africa, a country about a quarter of the physical size of our region of Ontario, but with a population of nearly 30 million people, it’s comparable to the 37 million population of the entire country of Canada.

Listen & Subscribe on:

iTunes / Stitcher / Podbean / Overcast / Spotify

Contact Info

• Youtube: @Emmanuel_S Music https://www.youtube.com/user/song5700
• Instagram: @e_5700 https://www.instagram.com/e_5700/

Most Influential Person

• My Canadian friend Steve

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness has kept my emotions in check.
• I grew up a very angry person with a lot of volatile tendencies but once I became a Christian and I really took scripture seriously and welcomed the Holy Spirit and empowered me to live right, everything changed.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathing has become [more important]. I realize with my work schedule and all the craziness, sometimes I'm working at my desk and I think, am I really breathing. Then I pause and take a deep breath and then I realize I wasn't breathing. After that, the intensity of my breathing increases.
• I've started running and when I'm running I pay more attention to my breathing.

Suggested Resources

• Book: The Bible
• App: Listening to music on iTunes or Spotify

Bullying Story

• I went to boarding school. The older students were in charge of punishing students who were defiant and a lot of them took advantage of that to bully people.
• Once when it was time for bed after I used the washroom, one of the older students saw me and decided to punish me. He made me sleep on the wood floor under his bed. Mindfulness then for me was to just ignore him and at that point not respond.

Related Episodes

• 445 You Evolving Now; Andre Young
• 509 Resilience Despite Abuse; Ola Muhammed
• 408 Fresh Food Alchemist; Julie Ward
• 210 Purposeful Millionaire, James Nowlin

Free Gift

Get Bruce Langford's training called The Stand Up Now Blueprint. Are certain areas of your life a struggle? Do you ever feel overwhelmed with anxiety & stress? How would you like to enjoy more contentment so you felt happy and relaxed? In this training, you'll learn 5 Simple Ways To Move From Struggling To Productive. You’ll begin to accomplish things that truly matter to YOU in your life. Get the Free training at: www.standupnowblueprint.com/register

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

So, Emmanuel, what was it like coming to Canada? What was the culture shock that you experienced when you came here? And when was it, around 2014 or so?

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

It was 2009. Yeah, it was 2009. I pretty much came to Canada for graduate school. So I came to do my masters at Western University in 2009. One of the biggest shocks for me was just the social dynamics. I came from a region where you meet a random person at a bus stop and you had a conversation as if you knew the person for 20 years or 30 years and you know, I came thinking that it was the same thing here. I would just approach everyone and start talking. I'd say for the large part, a good number of people were friendly, but it was just that I think that's one of the biggest shocks for me was that it just didn't work the way it did back home, you know, people weren’t immediately open. My goal here is not to condemn the society, but just to say things are a bit different. Right? people seemed a bit more, you know, questionable when you approached them and started having a conversation. And so I guess that was the part of it for me that was challenging, just really that change in social dynamics.

Bruce Langford:
Yeah, so that must have been quite a shock for sure. Now, did you experience racism when you first arrived in Canada that you remember?

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

When I first arrived, the truth is that you know, it took me a while to settle in and get a good sense of the environment before I could even detect different forms of racism that was prevalent here. And I don't know if you want to go into details with that now, but absolutely I'll say I did experience multiple forms of racism or things and experiences that I believe were linked to my race. You know, at a university, I thought a lot of courses and even some of my interactions with students, right and how rude students sometimes were to me relative to my other colleagues, who were also teaching assistants or who were teaching. And I'd say, you know, we had a similar level of expertise and intelligence but that had nothing to do with it. But I had a lot of experiences of students swearing at me, undergraduate students.

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

For instance, I think it was about three or four years ago, a Jamaican friend had been visiting me. He was doing a course in Project Management. He had just finished his degree in Economics at Western. So I'm on campus, and at that time, I was working as an Educational Developer and as part-time faculty in the Geography Department. And I was training Profs to teach, and to improve their teaching, which was my job back then. And so I went out to my friend’s car and was sitting there chatting, and someone called the London police and said there were two black guys in a car carrying a gun. This was me on the campus where I did my PhD and was now working. So all of a sudden we have about six cops around and I asked Nicolas, what's going on? Anyway, you know, a lot of other experiences as well. I was asked to home sit for a friend in one of the wealthier neighborhoods in London and I was walking home one night and a lady just come out of a house with a dog. And I just came around the corner, she saw me and she quickly ran in and shut the door.

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

And then when I was living around the Wortley Village area, which has a lot of older population, I also had some bad experiences. People standing in front of their home smoking, and as you were walking by, oh, it was always when it was dark, right? Yeah, as soon as you were walking by they would run inside. And so it actually got to a point when I saw people out in front of their houses, I would go a different way, you know, just the impact of seeing that response. And yeah, it's just, yeah, quite devastating.

Bruce Langford:

Yeah, yeah. would be very devastating. And in this city of London, Ontario, it's a little multicultural, but not very. Not extremely multicultural, right? There's not a lot of black people here in London, would you say?

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

I'd say over time there's been an increased number before I left London, Ontario, which was around 2018, I think. Yeah, I've seen that the population has increased significantly. [of black people]. So in terms of numbers, I guess there are more black people in the city now, and a majority of black people will tell you that they still face a lot of systemic racism and problems. So yes, population-wise, we do have a good number but experience-wise, it's not a city that, you know, that lends itself to diversity.

Bruce Langford:

Back on May 25, when George Floyd was killed in the United States in Minneapolis, tell me how you reacted to that news and how you felt about that.

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

Oh, that was extremely devastating. And I thought, you know, I knew it was going to result in kind of a massive societal response. As a black male of color, I'll say that you know, some of the emotions and feelings we've seen have been building inside for a long time. Because, you know, you go through all these experiences on the day to day, you know, it's like your story. You know and of course, an extreme example of your story, and a very devastating example, but on an emotional level. Equally damaging, right? I mean, I haven't had any physical altercations with anyone but on an emotional level, sometimes you think, you know, if I was [inaudible], it would probably be less damaging than the emotions you carry through all those experiences. So, for me personally, that was just as soon as I, I saw what happened, it just bring in a lot of flashbacks and a lot of bad experiences I've personally faced and you know, reflecting on things like, you know, when I had the Police Force be called on me, what would that have looked like, if I wasn't fortunate in that moment, right. So, yeah, it just got me. It just got me very emotional. I thought, man, this is it. This is what it looks like. You know,

Bruce Langford:
Very emotional for me too. And I just, I just can't believe that this kind of thing continues to go on. And go on and go on. And I mean, that was May 25. And since then Rayshard Brooks, who is 27 years old was shot in the back. And I mean, how does this continue to happen? I mean, I know the situation around that was reported in the news and there was a struggle and you know, he was intoxicated and everything, but, you know, to shoot the man in the back, like it's just absolutely unacceptable. And here in Canada, it's also unacceptable how we have treated our First Nations people. And I think that sometimes there's an attitude that oh, you know, we don't mistreat people here the way they do in other countries. Yeah, possibly, but we have a terrible history with the way we've treated our First Nations people. And like, what do we do? How do we move through this? How do we face it? and change it? What are your thoughts?

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

That's it. That's a big question bigger than my head. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my thought is that you know, a lot of the problems and problems come from, you know, certain thought processes that are ingrained in people. And as a black male, I think I can speak more to what I'm doing about it because it's hard to speak to what others should be doing or what should be happening at a systems level and then maybe I will speak to that a bit. But I have a lot of friends who are white. And so I think that because I have these quality friendships, the focus for me has just been telling them more about what the problem is and asking them to join the fight. I think that you know, like people are tired, to be honest. I mean, I talk to my friends all the time, or when we see a news article of a shooting in the shed, typically their response now is man, I'm tired. And I think that we need white colleagues to actually rise up and fight for us. And probably their voice means something different to other white people who might be carrying a lot of racist values.

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

So an example is yesterday, I had a conversation with a good friend and he said, you know, he said, I don't see color. I had to break that down and I said, you know what, color is around us. I said, you know, through autumn, winter, summer spring, the change in the color of the leaves and the change in color that we see around us signals that we've entered a different season and I said, you know for us humans, unfortunately, we can't claim not to see color because color determines the experiences of some people. And so to claim not to see color. And he asked why don't we just say ‘Lives Matter’ and take away ‘Black Lives Matter’? He asked if it wasn't divisive and I said no it's not because all lives cannot matter until all lives actually matter. Currently, black lives don't matter like other lives matter. And the same with brown lives and indigenous lives and so I said, you know, the purpose of this is to say, you know, these people like we see the different seasons, the different color colors is to say that color actually has a bearing on people's day to day experience. And we can't wipe away color and say, you know, we don't see color, it's all neutral. No. If my color were different my experience walking into a grocery store would be different from someone else walking into a grocery store. So it to me, you know, how do we make changes, I think that a lot of deep conversations have to happen on the individual level where you know, we as black people, indigenous people, other people have experienced racism can really help people unpack some of the myths and false, but sometimes well-intentioned [inaudible] that people have and say, No, we can look at things that way for x&y reasons and also really give people a one on one, you know session on what our experiences have been, and the fact that these problems exist as much as they exist in the US.

Bruce Langford:

Right. Well, Emmanuel, if you were a white man, what action do you think you would take against racism knowing what you know as a black man?

Emmanuel Songsore, (Black Lives Matter Convo):

So, I mean, I would see it as something happening to my own people. And I think that just changes everything. And I mean, I had friends asked me, you know, like after, after George Floyd and all these incidents, you know, what do you think we should do? And I said, act as if it was your brother. And that's why, you know, the whole, ‘All Lives Matter’ idea is pretty flawed. It's true that all lives matter, if I said, Oh, Black Lives Matter and other lives don't matter. That's absolutely stupid. No one is saying that. And people are saying that no, all their lives matter to a particular group of lives matter. And so I think that it's really recognizing that, you know, we are all human coming to that place of recognition, which sometimes unconsciously, a lot of people haven't come to that place of recognition. You know, when you live in privilege and you don't experience any of these things. I mean, doesn't touch you doesn't matter to you So, I think that you know, if I [inaudible] trying to see this is something that was happening to my brother or my sister. And from there, I mean, I think from there, you totally take action as you deem best, right? You know, which is calling your own people out, you know, whether it's in a family gathering, you're calling people out for inappropriate things, they talk about, you know, educating yourself, you know, reading. And really, this is all coming from the Christian perspectives. We are brothers and sisters, and it's, and once we begin to see each other as that it just changes our perspectives on a lot of these things. So I don't know if that necessarily answers that question, but it would be to see as something that was happening to me even though it was happening to another race right?

Listen to the podcast for more of the conversation.