Abstract
The Black presence in Canada is most commonly described as a homogeneous foreign presence that emerged during the 1960s. In this paper, I explore how Afro-Caribbean women entrepreneurs in creative industries deploy a counter-discourse against hegemonic racist white discourses of blackness in Canada. The counter-narrative they deploy, that I call For Us by Us discourse, challenges the official national story of Blacks in Canada. Black women rearticulate, through their business activities, a Canadian blackness that is defined by them. This articulation is described in both local, as rooted in Canada and global, Black diaspora, ways. The notion of the Black diaspora allows for great malleability and fluidity of notions of identity and belonging. This powerful political counter-discourse can, however, also be exclusionary when it too homogenizes identity. This counter-discourse, however contested, is made possible through entrepreneurship. Participation in this status of work is very strategic, in that, it allows for the creation of political spaces, aimed at developing community, that are often denied to Blacks.
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