'Life outside of blackness': Montreal family reflects on race, identity - Action News
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'Life outside of blackness': Montreal family reflects on race, identity

Race, ethnicity and religion are all intertwined for the Eyobs, a Montreal Ethiopian-Jewish family. But the experience of being black differs for each generation.

Race, ethnicity, religion all part of Ethiopian-Jewish family's experience in Montreal

3 generations of Eyobs on race and identity

9 years ago
Duration 4:41
Malefiya Zeleke, her daughters Hirut and Eleni Eyob and Hirut's daughter Mshama share a Shabbat meal and talk about how their colour and their Jewish faith affect their lives in Montreal.

Real Talk on Raceis CBC Montreal's special series exploring personal conversations and experiences around race in the city.


Race, ethnicity and religion are all intertwined for the Eyobs, a Montreal Ethiopian-Jewish family.

But the experience of being black differs from grandmotherto motherto daughter.

Three generations of the Eyob familyshared their experiences with CBC Montreal, as part of our Real Talk on Race series.

Malefiya Zeleke: 'Number oneis my religion'

Malefiya Zeleke with the framed story of Queen Sheba and King Solomon, written in the Ethiopian language Amharic. (Ainslie MacLellan/CBC)
Every Friday,MalefiyaZeleke'schildren and grandchildren gather at her home inCte-des-Neiges.

"This is our tradition," saidZeleke. "We're sitting together. We talk [about]the whole week we've passed."

As an Ethiopian-Jewish family, observingShabbatis important, she said.

"Number oneis my religion," she said. "As Jewish -- it's my religion. And Ethiopian Jewish: It's my identity. I am black and a Jew. This is my identity."

It was 1984 when Malefiya Zeleke packed up her family and left Ethiopia for Canada. Her home country at the time was under communist military rule. Herfamily members would often hide the fact they were Jewish, for fear of discrimination from others.

"We don't want to talk too much about Jewish religion.Most of the time they don't understand about us, and they give us bad names, like hyena."

But Zelekedoesn't feel that she's been discriminated against because of her race.

"My blackness? No," she said. "It never affected me."

"God protects all colours,"she said.

Hirut Eyob: 'Blackness is very much a political identity'

'Since I've had kids, my identity has been very much, what message I want to pass on, what are the identities that are relevant to them?' said Hirut Eyob. (Ainslie MacLellan/CBC)
"The idea of blackness, I learned that by coming to Canada at the age of seven," said Hirut Eyob, Zeleke's daughter. "So the first seven years of my life in Ethiopia, I was allowed to just be myself."

Eyobsaid it was through conversations with Caribbean and other black Canadian classmates that she was first told she was black.

"I didn't understand what they were talking about. I was just like, 'I'm brown,'because I looked exactly like my friend who is from Sri Lanka."

Eyob, who works as a doulaand lactation consultant, says she's become more rooted in her Ethiopian-Jewish identity since she's had children.

"Myidentity has been very muchwhat message I want to pass on, andwhat are the identities that are relevant to them?"

But because the Ethiopian-Jewish diaspora in Canada is small, Eyob said she has gravitated towards other black Montrealersin order to find community.

She's a co-founder of the Third Eye Collective, an organization that addresses issues of violence andsexual violence targeting black women.

"It's over time that I learned that blackness is very much a political identity. It's a survival identity. It's not necessarily how I identify, but it's how I'm perceived."

Mshama Eyob-Austin: 'Blackness is beautiful'

Mshama Eyob-Austin, 13, said her mother Hirut Eyob has told her many times, 'I wish I could have been able to have you in Ethiopia, where you could know what it was like to not be black.' (Ainslie MacLellan/CBC)
As the daughter of an Ethiopian-Jewish mother and a Jamaican father, 13-year-old Mshama Eyob-Austin has invented a word for who she is.

"I consider myself, what I call, Ethio-Jamaican-Canadian," she said, laughing.

But from an early age, she realized that some peopleonly sawher as black.

"My first encounter with racism was maybe grade oneor two. There was this girl.She was white. And she was always telling me I looked like poo."

"That's when I knew,I am different than everybody here. And people are going to point it out to me."

Mshama Eyob-Austin on being black

9 years ago
Duration 0:32
Jewish-Ethiopian-Jamaican Montrealer Mshama Eyob-Austin describes her love-hate relationship with her dreadlocks as a child.

Mshamaalso faced schoolyard taunts about her hair, which she used to wear in dreadlocks. By the third grade, that experiencehadtaken itstoll.

"Ijust started cutting them," she said."My parents would find dreads around the house. And I would try to hide them away so they wouldn't see them."

"Eventually they started noticing... 'Mshama, is that your dread on the balcony? Is that your dread on the floor?'And they were just like, 'We need to talk.'"

She feels her mother's experience with race is different fromher own.

"My mom has told me this so many times:'I wish I could have been able to have you in Ethiopia, where you could know what it was like to not be black.'"

"The first time she told me that, I was offended," Mshama said."I was like, 'What's wrong with being black?'"



Eventually,Mshama understood that her mother wished for her not to have to deal with certain burdens that come with race.

"Going to the mall for me is all about blackness," she said."I can't go to the mall without someone following me around. I can't see the police without feeling something inside."

Still, she can't imagine life with a different identity.

"I don't even know if I would want to try that," she said.

"Because as many issues as there [are]with being black ... and how people treat you based on the colour of your skin ... blackness is beautiful."