A McGill University historian told a Humber audience Tuesday that democracy is under threat when Black self-determination movements face surveillance and disruption from state institutions in Canada and the U.S.
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, an associate professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African diaspora history, spoke Feb.10 as part of Humber College’s President’s Lecture Series, hosted by the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
His talk, titled “Pan-Africanism and the Paradox of Progress: Black Self‑Determination and the Limits of ‘Democracy’ in Canada and the United States,” at the Barrett Centre for Technology Innovation at Humber’s North Campus, challenged the audience to consider how racial inequality and democratic ideals have long coexisted in North America.
Adjetey, a William Dawson associate professor of history, drew on research from his Governor General’s award‑winning book, Cross‑Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of Pan-African North America. He said colonial power structures, slavery and laws created long-standing systems of exclusion.
He pointed to Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1676 as a turning point when elites sought to prevent Black and white labourers from forming alliances. He also referenced Thomas Jefferson’s writings to show how slavery and racial hierarchy were later embedded in the development of democratic institutions.
“The rights of Englishmen were preserved by destroying the rights of Africans,” he said, quoting historian Edmund Morgan.
Adjetey said these dynamics extended beyond the United States and influenced Canada’s development. He described this as a “paradox of progress,” where legal and social changes can create the appearance of racial progress, but deeper inequalities or power structures remain intact.
The lecture introduced what Adjetey called “four instruments of warfare,” used by governments to respond to perceived internal threats: counter-subversion, counter-intelligence, counter-insurgency and counter-revolution. He argued these strategies were used to monitor and disrupt Black activists and liberation movements in both countries.
Adjetey cited the historical example of Warren Hart, an American operative loaned to the RCMP in the 1970s who infiltrated community organizations in cities including Toronto and Montreal. He said Hart targeted youth through attempted entrapment by encouraging criminal activity, as part of a broader effort to disrupt Black and Indigenous movements from forming a common cause.
During the Q-and-A session, audience members asked how those tactics persist today and what modern resistance can look like. Adjetey said understanding these dynamics is empowering and pointed to political education and organization as part of building resistance.
The President’s Lecture Series continues April 8 at the Lakeshore campus with a talk by author and activist Cory Doctorow titled “De‑Shitification Nation: How Canada Can Fix the Internet, Win Trump’s Trade War, and Make a Genuinely Astonishing Amount of Money.”
