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African Nova Scotians are calling on the province's premier and chief medical officer to apologize for comments they made about their communities breaking public health rules during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a daily briefing April 7, Premier Stephen McNeil and Dr. Robert Strang named the predominantly African Nova Scotian communities of North Preston, East Preston and Cherry Brook as places of concern, noting some members of these communities are “not following the requirements to minimize social gatherings, to stop unnecessary social interaction.”

The remarks have drawn criticism from advocates and African Nova Scotians who say they are shocked that McNeil and Strang made “the ill-advised choice” to name and shame the specific communities. In an open letter first distributed Monday, they demanded an apology.

“During the April 7, 2020, daily briefing, both the premier and the chief medical officer engaged in behaviour and the use of language that both exacerbated longstanding anti-Black racial tensions in the province, and stigmatized members of these communities as vectors and carriers of disease,” the letter states.

“It is time to move forward and turn the page. And the only way to do that is for the premier and the chief medical officer to provide an unreserved apology to all members of North Preston,

Ruth Riley, a member of the Lake Loon community who has several family members in neighbouring Cherry Brook: “I was taken aback by the comments from the premier and the chief medical officer." - Contributed

East Preston, Cherry Brook, Lake Loon and African Nova Scotian communities across the province.”

At Tuesday's media briefing, the premier said case clusters like these are concerning, which is why public health goes into the communities.

"We're not trying to offend you, we're trying to save lives," said the premier.

So far, the open letter has been signed by about 200 people, according to OmiSoore Dryden, who took part in writing it.

“We wanted to document that we saw their really disrespectful, in what I myself call, racist behaviour. We wanted to hold them accountable for that, so they just couldn’t forget that it happened,” said Dryden, who is the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies in the faculty of medicine at Dalhousie University.

Ruth Riley, a member of the Lake Loon community who has several family members in neighbouring Cherry Brook, said she signed the letter “right away” after coming across it on Facebook.

“I was taken aback by the comments from the premier and the chief medical officer ... and I was really concerned about the backlash that would come directly for the community, just because of the history of black Nova Scotians being treated in that kind of way,” she said.

Riley said from what she has heard, “the vast majority” of the members of those communities are following public health orders to stay at home and practise social distancing, contradictory to what McNeil and Strang have said.

“I just found that it spreads a bit of misinformation about the communities and it made us look bad in a way, like we’re the problem and we’re the ones causing this disease to spread, and that’s just not true,” said Riley.

Viola Cain, a member of the North Preston community who also signed the letter, expressed similar concerns. She said what African Nova Scotians need right now is support and resources from the provincial government and public health officials to fight COVID-19, not to be called out.

“They put the community down,” said Cain. “What we need is we need help. We don’t need to be put down.”

In addition to asking for an apology, Dryden said they are demanding that the provincial government collect disaggregated race-based data to help address health-care disparities among different groups, including in African Nova Scotian communities, and to develop a “proactive plan” to address COVID-19 in African Nova Scotian communities.

“We need leaders who are willing to roll up their sleeves and say, ‘You know what? Racism is ugly and the only way to disrupt racism is to talk about it.’ We don’t need leaders saying ‘I don’t want to talk about racism because it makes me feel bad,’ and then we continue to perpetuate health data that doesn’t give us the information that we actually need,” she said.

Noushin Ziafati is a local journalism initiative reporter, a position funded by the federal government.