A 15-year-old Ghanaian boy died on October 29, 2026. He was fatally shot while on his way to school.
He was not just a high school student. He was someone’s son, an immigrant, a newcomer and a Black person.
Many of us may not have known him before this tragedy, but one thing I believe a lot of us can relate to are the experience of being the new kid in school. I know I can.
However, as I read more about his story, I found myself asking questions that I wish the news would spend more time exploring. Why was Javits being bullied? What made him a target? Was it his nationality, his accent, his race, or simply the fact that he was new? How many times did he have to speak up before someone took his concerns seriously? And what responsibility did the adults and institutions around him have to ensure that he felt safe?
It is already an uncomfortable position to be in. Now, imagine having to navigate that experience while also being new to an entirely different country. There is so much to adjust to, including culture shock, unfamiliar systems and trying to find your place in an environment where everything feels different.
I don’t believe we should rush to assume we know why he was targeted or connect the bullying to his death without evidence. But I do believe we should be willing to examine what happened before that tragic day.
Beyond what we know about his death, I keep thinking about what his everyday life must have looked like, especially as a young boy trying to find his place in a new country.
His story has brought me back to my own experience of growing up in Canada, and what it means to enter a country while simultaneously learning how to belong in it.
I remember being six years old when I first came to Canada. One of the first things my six-year-old mind had to process was snow. Something that may seem so ordinary to someone who grew up here was completely unfamiliar to me.
Like Javits, I came to Canada, leaving my mother behind in Jamaica to live with my father. It was not an easy transition, especially when it came to adjusting to school.
There were so many new systems I had to navigate. From learning how to use the bus system to understanding the Canadian school system, everything required an adjustment. I came from a country where we started our school mornings with prayers, and then I arrived in Canada, where that was not necessarily part of the school routine. Girls could wear pants to school, and many schools did not require uniforms. Coming from an environment where wearing a uniform was the norm, even these seemingly small differences felt strange to me.
You get the point I am trying to make. These were all differences I had to understand, navigate and eventually adapt to at just six years old.
Now, imagine experiencing all of this at 15. Imagine navigating a new country, a new school and unfamiliar social expectations during a period of life that is already challenging for many young people.
We know how cruel children and teenagers can sometimes be, particularly towards those they perceive as different. On top of adjusting to a new country and a new school, I also experienced bullying.
I honestly do not remember all the details of what happened, but I remember that it happened. Looking back, I sometimes wonder how much of that experience contributed to the way I began to present myself.
I wonder whether, even at six years old, I subconsciously started making adjustments to how I spoke and expressed myself as a way of fitting in and avoiding being perceived as different.
Even today, I get comments about how I sound so “white”. But what people may not realize is that the way I speak is also part of the adjustments I made while growing up in Canada. These were changes that happened over time as I navigated a new environment and tried to find my place in it.
It is interesting how certain ways of speaking become associated with whiteness, while others are treated as something that needs to be corrected or adjusted.
I sometimes catch myself correcting people when they say certain words or phrases differently. I’ll tell them, “That’s not how you say it.” But then I have to ask myself: according to whose standards? Who decides which way of speaking is right and which way is wrong?
It makes me wonder how early we begin associating acceptance with how closely we resemble the environments we are trying to fit into.
And that is what makes this tragedy particularly difficult to think about. Beyond the headlines, there was a young boy who was navigating his own experience of being new, of belonging and of finding his place in a country he was still getting to know.
Sometimes, we speak about assimilation as though it is simply learning to adapt to a new environment. But I wonder how often we consider what a person feels they must leave behind to be accepted. How many young immigrants find themselves changing their accents, expressions, clothing or even parts of their personalities because they want to avoid being singled out? At what point does adapting become a quiet expectation to abandon parts of ourselves?
I know many of us are outraged by this death, and rightfully so. However, I want to dig deeper into why this happened in the first place. Like many of you, it also makes me question the institutions and systems that have created and continue to reinforce this kind of Bullying.
Jamaica’s national motto, displayed on its Coat of Arms, is “Out of Many, One People,” which speaks to the diverse backgrounds that make up Jamaican society. Some of us have ancestry that can be traced to Africa, Spain, Scotland, Britain (Europe), India China, and Middle East. In many ways, the concept of Salad Bowl is not foreign to us because Jamaica itself is a Salad Bowl of cultures, histories and identities.
This brings me to the distinction between a melting pot and a salad bowl. Although both are used to describe multicultural societies, they represent two different ideas. A melting pot suggests that different cultural groups gradually blend into one shared identity, whereas a salad bowl recognizes that people can exist within the same society while still maintaining their individual cultural identities, traditions and customs.
Canada, for example, has a formal multiculturalism policy that recognizes the importance of preserving and promoting cultural diversity. The United States, on the other hand, has historically been associated with the melting-pot metaphor, although both countries have elements of cultural blending and cultural preservation.
I think this distinction is important because belonging should not necessarily require someone to abandon the culture, traditions or identity they brought with them. We should be able to create communities where people can participate, contribute and feel accepted without having to erase the parts of themselves that make them different.
That is why I find it particularly troubling when ignorance surrounding someone’s background, nationality or immigrant status leads to narrow-minded attitudes and discrimination.
North America , as a whole, needs to wake up. This should not be an issue of us versus them. We are one people.
We are not as disconnected as we sometimes make ourselves out to be. Across the African diaspora, we share histories, experiences and cultural connections that transcend national borders.
From our music and culture to our clothing, traditions and shared histories, there are so many similarities that connect us across borders. Yet, we allow nationality, birthplace and immigration status to become reasons to judge and separate one another.
Why should someone be judged simply because they are an immigrant?
I would argue that if many of us took the time to trace our ancestry far enough back, we would discover that our own histories involve migration from somewhere beyond the borders of the countries we now call home. Very few of us can claim that our family histories began and remained in one place.
Javits’ death also makes me question the responsibility of the institutions that are supposed to protect our children. When a child enters a new country, a new school and an unfamiliar environment, they should be met with opportunities to belong, not circumstances that make them feel isolated or unsafe.
If the reports of bullying are accurate, then we must also ask ourselves what happens when children repeatedly raise concerns and whether the systems responsible for their protection are responding adequately. Addressing bullying cannot simply be about responding to individual incidents after they occur; it must also involve examining the wider school environments and systems that allow these experiences to continue. We cannot wait until a tragedy occurs before we begin questioning the environments we have created for our young people.
This is bigger than one nationality, one community or one incident. It speaks to how we treat people who are different from us and whether we are willing to recognize their humanity before their background.
Perhaps we need to look beyond where someone comes from and recognize the shared humanity and history that connect us. Because growing up in a country should not mean spending your childhood trying to prove that you belong in it.
P.S Just a girl navigating her 20’s, one reflection piece at a time.
