Anti-Black Racism

This article by celebrated journalist and activist Desmond Cole was first published in Toronto Life in 2015.

"From racial slurs to microaggressions, racism remains entrenched in Canadian society, and its root causes may reach further back than we think. In Nova Scotia alone in recent years, there has been a cross-burning on the lawn of a mixed race couple, racist graffiti on the campaign signs of minority candidates in provincial elections and a noose tied to a Black teacher's classroom door. Figures released by Statistics Canada in 2017 revealed that hate crimes across the country rose for three consecutive years, with crimes targeting Black populations being the most common. For historians like Afua Cooper at Dalhousie University in Halifax, these phenomena are all part of the legacy of slavery in colonial Canada." (Brown, 2018).

"Canada's towns, parks and universities abound with statues and street signs that have immortalized our "founding fathers." But there is no sign of the men, women and children that some of these powerful men enslaved. Small wonder then, that many of us today are unaware that Indigenous and African peoples were forced into bondage across colonial Canada. Hiding two centuries of slavery requires some effort, and it is a collective silence that historian Afua Cooper calls the "erasure of Blackness."" (Brown, 2020).

Sociology can do better to further the understanding of anti-Black racism and teach the specific sociohistorical and political trajectory of people of African descent in this country. Canadian sociologists can probe and help students to detect, understand, and address anti-Black racism with an intersectional lens.

Derrick Bell's thesis, that racism is a permanent feature of society, is frequently misrepresented by detractors as signaling a view of racism as monolithic—bold, obvious, and unchanging. This paper argues that critical race theory reveals a very different understanding of racism as relentless, yet fluid, and quick to morph depending on current circumstances.

Whiteness—an ideological practice that can extend beyond notions of racial supremacy to other areas of dominance—has permeated every aspect of librarianship, extending even to the initiatives we claim are committed to increasing diversity. This state of affairs, however, need not remain. This article examines the ways in which whiteness controls diversity initiatives in LIS, particularly in light of the application requirements set upon candidates. [The author] then suggest[s] ways to correct for whiteness in LIS diversity programs by providing mentorship to diverse applicants struggling to navigate the whiteness of the profession and concurrently working in solidarity to dismantle whiteness from within.