Black Lives Matter – Race matters

February 2024: Black life matters

“Anti-blackness in Canada often goes unspoken. When acknowledged, it is assumed to exist, perhaps, but in another time (centuries ago), or in another place (the United States)” (Robyn Maynard, 2017, p. 3.) Policing Black lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present.
Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.

Marcia

As Black History Month starts, I’m reflecting on what I was taught about Canada’s history with enslavement in school: that we were the utopian endpoint of the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t until much later in life that my unlearning and relearning happened, often at the expense of the labour of Black friends and scholars like Drs. Delia Douglas, Onye Nnorom, and OmiSoore Dryden. Dr. Douglas is the Director of the Office of Anti-Racism, and Drs. Nnorom and Dryden visited our faculty in 2022, providing education on Anti-Black racism, including the social and physiological health impacts of injustice.

I think about the weight of this labour as Black History Month begins, and knowing how that weight is amplified by ongoing experiences of Anti-Black racism and violence, and the recent tragic killing of Afolabi Stephen Opaso. I am reminded that our collective responsibilities to address Anti-Black racism and enlarge and protect space for Black flourishing last all year long and offer a return to our January blog on rest for those who need a pause from their labour.

Delia

Breathing while Black: Bearing witness

It is Black History Month (BHM) – I regard this month’s blog as an opportunity to have a conversation that needs and deserves space… breathing space – the space that recognition of our humanness demands.

Black History Month 2024 takes place amid the tragic death of Afolabi Stephen Opaso, a 19-year-old student from Nigeria who had been attending the University of Manitoba. Mr. Opaso had been experiencing a mental health crisis on December 31, 2023, when he was fatally shot by a member of the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS).

Machuar Madut’s family continues to wait for an inquest, five years after Mr. Madut, originally from South Sudan, was fatally shot by a member of the WPS on Feb. 23, 2019. Mr. Madut, aged 43 at the time of his death, had been struggling with mental issues. In 2020 the officer involved was cleared of any wrongdoing. In its final report into Madut’s death, the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba said it found the use of lethal force by the officer was “reasonable, necessary, justified and unavoidable.”

According to a WPS spokesperson use of lethal force is justified when the life of an officer or other person is in immediate danger, or the police member or another person is in immediate danger of grievous bodily harm.

Keep in mind that Black folx are overrepresented in use of force, fatal shootings, and enforcement arrests, and charge rates in Canada.

In 2016 a UN Report from the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to Canada expressed their trepidation about police involved deaths of at-risk peoples of African descent who were experiencing a mental health crisis.

Breathing is necessary to life.

Anti-Black racism(s) is part of local/regional/national/global political landscapes.

In enslavement’s afterlife Black folx continue to struggle to breathe. Is it any wonder that Black people cannot live, owing to white supremacy and anti-Black racism given that breath is required for life?

2020 was both a moment and a movement. Following George Floyd’s murder, tens of thousands marched across the United States, in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM), and inspired global protests against police brutality, anti-Black racism, and racial injustice. Across Canada people organized and gathered to stand in solidarity with Mr. Floyd’s family and the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing attention to racialized police violence, systemic racism, and inequality. In Winnipeg, Justice 4 Black Lives organized a rally called for justice an end to state violence and racial injustice which thousands attended.

Reflecting B(l)ack

Black status and identity in Canada are linked to the country’s history of enslavement – of state sanctioned authorization and use of anti-Black racial violence.

The Atlantic slave trade involved the forced removal of millions of Africans which created a diaspora. The trade was fundamental to the economic and industrial development of Europe and North America, and the simultaneous under-development of Africa. Canada benefitted from the enslavement of Africans through profits accrued by the Hudson’s Bay trading company and the fur trade, and by the British Empire through traders of sugar, cotton, and the wealth generated by the colonies throughout the Americas. Settler colonial dispossession of the ancestral and traditional lands of Indigenous peoples was funded in part through the labour of enslaved peoples of African descent. The end of enslavement was followed by other manifestations of anti-Black racism such as racial segregation in schools, housing, and employment, the desecration of slave cemeteries in Ontario and Québec, and cross burnings on the property of Black families in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and New Brunswick.

B(l)ack to the future: Moving forward

We inherit the legacy of that which has come before.

Knowing our racial past helps us to understand our racial present. It also encourages us to imagine/dream/desire and build our futures ….

I stand on the shoulders of many who have gone before – known and unknown. My father, the late Dr. Lawrence F. Douglas, is one person whose shoulders helped lift me to where I am today.

My father was a single parent and the most influential person in my life.

He was also the first Black faculty member in the Department of Sociology at the U of M, and one of its four founding members. He retired in 1989 after 22 years of teaching. The Department would not hire another tenure track Black faculty member, for 32 years: Dr. Joseph Asomah.

Representation matters.

Fast forward: of the nearly 50 000 faculty that work across the 40 post-secondary institutions in Canada, there are approximately 900 Black faculty @ 300 of which are Black women…Black – and Indigenous peoples – are the most underrepresented Faculty in Canadian post-secondary institutions.

Racial equity matters.

In 2021 UM Law alumnus, David Sowemimo, established the David Sowemimo Law Entrance Scholarship awarded annually to Black undergraduate students enrolled full-time in the juris doctor program in UM’s Faculty of Law. It was the first scholarship of its kind at U of M.

Over the course of the past year, I have been working with Ekong Udobang in Donor Relations, to create a Fellowship in perpetuity for Black graduate students in the Department of Sociology and Criminology. The Dr. Lawrence F. Douglas Fellowship will be awarded for the first time in 2024-2025 academic year.

The Fellowship is a way for me to honour my father, and it is also an opportunity to pay it forward, to offer dedicated support to Black graduate students in their academic journey.

Where is the love?

The project of anti-racism is incomplete without addressing anti-Black racism(s). Nearly 4 years have passed since the events of 2020 – in many ways it seems like a lifetime ago. To paraphrase Janet Jackson – what have you done… lately? Or, more to the point, what will you do?

Breathing is necessary to life.

I can’t breathe

Is a proclamation…
A declaration…
A metaphor for the wounds/harms/effects of racism.
I can’t breathe is also
A protest statement,
and
A call to action…

If not now, then when?

Resources

Dunn, T. (5 April, 2018). In deadly encounters with Toronto police more than a third of victims are Black. CBC. Available at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/police-deaths-blacks-data-1.4599215.

Olynick, H. (2021). UM Today. Alumnus creates scholarship for Black students. Available at https://news.umanitoba.ca/alumnus-creates-scholarship-for-black-law-students/.

Petz, S. 2024. (24, January). Nearly 5 years after fatal Winnipeg police shooting, Machuar Madut’s family still waiting for inquest. CBC News. Available at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/machuar-madut-family-speaks-inquest-delays-1.7092571.

United Nations report of the working group of experts on people of African descent on its mission to Canada. Available at https://ansa.novascotia.ca/sites/default/files/files/report-of-the-working-group-of-experts-on-people-of-african-descent-on-its-mission-to-canada.pdf.

“We do not accept your apology.” (16 June, 2022). CBC. Available at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-race-based-data-use-force-strip-searches-1.6489151.

July Blog: Part 2: Identifying grammars of resistance and refusal on the ground

Delia

The Politics of Language

Thinking about language as a site of struggle provides new sets of questions and invites new way of thinking, speaking, and disrupting racism(s).

Case in point, we need to be attentive to the fact that anti-Black racism is not one thing.

Following the murder of Mr. George Floyd in May 2020, attacks on Black and racialized minority Muslim women in Canada increased. Identifying these attacks solely as incidents of Islamophobia does not capture the specific vulnerabilities, stereotypes, and harms different Muslim women face. The violence that these women experienced is emblematic of anti-Black gendered Islamophobia. We need to employ language that recognizes the specificity of Black and racialized minority Muslim women’s experiences as this provides clarity and furthers our ability to understand and respond to their needs. To do otherwise is to dehumanize the very targets of racial violence and terror further by denying them the supports and resources they require and deserve.

As Audre Lorde reminds us, “We don’t lead single issue lives.” In order to understand the full effects of racism, we have to see how race intersects with other forms of difference such as gender identity and expression, sexuality, dis/ability, etc.

Language matters.

Just as Black folx are diverse, so too are manifestations of anti-Black racism.

So, if our consideration and commitment to addressing anti-Blackness focuses solely on the violence done to cis Black heterosexual men, while ignoring the voices and experiences of Black Muslims, Black queer, trans, and gender diverse folx, and Black disabled folx, then we undermine the movement for all Black lives. We cannot disregard or erase those in our communities who are typically positioned on the margins – our language should take in to account the diversity and complexity of Black peoples.

A grammar of resistance and refusal refers to language that captures the nuances and complexities of racism(s) expands the conversation and enables us to attend to the fullness of who we are.

In 2010 Moya Bailey and Trudy introduced the concept misogynoir to capture the particular forms of discrimination Black women experience when anti-Black racism and anti-Black misogyny collide in popular culture. Their insights are a purposeful intervention, one that recognizes the gender and sexual diversity that exists among Black women and captures the unique challenges/experiences/violences that confront diverse Black women. They also coined the term transmisogynoir to describe the particular challenges and forms of dehumanization that Black trans women face.

Enter Eternity Martis: This past March the University of Manitoba invited Eternity Martis to give the Robert and Elizabeth Knight Distinguished lecture. Martis, a Black and South Asian journalist, author, and faculty member at Toronto Metropolitan University discussed her 2020 memoir They said this would be fun: Race, campus life, and growing up. Describing how she was simultaneously exoticized, desired, and disparaged, Martis offered a critical lens regarding the intricacies and intimacies of how anti-Black misogyny, anti-Black gendered racism, and anti-Black sexual and gender-based violence are embodied. Crucially, she linked the all too familiar ways in which she was perceived and treated according to Canada’s history of enslavement, and the attendant white supremacist narratives about Black women’s sexual availability. Martis also offered points of connection and points of difference among and between diverse Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority women, providing potential pathways to establishing support for coalition and solidarity work in the areas of racialized sexual and gender-based violence and policing within Black communities and beyond.

The marginalization of violence against Black women and their disposability endures – these are some of the circumstances behind the activism of two Black women – namely Tarana Burke’s life work and her founding of the MeToo Movement, and the Say Her Name campaign initiated by Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Denial, disposability, and the damage done

In August 2022, Daniella Mallia, a 23-year-old Black woman, sought support and police protection from a violent former domestic partner. Ms. Mallia reported her concerns to two members of the Toronto police force. However, despite providing abundant evidence to substantiate her concerns about the threat her ex-partner posed, Ms. Mallia was cautioned: she was treated as a perpetrator rather than a target. Three days after filing a report with the Toronto police, Ms. Mallia was found in an underground parkade, the victim of a shooting. Her ex-partner has since been charged with first degree murder and one Toronto police constable is facing numerous charges including neglect of duty and making false or misleading statements related to his encounter with Ms. Mallia (a second officer is involved but the charges have not yet been made public). Ms. Mallia was not simply disregarded, she was criminalized. Ms. Mallia was not deemed worthy of protection – rendering her disposable. The absence of empathy demonstrates how the intersection of systemic anti-Black gendered racism, anti-Black misogyny, and gender-based violence contributed to the tragic violent end to Ms. Mallia’s life.

Expanding our circles of connection is part of an ethics of struggle.

Creating spaces that recognize our humanity, diversity, and complexity offer possibilities for Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folx to find connections across our differences.

This journey towards racial justice invites a commitment to learning and unlearning. We cannot disrupt and dismantle all forms of racism unless we challenge the divisiveness of hierarchies of oppression and recognize the interconnectedness of systems of domination. Just as we have to recognize that people’s experiences of racism are simultaneously shaped by their gender identity and expression, class, sexuality, dis/ability, and spiritual practices, we have to recognize the ways in which our histories and our communities are simultaneously distinct and connected.

Holla if you hear me…

#Tarana Burke: #MeToo
#Kimberlé Crenshaw: #Intersectionality; #SayHerName

Resources

Bailey, Moya and Trudy. (2018). On misogynoir, citation, erasure, and plagiarism. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 762-768.

Beauttah, Biko. (19, April, 2021). Commentary: Black trans women need to be listened to, supported. Global News.

Carter, Adam. (29, March, 2023). Toronto cop who allegedly ignored domestic violence report charged after woman’s death. CBC.

Huncar, Andrea. (4, March 2021). Edmonton Muslim women rally in solidarity after hate-fueled attacks. CBC.

Martis, Eternity. (2020). They said this would be fun: Race, campus life, and growing up. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart.

Reclaiming power and place: The final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.

Sengupta, Joyita. (28, June 2020). In a time of protest, Black LGBTQ voices rise.

Statistics Canada. (2021). Gender based violence.

Ware, Syrus M. (2017). All power to all people? Black LGBTTI2QQ activism, remembrance, and archiving in Toronto. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 4(2), 170-180.

Yourex-West, Heather (2021). Why are Alberta’s Black, Muslim women being attacked.

May 2023: The past is the prologue

Delia Douglas and Marcia Anderson

May 25 marks 3 years since the murder of Mr. George Floyd.

In the aftermath, tens of thousands marched across the United States, in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM), and inspired global protests against police brutality, anti-Black racism, and racial injustice. Across Canada people organized and gathered to stand in solidarity with George Floyd’s family and the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing attention to racialized police violence, systemic racism, and inequality. In Winnipeg thousands attending the Justice 4 Black Lives rally called for justice for Black people and an end to state violence and racial injustice, the organizers of the demonstration at the Legislature carried out a series of protests for eight consecutive days beginning June 22 at the Winnipeg Law Courts, in recognition of the urgency and pervasiveness of racism and racial inequality in Winnipeg and across the country.

These protests took place at a time when large public gatherings had been banned to prevent transmission of the virus, massive crowds of Black, Indigenous, and racially diverse groups of people took to the streets, risking their lives. Truth be told their lives were already at risk – they were fighting two pandemics that inhibit our ability to breathe: racism and COVID-19. The protests were not a choice, but a necessity, a matter of life and death. stand against racial terror and a rejection of the status quo. For Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folx, these demonstrations were an affirmation of our humanness, and a confirmation of our commitment to building a better future. One where race does not shape who lives and who dies. As physician Rhea Boyd explains, “protest is a vital public health intervention.” Notably, thousands of health care practitioners across Canada and the US penned an open letter, offering their full support for those who are working to demolish racist institutions, stating “white supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”

Some regarded this massive mobilization as a racial reckoning, derived from widespread recognition of the brutality and lethalness of systemic racism.

Some wondered if this was simply a moment – an expression symbolic solidarity that would not result in substantive change: a moment that might be followed by no change at all.

3 years on – where are we at now?

Black learners, physicians and educators have provided leadership that would move systems beyond symbolic solidary to substantive change.

The Black Medical Students Association of Canada provided recommendations to Canadian medical schools and to the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada.

The Black Health Education Collaborative began working on competencies for learning and a Black Health Primer to support the transformation of medical and health professional education to improve the health Black communities across Canada. They also pushed the CMAJ to publish two special issues on anti-Black racism the its effect on health in Canada.

And yet: racism persists. Race continues to shape who lives and who dies: it remains a public health crisis. The lives of Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folx remains at risk.

Real talk: How has the labour and leadership of Black folx been met with reciprocity and effort by your institution? What have you done personally to advance anti-Black racism, or anti-racism, ‘lately’? As in the past 3 years lately?

In August 2020 the Disruption of All Forms of Racism Policy was passed by the Rady Faculty Council. It is currently being revised and will be supported by a disclosures and reporting document. The policy was created in and against the backdrop of the histories and the enduring legacies of the racial violence and hostility that created the Canadian nation state some of which include dispossession, enslavement, genocide, the Indian Act, Residential Schools, and immigration laws.

The prioritization of racism is important because racism is entrenched in our day-to-day lives both in and outside of the university. Racism is (re)produced through silence, invisibility, and exclusion, as well as through covert, entrenched and cumulative actions that can be difficult to identify.

In this context, the creation of an anti-racism policy signals that manifestations of racism are a key concern of the RFHS, and evidence of its commitment to building a safe community, where all are valued equally and treated with dignity and respect.

It is also important to note this policy goes beyond consideration of individual behaviours or the notion that racism simply involves individual acts, to focus on structures, as one tool that is integral to achieve organizational cultural change.

While the passing of the policy was groundbreaking, there remain many barriers and challenges to actively advancing and sustaining the work of anti-racism. We continue to have much work to do at a system level and at individual levels to realize its aspirational goals.

Here are a few examples:

There is a significant knowledge gap regarding the meaning and significance of race and racism. The only reason we are talking about race, is because of the pervasive problem of racism – so we need to address it. The knowledge gap means that the work necessary to disrupt/eliminate the various barriers/social relations/attitudes/practices that promote and/or sustain racial inequality and the damage of racism have not been taken up. We need more individuals across our Faculty to commit time and effort to their own unlearning and learning. The Office of Anti-Racism provides a starting point to explore learning resources available.

The profound under representation of Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority people in Faculty and Senior Leadership positions sustains racial hierarchies and puts unmanageable burdens and responsibilities on the Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folx who are present- this is one form of the minority tax. We need leaders to prioritize the relevant expertise that representation brings as they are considering job descriptions and hiring decisions to support the recruitment and retention of Black, Indigenous and racialized minority folx.

One of the consequences of inadequate representation is that decisions regarding the meaning and significance of race and racism are largely in the hands of those who are Not the targets. The absence of a critical mass of Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority learners, staff, and faculty also makes it difficult for the targets of repression to speak up for fear of reprisal. One of the resources we developed is a template to review committee Terms of Reference to support critical reflection on how all RFHS committees explicitly support our stated commitments to anti-racism. We need committee chairs and leaders to have open conversations with the Black, Indigenous and racialized minority folx in their departments about how to prioritize their participation in committees that most align with their own goals and career trajectories AND support high impact, anti-racist decision-making.

These are just a few actions that at the individual level can help support a continued movement away from symbolic statements and towards racial justice and equity.

Resources

Rhea Boyd, “You Realize It’s a Privilege to Worry That Protests Will Cause a Second Wave of Coronavirus, Right?” Cosmopolitan, 16 June 2020, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a32782471/protesting-saves-lives-even-during-coronavirus-pandemic/

^[1] Rhea Boyd, “You Realize It’s a Privilege,” para. 12.

February 2023: Black History Month: Meeting grounds of radical resistance, bold solidarity, and social justice

Delia Douglas

“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.”
Audre Lorde (1984, p. 123)

Black History Month 2023 takes place in the shadows of the in-custody death of Nicous D’Andre Spring, a 21-year-old Black man who had been illegally detained in a Montreal jail in December 2022, and the January 2023 murder of Tyre Nichols, a young Black man who died in Memphis, TN following a “routine traffic stop” where he was beaten by 5 police officers, all of whom are Black. Mr. Nichols died of his injuries in hospital 3 days later.

We live in a present created by dispossession, genocide, enslavement, and ongoing settler colonial projects. We live these histories intimately, intensely, quietly, and at times grievously (lateral and internalized violence).

Their needless deaths remind me of the fact that we are all exposed to images, ideas, beliefs, and practices (e.g., white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, dis/ability, capitalism) which structure our institutions and shape our relationships to ourselves and each other. Simply put, we need not be racialized as white (for example) to reproduce settler colonialism and uphold anti-Blackness.

The fact that we are not encouraged and taught to see ourselves as equals and the fact that we are not encouraged and taught to see ourselves in each other are examples of the normalization of racism. That is the very definition of systemic racism.

I am thinking about Black life matters, Black liberation, and lateral violence – within and across diverse Black communities and beyond…I am thinking about radical resistance and bold solidarity…

In 2014 – 3 Black queer women – Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors – established the contemporary #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement – a sociopolitical and ethical demand for action against state sanctioned anti-Black terror and anti-Black racism. Garza, Tometi, and Cullors advanced an expansive lens that sheds light on the experiences of those who have frequently been excluded as contributors to social justice movements and victims of anti-Black violence, namely Black women and girls, Black folks who are disabled, gender non-conforming and those who identify as LGBTQIA+.

Black freedom struggles are as multifaceted and diverse as are Black folx.

The events of the past few years have not only exacerbated existing inequities, they have also laid bare how racism is a public health crisis.

Racism lowers life chances. Racism kills.

The enduring legacies of residential schools are revealed in the uncovering of the bodies of the 215 children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (and the thousands more graves identified since), the death of Joyce Echaquan, the murder of George Floyd, the rise in racism against people of East Asian descent, Islamophobia, and the death of Indigenous, Black, and racialized people in police involved shootings across Canada. These are not individual acts of racism, or the actions of a few bad apples – these are instances of systemic racism. These are acts that demonstrate how racism influences who lives and who dies.

This is not a zero-sum game – racism is not a competition to see who has endured the most harm – comparing ourselves to each other to construct hierarchy is itself is a form of violence. Lateral violence does just involve Black people, it occurs between members of different marginalized groups. Lateral violence also occurs when we don’t show up for each other – when we adopt the settler colonial strategy of divide and conquer…

Systemic racism requires a systemic response.

Solidarity requires courage. We cannot eradicate racial inequality and injustice unless we challenge the divisiveness of hierarchies of oppression and recognize the interconnectedness of systems of domination.
Bold solidarity is that which affirms and embraces the marginalized and excluded in our communities.

Movements such as Idle No More, #AmINext, #BLM, #Sayhername, #MeToo, and Dream Defenders make visible and affirm the lives of Indigenous and Black women and girls, 2SLGBTQQIA and those who live along the gender spectrum as targets of, and resistors to, oppression, creating space for the recognition of the humanity of all Indigenous and Black lives.

These are acts of radical resistance.

Our freedom struggles and futures intersect in complex and complicated ways owing to these histories of racial violence and their enduring legacies.

There is no time like the present to analyze our investments and allegiances and to commit ourselves to broadening our understanding of the diversity and complexity of Black identity and lived experience.

Consider this February/BHM as an opportunity to examine how anti-Blackness is manifest within ourselves and in within and across our various communities…

As political activist, scholar, and freedom fighter Angela Y. Davis asserts, “freedom is a constant struggle.”

…We…. can’t stop…We… won’t stop…

References

Cathy J. Cohen (1997). Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3(4): 437-
465.

Angela Y. Davis. (2016). Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement. Chicago, Il: Haymarket Books.

Alicia Garza (2014). A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.” The Feminist Wire. Available at: https://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/.

Audre Lorde. (1984). Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press

Robyn Maynard. (2017). Policing Black lives. Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.

November 2022: Health and anti-Black racism the remix

“In some ways, Canada very much is a welcoming place. However, that can act as a barrier in understanding how racism manifests — it’s not just the racial slur. It’s not just the racist targeting. But it is in the very systems of continuing to practice race-based medicine. Even if we had more funding and even if we had more Black physicians and practitioners, if we do not address the very real reality of anti-Black racism — in structures and in practice — we will continue to see poor health outcomes from Black communities.”
Dr. OmiSoore Dryden, Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University

Delia Douglas

This month’s blog continues Rady’s response to the Scarborough charter. We would first like to extend our gratitude to Dr. Onye Nnorom (University of Toronto) and Dr. Omisoore Dryden (Dalhousie University) for the October 19th workshop: #Blacklivesmatter in health care: historical roots and legacies of anti-Black racism in medicine and the October 20th grand rounds: addressing anti-Black racism in the clinical setting: a look at the social and physiological heath impacts of injustice.

Anti-Black racism – what is it and why does it matter?

Dr. Akua Benjamin, professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University, conceived of the term anti-Black racism to underscore the distinct nature of systemic racism on Black people in Canada that is the result of the enduring legacies of enslavement and the colonization of people of African descent in this country. Anti-Black racism is manifest in policies and practices embedded in Canadian institutions such as, health care, education, and justice that reflect and sustain beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination towards people of African descent.

Consider that the first medical education program in Canada was established in 1824, a decade before the end of enslavement in Canada (1834), and while residential schools were operating.

In 1918 Queen’s University senate voted to ban Black students from enrolling in its medical school. At that time 15 Black men were enrolled in the university’s medical school, and while those students were not formally removed, the administration actively encouraged them to leave the program. Bolstered by the ban, white students put on a minstrel show; approximately half of the Black medical students left the program, while the other half remained. Several decades later, in 1965 Black students returned to register at Queen’s School of Medicine. The ban would not be repealed by senate until the fall of 2018 and an official apology was given in 2019.

In addition, the medical schools at McGill University, Dalhousie University, and the University of Toronto also excluded Black students, or placed restrictions on their admission, for varying periods of time.

Systemic anti-Black racism is evident in the ways people of African descent have long been used to “advance” medicine. For example, J. Marion Sims, the founder of gynecology, and the doctor credited with the creating the speculum was known for developing a surgical technique to repair vesico-vaginal fistula. His breakthroughs occurred at the expense of his subjects, namely enslaved Black women, who he operated on without use of anaesthesia. Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cancer cells were taken and used without her consent. Named after Lacks, the hela cell line represents one of the most important human cell lines in medical research; they have been instrumental in cancer studies and aids research, as well as in the creation of polio and Covid-19 vaccines.

Simply put, the past and present histories of enslavement and settler colonialism in Canada form the foundation of these institutionalized expressions of anti-Black racism in society in general, and in the field of medicine and medical education programs in particular.

Anti-Black racism(s) affect the health and well-being of Black communities in multiple ways. In addition to undermining trust in health care delivery systems and practitioners, it impacts the quality of care that Black people receive, resulting in poor physical and mental health outcomes.

It is therefore imperative that medical and health education professionals are taught about how anti-Black racism affects the social and structural determinants of health for Black people.

Marcia Anderson

In order disrupt the anti-Black racism patients experience, we have to disrupt the anti-Black racism that Black learners and health professionals’ experiences. These experiences are widespread, pervasive, and cause harm including decreased academic performance, burnout and high staff turnover. Disruption requires understanding how anti-Black racism was built into our systems.

The current special issues (volume 194, issues 41 and 42) of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) are an important intervention into this knowledge gap.