Tag: race

November 2024: What’s in a name? Why identifying the specificity of racism matters

Delia

In previous blogs I have talked about the politics of naming.

To recap:
Naming matters.
Why?
Because, if something isn’t named, then, it doesn’t exist…it is not in the
realm of possibility…

Oppression, discrimination, equity, bias, microaggression…

And so – it – goes…. All are important words, but we have to wonder why these words refer to
Anything.
But.
Racism.

The ‘disappearing’ of racism is an all too familiar tactic.
Why?
Because racism persists alongside its denial…

Talking about race is necessary because of racism.

Building on the initiatives that were outlined in the September blog, this month I want to discuss both the rationale and contents of the Foundations of Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism module that was done in collaboration with the production team at KnowledgeOne in Quebec.

The module will be available to members of the RFHS and the wider community at the end of this month (via UM Learn and Continuing Professional Development).

The motivation behind the course
An important point of departure was the recognition that we inherit the legacy of that which has come before: 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.

Another important consideration was the overall silence regarding the meaning and significance of race, and the persistence of racism, in all of our institutions – that includes universities. In this context, it was also important to outline the pervasiveness and ordinariness of racism and the associated need to activate systemic change.

Racism is a determinant of mental and physical health and well-being, and the impact spans generations.

Where we live now: The course addresses the politics of race and racism
I often say that there is no place to stand outside of racism – and so a key point of departure in this course is not IF race matters, but How and Why.

More often than not, in Canada, when racism is mentioned, it is framed as an individual matter or an aberration, as opposed to an integral component of the creation of the Canadian nation-state.

Following the murder of Mr. Floyd in May 2020, 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. Many people wanted a toolkit, or a 1-hour seminar – thinking that was all that was needed to either “understand” or “solve” racism.

It took us several centuries to get here…There is no quick fix or toolkit that can solve racism – if it were easy, we would be in a different place right now…

Some of the topics covered are:
Why race matters
What is race?
White matters: The social construction of whiteness
Racisms and their impact
Racial ideology and racial identity
What is racism?
Impacts of racism
Continuing your journey: Next steps

The intended audience for this course
I appreciate that people have a varied understanding of the foundations of race, racism, and anti-racism. As a society, our racial literacy leaves a lot to be desired. The course is intended to encourage people to understand that anti-racism is a journey, not a destination.

Participants will not be experts upon completion of this module. Far from it – I recognize that people come to this material from different vantage points and that they are on different paths personally and within their units/programs/Colleges/organizations.

The materials provide a range of ideas, theories, and empirical evidence, some of which will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Some of the materials raise deep-rooted issues, and the materials may question the values and beliefs that we hold dear. Some may prompt a more visceral response than others, and one of the learners’ challenges is to ask why that is the case.

To disrupt and dismantle racism in its various forms, we must first understand it. This course allows learners to expand their understanding of the meaning and significance of race and the persistence of racism. I hope folx will recognize how the historical past shapes the racial present and that racism is entrenched in our structures.

The course is part of our general efforts to address racism in the RFHS
The Disruption of All Forms of Racism Policy is a point of departure, not an endpoint.

By the same token, this course is a mechanism that builds on the Policy by providing people with a resource to cultivate their racial literacy by providing Faculty, staff and learners with a vocabulary for identifying and speaking to each other across our differences and facilitate the transformation of institutional and organizational cultures in the service of social justice.

The potential impact of this course on broader conversations and actions regarding racism and anti-racism
We have been in a long emergency with respect to acknowledging and addressing manifestations of systemic racism. The urgent need for organizational and institutional change has been laid bare as we have seen how race shapes who lives and who dies through the parallel pandemics of systemic racism(s) and Covid-19. As long the impact of racism(s) continues to be marginalized/ignored/denied, interpersonal and social relations will be compromised, talent will be lost, and Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority people will continue to suffer trauma and harm in a host of ways which includes death.

A new path forward toward racial justice is challenging but possible if we commit to new learning, building relationships, cultural shifts, and structural change.

I hope that it will motivate people to strategize on their responsibilities in addressing racism.

Lastly, I hope the course will encourage people to understand that anti-racism involves lifelong learning and that we all have a role to play in the disruption and dismantling of all forms of racism.

We will be taking a break in December.

See you in 2025.

June 2024: Bodies in motion, bodies at play: What’s race got to do with it?

“Everyone I see playing basketball is black. Everyone playing basketball must be black. If I am not black, I can’t play basketball; if you are black, you must be a basketball player”

Patricia J. Williams, 1997, p. 51. (Seeing a Color Blind Future. New York, NY: Noonday Press).

Marcia

I love to watch the Olympics, and I’m looking forward to the Summer Games this year. As I watch events this year, I’ll be holding questions from the blog Dr. Douglas has written below. Sport- like in some arenas of medicine- has some deeply engrained biologic assumptions about race. I wonder how these seep into my consciousness when I think about who is on the podium at what events, what this means about my assumptions about muscle mass and how this might infiltrate my thinking then when I’m in clinical spaces. This year, and with the very helpful critical reflections below, I’ll be challenging myself to see where I still carry assumptions about “natural ability” and push myself to see the hard work, persistence, and discipline of the athletes.  I’ll ask myself the challenging questions about how income and opportunity gaps that do occur by race are impacting who we see represented in what events, in the results, and in the media coverage.

Delia

Continuing the conversation about sport matters, this month’s blog takes up the question of race, sex, gender, and embodiment….

The WNBA (Coming to Toronto in 2026!), NBA, PWHL, NHL, soccer, tennis, pickleball, track and field… oh yeah, and golf …

Although sport is a key part of North American culture, we tend to underestimate its cultural and political significance: it is a place where different histories, traditions, and myths meet and intersect, creating cultural meanings and identities which travel across different mediums, national borders and commercial markets. It is a place where major cultural and political debates about identity, community and politics are staged and performed.

Sport is a visual and a visible field. It is a place where social dramas play out between different groups – historically and in the present.  Recall Jesse Owen’s victories at the Berlin Olympics, Althea Gibson breaking the colour bar at Wimbledon, Jackie Robinson’s trailblazing in MLB, Taffy Abel and Willie O’Ree’s groundbreaking presence in the NHL, Evonne Goolagong’s victory at the French Open, Cathy Freeman’s run to gold at the Sydney Olympic Games, and South Carolina vs Iowa in the NCAA women’s basketball final (I gotta give Coach Staley and co their flowers).

Because sport (and physical activity) are bodily practices, they enable the continued observation and discussion of sex, gender identity and expression, and racial difference in analyses of performance. In this context, the preponderance of certain groups in particular physical activities, coupled with their absence in others, has been readily interpreted as evidence of the natural differences in the ability and potential of different social groups. These patterns of participation are significant precisely because their visibility/visual logic conveys power and privilege; over time what we see becomes what we recognize and believe. potent cultural narratives about different groups are produced and normalized. In turn, because we have been socialized to be unaware of the ways in which power and privilege work in these settings, customary patterns of perception regarding sex, gender, racial, and sexual differences are perpetuated.

Sport studies scholars CL Cole and Susan Birrell explore how sport is a difference and power producing system” (1990, p. 18): it “works to differentiate winners from losers, the men from the boys, and the men from the women” (p. 18). I would add that sport also works to differentiate different racialized, engendered (gender identity and expression) and embodied groups. Simply put sport constructs and normalizes a binary logic of separation – this either/or framing does not allow for nuance, diversity, or complexity.

Think of it like this – putting a basketball in a hoop and explosive speed are actions that are seen, rather than interpreted. This is one of the key elements of the power of sport; namely, it is an area of life that seems to exist in the realm of the natural and is therefore not seen as requiring interpretation (Willis, 1982).

However, things are not so simple. We are socialized to be unaware of how the “seeing” of race and other social differences are in fact an interpretation rather than an objective account of what is ‘there.’ For example, the hypervisibility of some groups and the exclusion of others tends to bolster prevailing beliefs about racial difference that rely on biology to explain performance and participation rates.

For example, the fact that the times for the men’s 100 metres, the distance thrown for the shot put, etc. are different from those for women have been used as a way of reinforcing prevailing gender ideologies about a clear binary, one that confirms the so-called superiority of “men” over “women” (Willis, 1982). In the same way the success of Black athletes in basketball and sprint events, reinforces longstanding beliefs about the presumed natural athleticism of Black athletes. FYI – in the 1970s and 80s the sprint events were dominated by athletes from central and eastern Europe; in the 1960s 20% of the NBA consisted of Black players, currently over 70%, and the NHL is 97% white). Correspondingly, this presumed athletic superiority is believed to indicate bodily prowess over powers of the mind.

But ask yourself this: why isn’t the visibility and success of white Europeans in winter sports not read as evidence of innate athletic superiority and the absence of intellectual ability, but instead as confirmation of discipline and mental application? This typical “reading” of difference in athletic performance between different groups illustrates how the meaning and import of athletic performance and sporting events hold a cultural and political significance that extends well beyond the fields of play.

Sport is a complex and contradictory space, for it is a place where the presence and success of 1 or 2 Black, Indigenous, or racialized minority athletes is seen as evidence of equality – or of the absence of racism – rather than exceptions to systemic racial exclusion and racial tension.

Sport is a crucial locus of social justice struggles. It not only teaches us to “see” difference, sport teaches us to regard some differences as more important than others, amplifies them, and then uses them to support beliefs about sex, race, and gender inferiority and superiority – beliefs which uphold social inequality (Willis, 1982).

We will be going on summer hiatus: the blog will return in September.

Resources

Birrell, S., & Cole, CL. (1990).Double fault: Renee Richards, and the construction and naturalization of difference, Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(1), 1-21.

Douglas, D. D. (2018). Disqualified! Serena Williams and Brittney Griner: Black female athletes and the politics of the im/possible. In K. Farquharson, K. Pillay, P. Essed, and E. White (Eds.), Relating worlds, of racism: Dehumanization, belonging and the normativity of whiteness (pp. 329-355). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hartmann, D. (2002). Sport as Contested Terrain. In D. T. Goldberg & J. Solomos (Eds.), A companion to race and ethnic studies (pp. 405-415). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

King, C.R. (2007). Staging the Winter white Olympics: Or, why sport matters to white power. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 31(1), 89-94.

Willis, P. (1982). Women in sport in ideology. In J. Hargreaves (Ed.), Sport, culture and ideology (pp. 117-135). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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.

August 2023: Unspeakable: The violence(s) of disavowal

“…how people get mad, how that escalation from prejudice, to hate, to violence occurs, what and who is hated, and how it is expressed, is not unrelated to the world around us.”

Ursula Franklin, 1991, p. 9. 

Delia

Where we live now: Racial realities

On June 9 2023, we learned of that a young female employee at the Olive Garden restaurant in Transcona, MB was stabbed multiple times by a customer – a young white male. The Winnipeg police subsequently described the attack as “random” and “unprovoked.” Police Chief Danny Smyth later stated that the use of the word random was meant to indicate that the perpetrator did not know his target.

The attack was not random for the victim.

Far from it.

6 weeks later we learned the identity of the target of the attack – an 18 year-old Black Muslim woman – she was wearing an hijab. We learned of her identity because members of the Muslim community challenged police claims of the random nature of the attack. They called for an investigation into the stabbing – they wanted to know why it had not been identified as a hate crime, and why the perpetrator was charged with aggravated assault, and not attempted murder.

According to Police Chief Smyth, “There is no evidence that supports it being motivated by a hate crime…. That being said, this is a very serious crime, the individual was charged with aggravated assault, which is a very serious charge. People go to jail for that kind of thing.”

The charges were laid prior to the victim issuing a statement.

No evidence to support the motivation of hate….

So, what would evidence of a hate crime look like?

Correspondingly what exactly counts as evidence? And…Who is qualified to make that determination?

The victim, a young Somali woman, does not wish to be identified.  

When she was able to speak, she explained that she was the only racialized minority person in the restaurant, and the only person wearing an hijab. She described how the perpetrator watched her for 30 minutes before the attack. In her words: “He didn’t go on a random stabbing spree. He went straight for me. I know I could have died.”

She understood and experienced her attack as an expression of anti-Black gendered Islamophobia.

A Black Muslim woman, in defense of herself.

It takes courage to speak publicly about experiences of violence. It is another form of trauma.

Intentional erasures and purposeful interventions

Whose view counts?

Naming is a mechanism of control.

If it isn’t named, then it doesn’t exist…it is not in the realm of possibility.

This is where the guiding principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are indispensable. To recap, CRT is a framework that recognizes that racism is pervasive and not an aberration. It is a lens that recognizes that the violence is already here.

In a Canadian context CRT allows us to critically assess how the historical construction of Canada as a white settler colonial society has been, and continues to be, protected and sustained. CRT recognizes that current inequalities, institutional arrangements, and practices are tied to past and present systems of racial exclusion, hostility, and violence such as dispossession, genocide, enslavement, settler colonial projects, and immigration laws. It is a lens that sees link between racism(s) and mass incarceration, housing education, health, and income inequalities.

CRT is a framework whose guiding principles are integrative, recognizing that other forms of inequality intersect and animate each other. It positions the elimination of racial oppression as part of the broader project of eliminating all manifestations of oppression.

And crucially, CRT recognizes the experiential knowledge of Indigenous, Black, and racialized minority peoples and communities.

When and where race enters conversations of justice matters.

Efforts to deny, obscure downplay the relevance of race are productive; they facilitate the conditions which preclude the likelihood/probability of racism, as well as the contemplation of the existence of racism, in Canada’s multicultural, multiracial society.

Racism is (re)produced through silence, invisibility, and exclusion, as well as through covert, entrenched, and cumulative actions.

Disavowal is violence.

Nothing can be changed unless it is acknowledged…

Indeed. The very definition of racism remains a site of struggle. As Dr. Wahneema Lubiano (1997) asserts, “central to the existence of racism, is the politics of its denial” (p. viii).

The ‘disappearing’ of racism is an all too familiar tactic. Racism persists alongside its denial…

And so it goes…. Anything. But. Racism.

The rejection of racism – of anti-Black gendered Islamophobia – to be precise, is significant because it obscures the unmarked white Western settler colonial arrangements, relationships, and practices that pervade all of our systems, while simultaneously reinforcing the national narrative that manifestations of racism in Canada are unusual. These disavowals do not exist in isolation, they are part of social relations, organizational cultures and institutional structures that work to maintain the status quo of inequality and the normalization of racism.

How we respond to violence has an impact on an individual’s health and well-being.

…the “escalation from prejudice, to hate, to violence” – “who is hated and how it is expressed” is inextricably linked to the legacies of violence to legacies which shape where we live now…. (Franklin).

Racial matters

As long as the reality and character of racism(s) are defined by the dominant, members of Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority communities will continue to suffer trauma and harm in a host of ways, some of which will include death.

Anti-racism work involves the active process of acting to challenge not only one’s own biases and prejudices, this work also involves the dismantling of the policies/social relations/attitudes/practices that promote and/or sustain racial inequality and racial oppression.

Bold solidarity and courageous collaboration are acts of radical resistance –creating spaces that recognize the humanity, diversity, and complexity of Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folx.

Listen to the targets of violence…

As bell hooks (1996) reminds us: “The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew. Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance” (p. 146).

We need language that is expansive, disruptive, and ultimately transformative.

Bigotry and hate crimes directed against Muslims are on the rise in Canada.

Recall…Quebec City, London, Ontario, Edmonton, AB, …Winnipeg, MB….

Anti-Black gendered Islamophobia.

See her.

Hear her.

Believe her.

Resources:

Bernhardt, Darren. (18, July 2023). Muslim community suggests Olive Garden attack on Black woman motivated by hate. CBC News.

Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

Douglas, Delia. D. (2020). Un/Covering white lies: Exposing racism in the era of racelessness. Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, 7(2), 22-45.

Essed, Philomena. (2002). Everyday racism. In D. T. Goldberg & J. Solomos (Eds.), A companion to racial and ethnic studies (pp. 202-216). London, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Franklin, Ursula. (1991). Commemoration for the Montreal massacre victims. Canadian Woman Studies, 11(4), 9.

Greenslade, Brittany. (9, June 2023). Olive Garden employee repeatedly stabbed in ‘unprovoked and random’ attack at restaurant: Police. CBC News.

hooks, bell. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines.

Lubiano, Wahneema. (Ed.). Introduction. The house that race built (pp. vii- ix). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.

Thompson, Sam. (18, July 2023). Winnipeg’s Muslim community calls for investigation into Olive Garden stabbing of hijabi woman. Global News.

April 2023: Part 1: Integrate this! Identifying grammars of resistance and refusal

“The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew. Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.” bell hooks (1996, p. 146). 

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.” Audre Lorde (1984, p. 138).

(This month’s blog is part 1 of a two part discussion on the politics of language).

Delia Douglas

Where we live now: Translation terms and racial realities 

Language matters.

We have been in the long emergency with respect to acknowledging and addressing manifestations of systemic racism. The events of the past few years have laid bare the ordinariness of racism, underscoring that there is no place to stand outside of its reach. The parallel pandemics of systemic racism(s) and COVID-19 highlight how race shapes who lives and who dies. From the disproportionate impact of the virus on Indigenous, Black, and racialized minority communities, to the police violence directed against Indigenous and Black folx, to the racist targeting people of East Asian descent, and the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. These most recent examples emphasize the normalization of racism which is the very definition of systemic racism.

As long the impact of racism(s) continues to be homogenized/marginalized/ignored/denied interpersonal and social relations are compromised, talent will be lost, and people will continue suffer trauma and harm in a host of ways which will include death.

In order for us to disrupt and dismantle racism, we have to understand it. Racism is typically understood in simplistic and homogenous manner, however, there is no singular definition of racism. Rather, racism takes many forms, some of which include symbolic, embodied, psychological, institutional/systemic, every day, and interpersonal. 

The violence is psychological, physical, and cultural. We are far more familiar (and indeed comfortable) with allegations of racism that involve white supremacist and extremist groups. There has been far less attention given to the ways in which our daily lives are crucial sites through which practices and beliefs regarding white racial superiority/power/domination are produced.

Racism is dynamic, and our language must adapt so that we are able to address our racial realities and avoid oversimplification/erasure/silence/lateral violence. We need language that is expansive, disruptive, and ultimately transformative.

As Audre Lorde reminds us, “We don’t lead single issue lives.”  Consequently, if we are 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, class, etc. 

Dr. George Sefa Dei, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, uses the term “integrative anti-racism” to address the fact that people’s experiences of racism are shaped by the multiple elements of their identity such as gender, class, sexuality, and ableness. Talking about intersections is vital for us to be able to adequately understand and respond to the various ways in which racism(s) are manifest. However, while policies, strategies, and practices should address the integrative character of racism(s), he argued that we also need to be able to respond to the distinctiveness of anti-Black racism(s), anti-Indigenous racism(s), and Islamophobia in their myriad forms (e.g., engendered, dis/ability, sexuality). 

Language is indeed a site of struggle. As a tool of resistance and refusal, it can help us to create spaces that recognize our humanity, diversity, and complexity, and in so doing offer possibilities for Black, Indigenous and racialized minority folx to find connections across our differences.

…to be continued.

Resources

Dei, George S. (1995). Integrative anti-racism: Intersection of race, class, and gender. Race, Gender & Class, 2(3), 11-30.

Essed, Philomena. (2002). Everyday racism. In D. T. Goldberg & J. Solomos (Eds.), A companion to racial and ethnic studies (pp. 202-216). London, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

hooks, bell. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines.

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

March 2023: Racial matters: What is race? Who is ‘raced,’ and the role of disaggregated data in advancing health equity

“…any doctrine of racial superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous and must be rejected, together with theories that attempt to determine the existence of separate human races, …”

United Nations, 74th session, January 27, 2020.

Delia Douglas

Context – Racial Matters: What is race? Who is ‘raced’? 

As a sociologist working in the health sciences, I am continually confronted by the separation that exists between the social sciences and health sciences – a division which is not unintentional, but part of the way in which white supremacy operates through the reproduction of race-based medicine and racist assessments of patients. However, in order to disrupt and dismantle the many forms of racism that exist, we must first understand it. 

So, what is race? 

Race is a social and historical construct, not a biological difference. Despite the failure of science to demonstrate that our physical differences represent racial superiority and racial inferiority, biological racism (scientific racism) persists. There remains a profound investment in the belief that our visible physical differences signal proof of one’s ability, potential, and capacity: our humanness.

Marcia Anderson

From the time I started medical school in 1998 through the H1N1 pandemic (and beyond) with the exception of some of my Black and Indigenous colleagues, if a physician taught, talked about, or researched racial gaps in health outcomes it was framed as a question of genetic difference (e.g. the thrifty gene theory or T-cell immunity differences). Framing racial health gaps as the result of racism was unpopular, to say the least.

As an early public health doctor however, one of my role models was Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones who is an anti-racism activist and academic and former President of the American Public Health Association. She defines racism as “a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call “race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.”

When I consider the differential impacts of COVID-19, HIV, and the new CMAJ guidance on the reporting of race and ethnicity in research articles, I see that this is where the social sciences and health sciences have to meet.

Delia and Marcia

The reason we need to talk about race is because of racism. 

Similar to race, racism is about how we make sense of difference, it is based on the false assumption that physical differences such as skin colour, bodily features, and hair texture are related to intellectual, moral, or cultural superiority. 

This enduring investment in innate difference is a matter of life and death – the belief is used to justify racial inequality, it informs policies, relationships, it influences how people are seen and treated. It denies the fact that racial meanings are dynamic and shaped by the social, historical, and political context in which they appear. The belief in race as a biological difference is an attempt to silence and suppress histories of genocide, dispossession, enslavement, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and the attendant violence(s) of domination. In this context the role of science – of race as a biological difference – is employed to ensure that our differences are understood as inevitable/unchangeable/unalterable and thus don’t need further interrogation or intervention.

Who is ‘raced’?

Across North America, those typically identified as raced are those identified as Black, Indigenous, or a member of a racialized minority community. In other words, those identified as ‘non-white.’

This brings me to the matter of whiteness -whiteness is a location within the racial order and one of advantage, as highlighted by Dr. Jones. Whiteness is an element of identity and part of the system of racial categorization and while this also varies over time and place, it is shaped by the past and present of dispossession, genocide, enslavement, and settler colonialism. Usually unmarked, whiteness usually operates as the default category (e.g., the norm); whites are typically regarded and identify as ‘raceless,’ or simply human. Consider this –- to only regard Black, Indigenous, and members of racialized minority communities as racialized is an example of how a system of racial classification and hierarchy has been normalized. White people are “just human” while Black, Indigenous, and racialized minority folks are, well, regarded as something else: humans with caveats.

It is important to bring whiteness into this conversation because it is imperative that we acknowledge that we are all racialized, engendered, and sexualized (to name but a few components of our identities). Naming whiteness also signals how we are all located in relations of domination and subordination. Making whiteness visible allows space for us to understand how the marking of the so called ‘racial other’ simultaneously involves the making of the dominant…with respect to racism it means that we are able to not only recognize the harms and hardship of racism(s), but how it also benefits those who are not its targets.

Resources

Jude Mary Cenat. (2023). Who is Black? The urgency of accurately defining the Black population when conducting health research in Canada. CMAJ July 18, 2022, 194 (27) E948-E949; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.220274. 

Stuart Hall (1997). Race the floating signifier. Producer: Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation.

Camara Phyllis Jones. (2018). Towards the Science and Practice of Anti-Racism: Launching a National Campaign Against Racism. Ethnicity and Disease August 9, 2018, 28 (Suppl 1) 231-234; DOI: https://doi.org/10.18865%2Fed.28.S1.231. 

Matthew B. Stanbrook and Bukola Salami. (2023). CMAJ’s new guidance on the reporting of race and ethnicity in research articles. CMAJ February 13, 2023, 195(6) E236-238; DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.230144. 

United Nations. (2020). A global call for concrete action for the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Available at: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N19/426/41/PDF/N1942641.pdf?OpenElement.