I believe in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). I am not calling for its end, or making an argument against its relevance. I respect the field, I have friends who are EDI leaders, and I have dedicated my career to advancing these principles in the study of archives, theatre and performance, media and advertising. It’s because I do this work that I know critiques like this one are desperately needed.
Read MoreSenior administrative leadership has the most significant role to play in academic governance, but the data demonstrates that the very idea of academic governance is fundamentally set up to reproduce itself. Collegial governance, as the dominant university reward system, reinforces the diversity gap in senior administrative leadership.
Read MoreIn academia, the coded language of “collegiality” is part of the larger project of the new racism because it does not seek to create space for Black people, queer people, disabled people, and social-justice-minded White people to speak freely and openly but instead intentionally rewards “loyal” Black people, White women, and all those who fall under the umbrella of “going along to get along.”
Read MoreBy the 1680s, the institution of slavery in the Atlantic colonies was premised on race. Blackness became intertwined with servitude, whiteness became an attribute of the free and by extension white identity functioned as a “shield from slavery.” In the American and Caribbean colonies, a tiered system based on skin colour distinguished whites and light-skinned Creoles from Africans.
Read MoreDuring the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries enslaved men, women, and children were culled from West African ethnocultural communities of the Wolof, Mandingo, Mende and Yoruba.
Read MoreIf the nineteenth century was the age of mechanical reproduction, wherein the image became the most valued visual form, and print and photography were its agents, in the twentieth century, visual forms were also subject to the latent demands in society. These new images helped to co-create the modern visual landscape, and in so doing, Black women and men became part of the "new."
Read MoreTo have hope you have to dare to question the things you have taken as essential truths. Where many folks read the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1965, Colin Kaepernick in 2017, and Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, as depicting the act of kneeling in protest to systemic racism and against systems of capital that have benefited from Black servitude and disenfranchisement, others see anti-heroes, unpatriotic rebel rousers, and non-citizens who are not “grateful” for all that they have been given.
Read MoreOver the past decade, Black Canadians have been making significant moves in digital content creation, film production, digital archives, and heritage preservation. And they have been making these moves at the same time headlines are riddled with evidences of the decline in traditional media — television, news, radio, and digital.
Read MoreDuring Black History Month in 2023, Montreal-based artist Franck Sylvestre performed a puppet show geared toward Black children. The show included a puppet named “Max” who appeared with coal black skin, jagged teeth, bright red lips, wide eyes, and an ape-like nose. Many Black community organizations publicly denounced Sylvestre and his puppet.
Read MoreAs a Black Canadian scholar, writer, and public speaker, I participate in Black History Month every year. I am also old enough to remember when there was no Black History Month, and we would sit around complaining about the lack thereof. But every year when February rolls around, I find myself torn about it.
Read MoreI completely understand the logic behind Black Excellence — Black people, especially students are underrepresented, under acknowledged, and often are made to feel like outsiders at universities, especially in Canada where universities are still predominantly White. However, when you only celebrate a people’s accomplishments and ignore the challenges they have had to endure, and systemic realities they lived (and continue to live) through, Black Excellence becomes the veil that shields us from seeing how our systems and institutions are still rooted in White supremacist notions of “success”.
Read MoreIt is a uniquely challenging time to be employed or a student at a university, especially if you are Black woman or a student(s) with divergent opinions. From the high profile firing of Claudine Gay at Harvard and its aftermath, to the tragic suicide of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, Vice President of Student Affairs at Lincoln University, to the Toronto Star’s investigation into my own university’s Law School and the student letter in support of Palestine, where there's a bad news story, institutions of higher learning are in it.
Read MoreOn September 21 and 22, 2023 the Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA) Team co-produced Artists and Archivists in Dialogue (AAD), a Social Sciences Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant-funded two-day speaker series and creative showcase that was held at Toronto Metropolitan University’s ILC and Toronto’s Tranzac Club.
Read MoreI have been thinking a lot about Taraji P. Henson’s viral interview where she spoke about pay disparity in Hollywood: “[I’m] tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do and being paid a fraction of the cost and people are like ‘you work a lot’ well, I have to, the math ain’t mathing.”
While the headlines have repeatedly told us that “everyone” is being affected by the pandemic, and as such the “playing field is now levelled,” it is extremely urgent that we not forget the policy decisions of the last few years that might not have gotten us into the economic crisis that we’re in, but that have made the effects of COVID-19 unequally felt.
Read MoreIn 1989, Quaker Oats Company, in celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Aunt Jemima trademark, made extensive alterations to her face and body. Her image was ‘updated by removing her headband and giving her pearl earrings and a lace collar.’
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