Today is a LIVE class day! We will be meeting in our Virtual Classroom on Blackboard. See you there!

Today we will be having a group discussion about Lydia-Joi’s TED Talk on racial disparities in our healthcare system. Think about the following questions and be prepared to discuss as a class and in small groups:

• Lydia-Joi describes her experience in an interview for an executive position where the white interviewer said “You have this presence that makes me feel like you should be my assistant or a patient advocate” – how is this an example of a microaggression?
• How does her rephrasing of “Being Black in Canada is making me sick” to “times are tough and together we’ll get through it” sanitize the Black experience to appease white settler Canadians?
• How can your thoughts, speech, and behaviour affect your peers in a positive way when confronting anti-Black racism? How can it affect your peers in a negative way?
• Marshall questions “Am I willing to lose my job today?” when faced with the choice to confront a racist experience at work. How does confronting anti-Black racism in the workplace make visible the violence towards Black people in Canadian institutions?
• Lydia-Joi discusses media circulation of the murder of George Floyd as “Black people’s communal discomfort always being put on display.” Why do you think the media portrays Black pain so often? How are these cases typically represented?

Optional

Being Black is a Pre-Existing Health Condition

In this TEDxDayton Talk, Ryan Ivory discusses the impact of systematic racism on the healthcare that Black people receive. She pinpoints that Blackness itself is a pre-existing condition in which Black people themselves are treated like they are the problem.