Active, Engaged or Empowered Bystanders? Call it What You Will, We Just Need Bystanders to Intervene Against Anti-Black Racism

This virtual learning course explores anti-Black racism in Canada, past and present.

Anti-Black Racism can be understood “as policies and practices rooted in Canadian institutions such as, education, health care, and justice that mirror and reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination towards people of Black-African descent.” (Black Health Alliance, 2018). The term was first expressed by Dr. Akua Benjamin, Professor Emeritus and former Director of School of Social Work, Toronto Metropolitan University (Confronting Anti-Black Racism at TMU).

This course shifts Black ways of knowing from margin to centre. Troubling dominant narratives of racial innocence, tolerance and inclusion in “multicultural” Canada (Johnson and Aladejebi, 2022; Das Gupta et al., 2018) this interdisciplinary course outlines how systemic anti-Blackness produces marginalization and exclusion for Black Canadians. At the same time, we remained vigilant of not reducing the Black experience in Canada to that of deficit, trauma and suffering. What Ibrahim et al., 2022 refers to as the “stubborn durability of anti-Black tropes, the dehumanization of Blackness, persistent deficit ideologies, and the tyranny of low expectations that permeate the dominant idea of Blackness in the white colonial imagination.” Accordingly, we simultaneously sought to focus on Black joy and affirm “Black resistance and resurgences; Black creative ways of living as praxis” (Die, 2021). Likewise, it is essential to note that Black Canada is not a monolith or unidimensional, it is important to “resist a singular construction of Blackness that masks the nuances and multiplicity of what it means to be and experience the academy [and Canada, more broadly] as Black people” (Ibrahim et al, 2022). In short, Black Canada is not homogeneous. For example, within Canada’s Black community there is great diversity and cultural nuances of African, Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and Black-Indigenous experiences.

The latter part of the course pivots to praxis: “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 1996, p. 33). Accordingly, this course is an invitation to confront our collective complicities in systemic anti-Black racism. The course is intended for a diverse student body. Specifically, to support Black, Indigenous, and racialized youth to be feel pride and empowerment in relation to their racial identity and leadership development and capacity building to create meaningful social change. And for white allies/accomplices who are invested in and committed to dismantling anti-Black racism. As such, the course is envisioned as an educational site of resistance, situating students as agents of transformative social change, creating the context to confront anti-Black racism together for our collective liberation.

It was important to us that course learners not only explore the prevalence of anti-Black racism in Canada, but also gain concrete bystander intervention skills to effectively challenge and address it. We debated between ‘activating bystanders’, ‘engaging bystanders’ or ‘empowering bystanders’–none of which were ideal for various reasons. We opted for ‘empowering bystanders’ to capture our goal of facilitating concrete actions and practices against anti-Black racism. Empowered bystanders are aware of and appreciate their individual and collective power to interrupt, disrupt, and object to anti-Black racism in their everyday lives (e.g., at school, at work, at home and the spaces in between). This is predicated on learners willingness to “support an antiracist policy through their action or expressing an antiracist idea” (Kendi, 2019).

Elevating Black Voices

The methodology used to design the curriculum for this course elevates Black community and Black students’ voices with the aim of challenging white normativity and disrupting dominant white knowledge production structures within Canadian post-secondary education. Educational institutions routinely impose colonial systems of knowing, white credibility, white dominant frames of analysis, and in so doing reward proximity to whiteness and support white power and privilege (Dei, 2021). Accordingly, “Black knowledges and ways of knowing disrupt dominant, Eurocentric…bodies of knowledge that are taken for granted” (Ibrahim et al., 2022, p. xiv). Baker-Bell, Stanbrough and Everett (2017) argue that a radical “Black pedagogy” must therefore interrogate “the historical lineage that continues to support a white supremacist agenda that leads to anti-Blackness.”

The EBAAR project positions Black people as experts on ‘the Black experience in Canada’, which is inherently diverse, nuanced and multiple given that Blackness is lodged in the difference of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, language, and (dis)abilities” (Dei, 2022, p. 19). Despite the multiplicity of Blackness in Canada this course documents how systemic anti-Black racism impacts Black lives. As such, the perspectives, insights, and contributions of Black faculty, Black scholars, and Black community members are purposefully foregrounded. This “willful Black knowledge making centres Black lives in order to learn from Black people (vs. learning about Black people)” (McKittrick, 2022). Accordingly, we meaningfully centered Black–speakers, voices, embodied knowledge, and lived experiences throughout the entirety of the development of this course. Specifically, Black curriculum consultants (graduate and undergraduate students and recent grads) led a continuously refined research and curricular design process. Our goal was to create a course that engages in the critical educational praxis that ‘re-stories’ Black life in Canada (Crichlow, 2014). One that assists learners in examining how anti-Blackness “promotes racial inferiority that contributes to a lack of empathy for Black life leading to a public desensitization to Black pain suffering, angst, Black humanity and death” (Baker-Bell, et al., 2017). A course that supports collective inquiry (reflection) and practice (action) for the purpose of advancing racial justice and equity within and outside of the Canadian academy.

Black centered curriculum development is central to the EBAAR project’s goal of contributing to racial equity movements that are remaking the academy. Making ‘the classroom’ a space that isn’t just representationally diverse and inclusive of Black and racialized people but is structurally inclusive of them as expert knowers, and knowledge-makers. Although we consciously sought out and centered Black voices and knowledge in the development of this course; we acknowledge that the readings, learning exercises, videos, and resources we’ve compiled for this virtual class cannot possibly due justice to the multiplicity and rich intellectual tradition of Black Canadian scholarship. Black Studies programs within Canadian universities are needed for that. Instead, our hope is that this course equips students with the knowledge and skills needed to build our collective capacity to denormalize and render visible anti-Black racism within Canadian society. A task that has greater urgency as we “navigate the challenges of white nationalism and white supremacy in this new century” (Thomas, 2021).

Trauma Informed-Approach

Anti-Black racism is trauma.

This course takes a trauma-informed approach to teaching and learning about anti-Black racism. In so doing, we consider how learners are positioned in relation to the curriculum given that for students from racialized, marginalized, and equity deserving communities this learning will be more vulnerable and challenging. Accordingly, we seek to advance approaches to antiracist education that do not overlook the critical impact of anti-Black racism and racialized trauma on students’ health and well-being and to engage in pedagogical practices that prevent retraumatizing learners. The work of trauma-informed anti-racism education and training requires a nuanced understanding, not only of how trauma impacts student learning and mental health, but the root causes behind that trauma. The EBAAR course makes visible the historic and present-day pain and trauma experienced by Black people in Canada and seeks structural and systemic oppressions as sites for change. Importantly, the course also foregrounds Black ways of being beyond the reductive parameters of anti-Blackness. To this end, Black life and joy as resistance are integrated throughout the course (see Self-Care, Mental Health and Black Joy for further discussion).

This statement was informed by Richards (2021).

Openness and Course Design Choices (i.e., Pay Black Scholars!)

The spirit of “open” learning is often associated with eliminating textbook costs and choosing free, open sources for course material. The course design team has made every effort to ensure the use of open sources wherever possible. However, given the persistent exclusion of Black ways of knowing and the enduring anti-Black racism within the white/Eurocentric Canadian academy (Ibrahim et al., 2022) our course development team has very intentionally chosen to require the purchase of two books written by Black Canadian scholars, Robyn Maynard and Eternity Martis. We know that “Black scholars are significantly under-represented in the academy, and Black women (at 0.7 per cent) particularly so” (Ibrahim et al., 2022, p. xv). Imperatively, choosing books written by Black women provides students with perspectives and voices that are often marginalized, ignored, or diminished, and also supports Black Canadian scholarship.

References

Baker-Bell, A., Stanbrough, R. J., & S. Everett (2017). The stories they tell: Mainstream media, pedagogies of healing, and critical media literacy. English Education, 49 (2), 130-152.

Crichlow, W. (2014). Weaponization & Prisonization of Toronto Black Youth. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3(3), 113–113. Retrieved from https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/issue/view/14

Das Gupta, T., James, C., Andersen, C., Galabuzi, G.E. and R. Maaka (2018). Race and Racialization: Essentail Readings (2nd ed). Canadian Scholars.

Dei, G. (2022). “Commentary on Part One: Why the Study of Blackness Is Critical at This Historical Juncture” (p. 17-22). In Ibrahim, A., T. Kitossa, M.S. Smith., and H.K. Wright (Eds.,) (2022). Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, Learning, and Researching While Black. University of Toronto Press.

Dei, G (2021, December 10th). A discussion on Race, Indigeneity and Anti-Colonial Education: Making Discursive Links. Distinguished Speaker Series in Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Pedagogies, hosted by the Office of the Vice-President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, University of Windsor.

Freire, P. (1996) Letters to Cristina. Routledge.

Ibrahim, A., T. Kitossa, M.S. Smith., and H.K. Wright (Eds.,) (2022). Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, Learning, and Researching While Black. University of Toronto Press.

Johnson, M. and F. Aladejebi (2022) Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History. University of Toronto Press.

Kendi, I. (2019). How To Be An Antiracist. Penguin Random House.

McKittrick, K. (2022). Black Studies is …The University of Western Ontario’s Antiracism Webinar Series.

Richards, D. (2021). Incorporating racial equity into trauma-informed care. Centre for Health Care Strategies. Available from: https://www.chcs.org/media/Brief-Incorporating-Racial-Equity-into-Trauma-Informed-Care.pdf