Black Canadian Research Articles

The Traumatizing Impact of Racism in Canadians of Colour.

Purpose of ReviewWhile research has identified racial trauma in other contexts, it is often overlooked amongst Canadian society. Racial trauma occurs as a result of an event of racism or cumulative events over time whereby an individual experiences stress and consequent mental health sequelae. Given that the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Colour) population in Canada is increasing, it is imperative to identify racial discrimination and the subsequent stress and trauma associated with being racialized in Canada, which subjects BIPOC Canadians to various forms of racism, including microaggressions.Recent FindingsThis paper reviews the published literature on racism and racial discrimination that identifies or infers racial trauma as the source of the mental health implications for various groups (e.g., Indigenous people, Black Canadians, Asian Canadians, immigrants, and refugees). In addition, intersectionality of racialized persons is prominent to their psychological well-being as their psychosocial and socioeconomic position are complex. Therefore, this paper both provides insight into the Canadian experience as a person of colour and signifies the need for further research on racial trauma in a Canadian context.SummaryDespite Canada’s emphasis on multiculturalism, racialized individuals are at risk for racial trauma due to prejudice and discrimination. The politicization of multiculturalism has permitted Canada to deny claims of racism, yet the historical basis of established institutions results in irrefutable systemic and systematic barriers for Canadian people of colour.

The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies by Tiffany Lethabo King

Reviewed by: The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies by Tiffany Lethabo King Mary McNeil (bio) The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies by Tiffany Lethabo King Duke University Press, 2019 IN THE BLACK SHOALS, Tiffany Lethabo King argues that although the transatlantic slave trade and Indigenous genocide are distinct phenomena within a larger violent "conquistador-settler" project, they "can never be bracketed . . . from one another" (xi, 200–201). Leading from this argument, King theorizes Black and Indigenous radical possibilities as co-constitutive, asserting that "the most radical of Black and Indigenous projects—abolition and decolonization—exceed the horizons of freedom currently imagined by a White leftist imaginary and discourses of settler colonialism" (208). Thus, King troubles Western epistemologies by staging a "multivoiced conversation" between Black studies and Native American and Indigenous studies (xiii). In order to grapple with Western constructions of the "human" as an ontological category that excludes Blackness and Indigeneity, King grounds The Black Shoals in the works of Black studies scholars such as Frank Wilderson, Sylvia Wynter, and Hortense Spillers. The Black Shoals is also heavily informed by analytics from the subfields of Caribbean and Black Canadian studies. Of particular significance are Kamau Brathwaite's "tidalectics," Édouard Glissant's "errantry," and Katherine McKittrick's "black Atlantic livingness," which challenge colonial models of rootedness, exile, and value. Next, King stages a conversation between Black studies and Native studies in order to "trace the contours of a shared speech" of conquest (21). Finally, King critiques the limited grammars that white-dominated knowledge fields use in conceptualizing genocide and slavery. This is the theoretical foundation upon which King analyzes cultural production. King's book is anchored by the analytic of the shoal. An ever-changing space where ocean and land meet just beyond the shore, King uses the shoal as a metaphor to describe the "liminal, indeterminate, and hard to map" conceptual space where Black studies and Native studies might be able to engage with one another on their own terms (3). King also conceives of the shoal in active terms, drawing upon the use of "shoal" as a verb that describes a ship's navigation of shallow and rocky terrain near a coast. To "shoal" is to carefully navigate a space that resists definite mapping. Thus, shoaling necessitates the careful creation of new language to describe the [End Page 152] interconnectedness of Black and Indigenous experiences of conquest, genocide, and slavery. While the first two chapters of The Black Shoals primarily critique conquistador-settler epistemologies, the latter three attend to the ways in which cultural producers imagine other possibilities for Black and Native people. Chapters 1 and 2 analyze the 2015 defacing of Boston's Christopher Columbus statue with red paint and a Black Lives Matter tag; Toni Morrison, Junot Díaz, and Leslie Marmon Silko's meditations on conquest; William Gerard de Brahm's "1757 Map of the Coast of South Carolina and Parts of Georgia"; and the correspondence of enslaver Eliza Lucas Pinckney. In looking at these disparate objects, King makes three primary arguments. First, King argues that a shared grammar of conquest is most apt in conceptualizing Native genocide and Black enslavement. Second, King critiques settler-colonial studies' framing of settler-colonialism as a "land-centered" rather than "genocide-centered" project, arguing that such framing obscures settler-colonialism's inherent violence (69). Third, King asserts that while the conquistador-settler marshaled cartography as a tool through which to rationalize the "crafting and sustaining of European human life and self-actualization through Black and Indigenous death," eighteenth-century maps and correspondence reveal the limits and anxieties of "conquistador humanism" (84). In the last three chapters, King returns to de Brahm's map and attends to four new cultural objects: Julie Dash's film, Daughters of the Dust; the film's literary sequel; Tiya Miles's novel, The Cherokee Rose; and Charmaine Lurch's sculpture, Revisiting Sycorax. King employs analytics of porosity, fugitivity, fungibility, erotics, and ceremony to analyze the ways that these artists imagine other possibilities for Black and Native people. Such possibilities are rooted in a disruption of labor as the "governing frame . . . for understanding Black embodiment on plantation...

Views on Access to Justice in Quebec

Aim/Purpose: Understanding how Black people view the justice system helps in identifying some areas of friction, and thereby provides critical insights into the measures needed to improve the working and management of the justice delivery process. Background: Access to justice is a fundamental Canadian value. However, evidence shows that Black and racialized communities have been facing systemic racism and discrimination in all forms, and in all phases of the justice system. There is a need to study critical information regarding the inadequacies of the justice system, how they affect Black people, and what can be done to bridge the gap between Black communities and government policies in Quebec. Methodology: Through systematic race-based data collection, this study examines the perception of racial discrimination law enforcement and courts among Black communities in Quebec. Using a total sample of ninety-three (N=93) Black respondents, the study sheds light on Black people perception to identify and respond to issues of social inequities, discrimination, and racism within Quebec society. Both Likert scale and open-ended questions were asked in order to measure perception of justice accessibility, respectful interaction with law enforcement, fair procedure and outcome, language and overall perception of the justice system. Findings: The findings indicate that respondents with personal experience with police officers are less likely perceive access to justice positively. Regardless of their demographic characteristics, the results of this study confirmed that Black people continue to experience various forms of injustice, discrimination, and unfair treatment in Quebec. Impact on Society: Racism affects Black Canadians at every step of the criminal justice system, from policing to pretrial detention to sentencing to prisons. To have a clearer picture of the extent and nature of anti-Black racism in the Canadian criminal justice system, the researchers adopted systematic race-based data collection. Studies similar to the current research are the key opportunity to address anti-Black racism in the justice system.

“They Just Dash Us to the Side”: Race, Gender, and Negotiating Access to Basketball Spaces

Using Black Feminist Theory and qualitative data gathered from 20 Black Canadian female U.S. athletic scholarship recipients, this article identifies race–gender barriers to accessing informal athletic spaces for athletic training such as recreation centers and public gyms. I argue that these access barriers are rooted in a sexist anti-Blackness, while also examining the resistance and navigational strategies employed by the participants such as playing back and avoidance and considering how those efforts often led to additional financial expense and psychological and navigational labor. In so doing, I elucidate how the race and gender of the participants intersected to create social and athletic experiences and opportunities that are distinct from existing dominant discourses in collegiate athlete research, which tend to center American and Black males, while often neglecting the specific and more granular experiences of Black (Canadian) female athletes.

The legacy of Angélique in late 20th-century Black Canadian drama

ABSTRACT This article examines the complex issue of Black heroism through the legacy of the figure of the enslaved Portuguese woman Angélique, who set Montreal on fire in 1734. It looks into how late-20th-century artists have engaged in recuperating this figure through the analysis of two specific iterations, the plays of Lorena Gale (Angélique, 1999) and George Elliott Clarke (Beatrice Chancy, 1999). The article contributes to critical readings to date in arguing that these texts represent the enslaved subject as agent and not as victim, in line with recent changes in Black historiography, and that they constitute cultural interventions that aim to bring into focus the still largely unaddressed history of Black enslavement in Canada. Further, it adds a consideration of the plays’ currency nowadays insofar as their plot and characterization stress continuities between past and present struggles against pervasive forms of anti-Black violence.

Resilience and Memory in the Poetics of Africadia: Sylvia D. Hamilton's And I Alone Escaped To Tell You

Sylvia D. Hamilton’s collection of poems And I Alone Escaped To Tell You (2014) revolves around the vindication of the little remembered legacy of slavery of Africadians – George Elliott Clarke’s neologism to refer to African Canadians from the Maritime provinces – which acts as a metaphor of the silenced history of Black Canadians. To do so, Hamilton relies on memory work through the lens of resilience and, hence, participates in the recent post-trauma paradigm that is intent on highlighting resistance rather than victimhood. Thus, the resilient memory that emerges from the collection dismisses the position of victims for Africadians and, contrarily, focuses on the capacity to ‘bounce back’, to withstand historical adversities, to endure by being malleable and to adapt to conditions of crisis. Simply put, this resilient memory acts in the poems as the dignified exercise to keep on reinstating and vindicating the silenced history of Black Canada.

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

Black Gold: A Black Feminist Art History of 1920s Montréal

The 1920s have been touted as the golden era of jazz and Black history in Montréal. Similarly, the decade is well known for the Harlem Renaissance, a key moment in African American art history. Yet this period in Black Canadian art histories remains largely unknown. As a first step toward shedding some light on this period in Black Canadian art history, I propose to use what I term a Black feminist art-historical (bfah) praxis to discuss some visual art practices undoubtedly active alongside well-known jazz musicians and cultural producers in 1920s Montréal. This paper presents an overview of critical race art history and feminist art history, as well as Black feminist approaches to visual representation, to outline what might be considered four tenets of bfah praxis. Applying these tenets, I propose that a new art history may emerge from well-known art objects and practices as well as lesser-known ones. I posit that through a deliberately bfah approach, new meanings emerge and the voices of Black women, even when obstructed by mainstream white narratives, may begin to stand out and shed light upon a variety of histories. This praxis aims to underline the subtext lurking at the edges of these images and to make intangible presences visible in the archive and in art history. I propose bfah as a strategy for more nuanced discussion of the work of Black Canadian artists and histories that have by and large been left out of official records.

Plant Stories are Love Stories Too: Moss + Curation

In 2020, after a year of dreaming, we officially embarked on the development of Moss Projects: Curatorial Learning + Research, an educational and philosophical space that aims at peeling away the colonial layers of the art museum, within the context of Turtle Island (now North America), to imagine something else. This initiative supports peer-to-peer pedagogies alongside Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour-led and allied inquiry and practices, valuing diverse knowledge systems and modes of organization beyond dominant parameters of curation, art, and art history. As white settler and Black Canadian curators, we are founding Moss Projects as a collaborative, reflexive, and praxis-based process, utilizing our professional resources for curatorial incubation and to establish spaces and mechanisms for sharing cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary methodologies.

Educating from Difference: Perspectives on Black Cultural Art Educators’ Experiences with Culturally Responsive Teaching

Since the 2009 Ontario Ministry’s Equity and Inclusive Education strategy called for the implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy across the board, the voice of the Black creative and content in arts curriculum remains invisible. This primary research centers on the perspectives of African, Caribbean, and Black artists called on for the first time to discuss the successes and challenges of teaching culturally responsive arts in diverse Ontario classrooms. This qualitative study uses critical race theory to examine their experiences of working in Greater Toronto schools and surrounding areas in Ontario, Canada. Using cultural arts from across the African diaspora as a tool, their artistic work is situated within culturally relevant pedagogy, which is an alternative approach to centering on identity, cultural frames of reference, and critical student learning. Yet, as these Black Canadian artists garner successful impacts from culturally responsive teaching in classroom space, they identify simultaneous challenges of institutional unpreparedness, anti-Black racism, cultural appropriation, and legitimizing their cultural artistry to school administration. Semi-structured interviews include rich narratives from artists specializing in contemporary and traditional expressions of orality, visual arts, dance, and drumming/percussion from the African diaspora. While navigating instances of unbelonging, recommendations are proposed to improve the understanding of the artists’ role and improve Canadian educational institutions’ relationship with Black creatives in inclusive education.

The True North Strong and Free? Casting Shadows on Whose History Students Learn in Canadian Universities

Race-based discrimination in Canada exists at the institutional and structural level. While acknowledging its existence is a crucial first step in eradicating this particular form of discrimination, an essential second step includes implementing structural changes at the institutional level in Canadian universities. In an effort to disrupt the Eurocentricity of knowledge production this commentary argues that the Canadian government’s official historical narrative that depicts Canada as being born of the pioneering spirit of British and French white settlers fails to capture the actual history of the country. Rather, it fosters the continuation of the supremacy of whiteness thereby causing significant harm through the perpetuation of racial bias. We argue that the history and contributions of Indigenous, Black, and Chinese Canadians, all of whom were in this country prior to confederation, should be told in a mandatory university course. Our findings indicate that while a number of universities have individual courses, usually electives and some graduate degrees on Indigenous, Black, and Chinese history, there is little offered from the Canadian context and certainly nothing that is a mandatory course requirement. In addition, we suggest compulsory university staff-wide anti-racism training; the ongoing hiring of professors and sessional instructors who are racially representative of the population of Canada; and community outreach, mentorship, and counselling programs that are designed to help students who are underrepresented in Canadian universities. In our opinion, we believe that these changes have the potential to provide a lens to disrupt settler colonial spaces, mobilize race in academic curricula, and encourage social justice actions that can offer a more inclusive learning environment.

But How?

Abstract Overexposed famous histories of Black people in the West often lead to mainstream oversimplification, relegate racial tensions to the past or elsewhere, and label them a closed chapter. These histories produce curated, uncontextualized grand narratives. The Canadian sport context is particularly fertile ground to explore the silencing of Blackness in national public histories. For instance, Jackie Robinson's 1946 debut with the Montreal Royals was more than the sanitized Canada-the-good moment reflected in Heritage Minutes. While shortened histories can be useful portals into complex sociohistorical narratives for the public, left to themselves, they deny complexity, often for political purposes. I argue that history of sport scholars need to be deliberate in publicly underscoring the “seriousness” of sport, not by themselves, but as a collective. This means more involvement in public sport history to provide an often-missing critical perspective. There are a variety of methods at historians’ disposal to begin working in tandem with each other and with other nonacademic stakeholders invested in public sport history. Using a Black Canadian lens, this essay adds a currently absent perspective to the discussion of the state of public sport history to illustrate directions for an enhanced presence of the work of historians of sport outside academia. I discuss best practices using examples of some historians’ efforts to provide critical, intersectional, and visible counternarratives alongside various other sport stakeholders, from journalists to halls of fame, and through multiple formats.

Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty

As part of a collective thinking project, article proposes that all Black Canadians move to Nova Scotia to set up a decolonial, anti-racist, non-patriarchal, abolitionist settlement. Recognizing the denial of the right to collective self-determination for Black Canadians, this article explores how Black Canadians can work in solidarity with Indigenous solidarity movements to correct the injustices of settler-colonialism.

How African Nova Scotians envision culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy as civic repair

African Nova Scotians constitute the largest multigenerational Black Canadian community, with 400 years of presence in Atlantic Canada. Despite the end of de jure school segregation in 1954, African Nova Scotians’ social and cultural capital were not incorporated in curricular and pedagogical practices. Using the theoretical framework of cultural trauma, this article draws from a qualitative study conducted using semi-structured interviews and focus groups with sixty participants. A cultural trauma process takes place after a traumatic event and involves a cycle of meaning-making and interpretation that can result in demands for reparation or civic repair. This study illustrates how through the cultural trauma process grounded in their collective memory, African Nova Scotians articulate an aspiration for culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy as a form of civic repair. This transformative pedagogy would facilitate a reconnection with their heritage and a fulfilment of the democratic goals of public education.

The Influence of Mass Media and Pop-culture on Young Heterosexual African, Caribbean, and Black Canadian (ACB) Men in Windsor, Ontario

Mass media and pop culture have contributed to unhealthy sexualities and irresponsible sexual behaviors. In these platforms, casual sex is normalized while minimizing its serious social and health consequences. Sexual contents and activities hype unhealthy sexual attitudes, which feed into African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) men’s stereotypes as hyper-sexualized, irresponsible, reckless, and incapable of dealing with issues affecting their health. Based on 3 focus group discussions with 31 self-identified heterosexual ACB men, aged 16 years and above, the paper explores how mass media and pop-culture have impacted young heterosexual ACB men's social, and sexual attitudes and behaviors in Windsor, Ontario. The results suggest that exposure to sexual content and materials influence unhealthy and irresponsible sexual behaviors, especially among young heterosexual ACB men. Also, the negative portrayal of ACB men in the media and pop culture define and shape how ACB men conduct themselves.

Actions needed to promote health equity and the mental health of Canada’s Black refugees

ABSTRACT Objectives The overall goal was to synthesize knowledge on actions that need to be taken to promote health equity and the mental health of Black refugees in Canada. Design Group concept mapping systems were applied to generate and organize action-oriented statements related to the different social determinants of health. A total of 174 participants from the cities of Calgary and Edmonton with experience working with Black Canadians participated in four focus groups: (a) 2 focus groups that engaged 123 participants in brainstorming 84 statements guided by the following focus prompt: ‘A specific action that would improve the mental health equity of Black refugees living in Canada is … ’ and (b) 2 focus groups of 51 participants who sorted the generated statements and rated them by order of ‘importance’ and ‘ideas seen in action.’ Data was further computed and analysed by the research team and a select advisory group from the participants. Results A 10-cluster map generated included the following clusters: (1) promoting cultural identity, (2) promoting ways of knowing, (3) addressing discrimination and racism, (4) addressing the criminalization of Black Canadians, (5) investing in employment for equity, (6) promoting equity in housing, (7) facilitating self-determination, (8) improving (public) services, (9) promoting appropriate and culturally relevant mental health services, and (10) working with and addressing faith and belief related issues. Clusters 4 and 9 ranked as the most important clusters in promoting health equity and the mental health of Black Canadians. Conclusions Addressing the criminalization of Black Canadians through a range of rehumanizing interventions at institutional levels will provide a platform from which they can participate and engage others in developing appropriate and culturally relevant mental health services.

Ethnoracial Differences in Coercive Referral and Intervention Among Patients With First-Episode Psychosis.

Using a retrospective sample, the authors sought to determine whether Black patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) in Canada were at a higher risk for coercive referral and coercive intervention than non-Black patients with FEP. Retrospective data from patients referred to an FEP program in 2008-2018 were collected via chart review (N=208). The authors used chi-square and logistic regression analyses to explore the relationships among race-ethnicity, diagnosis of psychosis, and coercive referral and intervention. Results showed that Black persons of Caribbean or African descent with FEP were significantly more likely to be coercively referred (χ2=9.24, df=2, p=0.010) and coercively treated (χ2=9.21, df=2, p=0.010) than were non-Black individuals with FEP. Age and violent or threatening behavior were predictors of coercive referral. Ethnoracial status, age, and violent or threatening behavior were predictors of coercive intervention. This study contributes to the dearth of research on Black Canadians and offers insight into factors that may place patients with FEP at risk for coercive treatment. More research is needed to explore the role that ethnoracial status may play in hospital admissions and to uncover the role of racial prejudices in the assessment of danger.

Afroperipheral indigeneity in Wayde Compton’s The Outer Harbour

Black Canadian writer Wayde Compton’s short story collection The Outer Harbour (2015) is located in the Afroperiphery of British Columbia which stands as a ‘contact zone’ that enables the alliances between Black and Indigenous peoples and also establishes a fecund ground of possibilities to emphasize the way in which cross-ethnic coalitions and representations reconsider imperial encounters previously ignored. The stories participate in the recent turn in Indigenous studies towards kinship and cross-ethnicity to map out the connected and shared itineraries of Black and Indigenous peoples and re-read Indigeneity in interaction. At the same time, the stories offer a fresh way to revisit Indigeneity in Canada through the collaborative lens and perspective of the Afroperipheral reality. In doing so, they contribute to calling attention to current cross-ethnic struggles for Indigenous rights and sovereignty in Canada that rely on kinship and ethnic alliances to keep on interrogating the shortcomings of the nation’s multiculturalism.

"Finding my Blackness, Finding my Rhythm": Music and Identity Development in African, Caribbean, and Black Emerging Adults.

This study examines how music functions in relation to identity development for African-, Caribbean- and Black-identified emerging adults who have immigrated to Canada. Eleven ACB-identified emerging adults, recruited from music schools, community, and student organizations took part in semi-structured interviews adapted from McAdams’ Life Story Interview protocol to focus on music practices and memories. Thematic Analyses results suggest that transitioning to life in Canada necessitated learning new meanings of being and “becoming” Black. Participants described the influence of music on negotiating identity in a Canadian context. They described using music to resist racist and hegemonic narratives of Canadian Black identity, to connect to and celebrate their embodied Black identities, and establish self-continuity and coherence across histories and generations to connect with spiritual memories, land, and ancestors. We conclude by suggesting implications of this work for practice and developing research methodologies that resist whiteness.

Prevalence and Effects of Daily and Major Experiences of Racial Discrimination and Microaggressions among Black Individuals in Canada.

The prevalence and correlates of different forms of racial discrimination among Black Canadians are unknown. This article aims to examine the prevalence of different forms of racial discrimination (daily, major and microaggressions) and their association with self-esteem and satisfaction with life among Black Canadians. A convenience sample of 845 Black Canadians aged 15-40 was recruited. We assessed frequencies of everyday and major racial discrimination, and racial microaggressions against Black Canadians and their association with self-esteem and satisfaction with life, controlling for gender, age, job status, education, and matrimonial status. At least 4 out of 10 participants declared having being victims of everyday racial discrimination at least once per week. Between 46.3% and 64.2% of participants declared having been victims of major racial discrimination in various situations including education, job hiring, job dismissal, health services, housing, bank and loans, and police encounters. Significant gender differences were observed for everyday and major racial discrimination with higher frequencies among female participants. A total of 50.2% to 93.8% of participants declared having been victims of at least one episode of racial microaggressions. Results showed a significant negative association between racial discrimination and satisfaction with life (b = -0.26, p = .003), and self-esteem (b = -0.23, p = .009). This study highlights the need to stop colorblind policies in different sectors in Canada, and for a public commitment to combat racism at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Implications are discussed for prevention, research and public health.