(BCS1) Black Skin/White students: Black and racialized faculty members teaching about race and anti-racism in predominantly White university classrooms.

This panel will explore the experiences of Black and racialized faculty members teaching about race and racism in predominantly White university classrooms. In the current post-George Floyd context, there is a backlash against ‘wokeness’ by conservative and right wing individuals and groups who attack racialized and Black faculty for teaching Critical Race Theory or engaging in critical discussions about race and racism. Black and racialized faculty members often face reprisals in the form of lower student evaluations, complaints to the administration, or social media attacks. Using a theoretical grounding in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and intersectionality theory, panelists will discuss the challenges and opportunities that they face as Black/racialized bodies in overwhelmingly White spaces. Critical race theory is a helpful theoretical lens to understand educational praxis contexts. Critical race theorists adopt a position known as ‘racial realism’ which holds that racism is a means by which societies allocate privilege and status (Delgado et al., 2017). CRT recognizes that education systems are far from race-neutral (Crenshaw, 2011; Delgado et al., 2017; Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2010; Goldberg, 2009; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Intersectionality provides a wider theoretical lens to examine the multiple intersecting identities of Black/racialized faculty (Collins, 2000). This panel will offer insights and promising practices to engender greater institutional support for Black/racialized faculty teaching White students about race and racism.

Organizer: Alana Butler, Queen's University; Chair: Alana Butler, Queen's University

Presentations

Amos Nkrumah, Mount Royal University

Journey of developing and teaching the Sociology of Black and African Canadians at Mount Royal University

The introduction of Black/African Studies in Canadian post-secondary institutions reflects a growing recognition of the importance of the historical and contemporary issues related to the Black or African experience and the contributions of Black communities in Canada. The urgent call for the inclusion of Black Studies in Canadian universities and colleges is part of a broader global movement towards acknowledging and integrating diverse perspectives within academic curricula, which has been dominated by Anglo/Franco ideology and culture. The historical accounts about Blacks/Africans have, in many situations, been framed through a colonial lens, ignoring and downplaying the rich histories of Blacks/African civilizations. Furthermore, the history of the African diaspora, including the transatlantic slave trade, has, on numerous occasions, been oversimplified and inadequately represented, leading to a limited understanding of the complex impact on Black communities. Introducing and expanding Black and African studies in post-secondary institutions in Canada would help correct these anomalies. As scholars argued, Black/African studies strengthen knowledge about African history and foster a worldview that values community, the reality of African people, and an innovative interpretation of the modern issues confronting people of African origin in contemporary Canadian society (Dei, 1994; Ginwright, 2004; Asante, 2008). This presentation aims to recount a personal journey and lived experiences in developing a first course, “The Sociology of Black and African Canadians at Mount Royal University,” and teaching the course. The following areas would be covered – the process and development of the course/course outline, teaching the course, and engagement/interactions with students in and outside the classroom. I argue that the ultimate purpose of teaching Black/African studies is to rectify historical omissions and interrupted history about Blacks/Africans and provide a more comprehensive understanding of Blacks/Africans and their lived experiences.

Giselle Thompson, University of Alberta; Sterling Tong, University of Alberta

Groundings With My Students: Teaching and Learning Black Studies in Education in the Prairies

This paper uses a collective autoethnography (CoAE) (Noel et al., 2023) framework, to delineate the distinctive ethos of the inaugural Black Studies in Education (BSE) graduate seminar in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta (U of A) in Fall 2023. Because Walter Rodney’s (1969; 2019) “groundings was the pedagogical praxis deployed in this course (Vaught, 2015), it will be invoked theoretically (Bogues, 2009) to explain how BSE “offers glimpses into the transformative power of the field to… serve as a means of empowering people to build the world we need” (Roane, 2017, para. 3). We, the authors, will draw from students’ written reflections on the course, in which they were invited to describe their respective experiences navigating the course materials, the instructor who was a Black woman, the “groundings” pedagogical approach, their fellow students, the course location (the U of A), and broader social and political Prairie, Canadian, and international contexts. The reflective journey addresses students’ knowledge of Black Studies prior to enrolling in BSE, resonant course topics, readings, and theories. Each student was invited to consider their race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender in undertaking this task. The reflections explore the implications of engaging in critical Black study, emphasizing its significance for future praxes as educators, academics, and human beings. The paper will also reckon with the timing of the inaugural BSE course – the post-George Floyd moment/a Black cohort hiring initiative/neoliberal budget cutbacks – and the institutional support that the instructor received/did not receive to develop it. To do this, we will draw from critical race (Delgado, 1995; Delgado and Stefancic, 2012) and intersectionality (Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) theories. The transformative potential of the discipline of Black Studies, and its seminal role in empowering individuals to shape a more equitable world (Kelley, 2002, 2018; Wynter, 1994), will be delineated as a means of countering the embeddedness of anti-Black racism in the white academic landscape. For this reason, we present our case for BSE to be made a permanent course in the Faculty of Education.

Jennifer Ma, McMaster University; Maimuna Khan, McMaster University; Ameil Joseph, McMaster University; Chelsea Gabel, McMaster University

Dismantling white supremacy in academia: Addressing postsecondary education's capacity for implementing anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies

Both anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies involve deconstructing Eurocentric knowledge production and amplifying knowledge from the Global South, which have been largely excluded by modernity and coloniality. Generally, in post-secondary education there is growing discourse around decolonizing the academy and anti-racist movements with little tangible follow through. Existing research has demonstrated that educators express racist attitudes and beliefs and often uphold systemic racism in their work. Many anti-racist and decolonial actions within the academy have been reactionary (Gaudry and Lorenz, 2018) and tokenized (Moosavi, 2020). What remains unknown is the broader knowledge landscape regarding anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies, programs, and practices that educators engage with to contribute to efforts to dismantle white supremacy and to shift the dynamics of privilege and marginalization. A knowledge synthesis (KS) research project was conducted to bridge this knowledge gap. This KS seeks to respond to the contradictions within theory, pedagogy and practice that are complicit with and perpetuate systemically racist outcomes in the world. The scoping review utilized the framework by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) and PRISMA-ScR reporting guidelines (Peters et al., 2020; Tricco et al., 2018). It is anticipated that the findings will guide and inform public and educational policy and practice, including promoting a true decolonial and anti-racist learning environment, which can extend beyond the classroom into communities and society at large while increasing the level of participation, representation, and knowledge sharing within the academy. The findings demonstrate that the main characteristics across the pedagogies include decentering dominant discourses, disrupting hierarchical power relations, relationality, reflexivity, intentionality, and creativity. The extant literature emphasized that anti-racist and decolonial work is for all administrators, educators, and learners. Furthermore, white supremacy, whiteness, settler colonialism, and racism must be named and discussed with the intent of dismantling systems of oppression. Universities need to shift from performative, surface level changes to structural and systemic change supporting implementation while participating in accountability processes. The workshop will focus on some of the high-level findings for context, but will primarily focus on some of the institutional, instructor and student barriers that prevent this work from prevailing. Participants will engage in critical discussions about experiences implementing anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies through participatory, experiential activities that can be used in the classroom and university. Folx will be invited to join an emailing list which will let people know when an open-access database is ready, which contains the bibliographical information for the articles included in the scoping review. It is hoped that this resourced will be continually updated and used as a method for researching anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies.

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Non-presenting authors: Corrine Bent-Womack, University of Toronto; James Esemu-Ezewu, McMaster University; Hani Rukh E Qamar, McGill University; Xin Huang, McMaster University; Vanessa Maradiaga Rivas, McMaster University; Aasiya Satia, McMaster University; Ayat Salih, McMaster University