At an Elite University
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BLACK RACIALIZATION AND RESISTANCE AT AN ELITE UNIVERSITY rosalind hampton BLACK RACIALIZATION AND RESISTANCE AT AN ELITE UNIVERSITY The presence and experiences of Black people at elite universities have been largely underrepresented or erased from institutional histories. In Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University, rosalind hampton documents narratives that span half a century and that reflect differ- ences in class, gender, and national identifications among Black schol- ars. By mapping Black people’s experiences of studying and teaching at McGill University, hampton reveals how the “whiteness” of the uni- versity both includes and exceeds the racial identities of students and professors. The study highlights the specific functions of Blackness and of anti-Blackness within society in general and within the institution of higher education in particular, demonstrating how structures and prac- tices of the university reproduce interlocking systems of oppression that uphold racial capitalism, reproduce colonial relations, and pro- mote settler nationalism. Critically engaging the work of Black learn- ers, academics, organizers, and activists within this dynamic political context, this book underscores the importance of Black Studies across North America. rosalind hampton is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. ROSALIND HAMPTON Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2020 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978- 1- 4875- 0438- 0 (cloth) ISBN 978- 1- 4875- 3005- 1 (EPUB) ISBN 978- 1- 4875- 2486- 9 (paper) ISBN 978- 1- 4875- 3004- 4 (PDF) _____________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Black racialization and resistance at an elite university / rosalind hampton. Names: hampton, rosalind, 1966– author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200158848 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200158910 | ISBN 9781487524869 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487504380 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781487530051 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487530044 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: College students, Black – Québec (Province) – Montréal. | LCSH: College teachers, Black – Québec (Province) – Montréal. | LCSH: McGill University – Students. | LCSH: McGill University – Faculty. | LCSH: Blacks – Study and teaching (Higher) – Québec (Province) – Montréal. | LCSH: Discrimination in higher education – Québec (Province) – Montréal. | LCSH: Educational sociology – Québec (Province) – Montréal. | LCSH: Race relations. Classification: LCC LC212.43.C23 M6643 2020 | DDC 378.1/982996071427–dc23 ___________________________________________________________________________________ CC-BY-NC-ND This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative License. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact University of Toronto Press. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support from the University of Toronto Libraries in making the open access version of this title available. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents Acknowledgments vii Prelude 3 Finding a Conversation 6 “Becoming” an Activist 7 1 Introduction: The University as a Site of Struggle 12 Settler Colonialism and Education: A Brief Overview 15 The Canadian University 17 Whose University? The 1960s 20 Black Educational Activism and Black (Canadian) Studies 22 Neoliberalism and the University 26 Critical Race Counter- Storytelling 28 2 Colonial Legacies and Canadian Ivy 32 Meeting James McGill 33 Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Economy 36 The University and Its Sponsors 40 McGill Lineage 42 3 Trying to Keep Canada White and the Power to Write History 45 McGill and the Modernization of Québec 47 Anticolonial Resistance and Black Power 49 “That … Statue” 58 Conclusion: On a Critical Engagement with History 62 4 The Idealized Elite University 66 Class and Class- Mindedness 70 The McGill Bubble: A “Sea of Whiteness” 75 “White Hallways” by Cora- Lee Conway 83 The Professoriate 84 vi Contents On Mentorship and Academic “Expertise” 88 The Power of the Prof 97 Conclusion: Expectations Meet Experience 102 5 Being and Becoming Black 104 A Word on Whiteness 105 Socialization in a Culture of Whiteness 106 Naming Race and Racism 107 “I Didn’t Know I Was Black” 111 Black Canadian “Identity Problems” 113 Managing Interlocking Stereotype Threats 116 Construction Work 121 Black as in Radical, Radical as in Rooted 125 Community and Communing 131 Conclusion: Navigating and Resisting Racialization and Colonial Ideology 133 6 Academic Service and Resistance within the Neoliberal University 136 “Diversity and Equity” Work 138 Hiring Committees 143 The Africana Studies Committee 148 Conclusion: Towards Informed Decision Making 153 Final Thoughts 157 Notes 161 Bibliography 181 Index 213 Acknowledgments I am thankful to University of Toronto Press for recognizing the impor- tance of the issues discussed in this book, and especially to the editors at UTP who worked on the manuscript throughout the publishing pro- cess. The research presented in this book was supported by funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. The book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The people I interviewed for this work generously shared experi- ences and insights that recalled painful, humorous, infuriating, and inspiring memories and events. I am deeply grateful to all of them for their enthusiastic participation and the candid conversations we had. Their narratives have been crucial to the analysis developed here; their voices remain central to this book and the story it tells about Black racialization and resistance in Canadian academia. This book is also informed by my experiences over several decades as a community worker, educator, and activist in Montreal. I am deeply grateful to all of the many friends and comrades in that city with whom I have organized, theorized, played, created, taken to the streets, claimed spaces, linked arms, held hands, and yelled at the top of our lungs for a better world. I especially want to thank Cora, Sunci, Fernanda, Pattie, Mona, Robin, Ron, Hesser, Michelle, and Tameem for keeping me so full of love and light. This book was brought to fruition during a period of personal and career transitions throughout which I have been espe- cially and enormously grateful to have such caring, brilliant, creative, funky, legit friends. I continue to be guided by the love and politics of my mother Judy, and am thankful to my father Robert Earl Hampton for his constant encouragement. My son Tyson’s strength and creativity viii Acknowledgments are unending sources of inspiration to me, as are the love and support of my sister Margot, who always keeps it real and gets me to laugh harder than is humanly possible. My work is deeply indebted to many scholars, artists, and activists who have been doing Black Studies and critiquing social relations in and around Canadian universities for much longer than I have, and my gratitude extends to all of these people for their tireless work and refusal to be deterred. I thank Adelle Blackett, Aziz Choudry, Grace-Edwar d Galabuzi, Annette Henry, Carl James, Charmaine Nelson, Khalid Medani, and many members of the Black Canadian Studies Association who offered me critical feedback and encouragement as I pursued the research that informs this book. I especially want to acknowledge and thank my comrade- colleague and co- conspirator Michelle Hartman for her relentlessly generous mentorship, encouragement, and engage- ment with this and all of my academic work over the past several years. I am also indebted to Abby Lippman, who read and offered me invalu- able feedback on early parts of this work, and knew before I did that one day it would become a book and I would become a professor. We miss you so, so much, Abby. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the colleagues and graduate students who have welcomed me to the University of Toronto. My special thanks to Marcus Singleton and Cherie A. Daniel for reading this manuscript as I prepared it for publishing, and to all of the graduate students of Black Studies with whom I am teaching and learning and imagining that another university is possible. BLACK RACIALIZATION AND RESISTANCE AT AN ELITE UNIVERSITY Prelude “Why do you want to go to that white school and try to impress those white people?” a young person challenged me. I had just told him about my acceptance into a doctoral program at McGill University. I pushed back that according to his argument, we might just as easily ask why we live in this white province, or in this white country. “Yeh, why do we live here?” the youth interjected.