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Home , Black Canadians, Nita Barrow

Teaching Black (s) Across Borders: Insights from the and United States

Amoaba Gooden and Charmaine Crawford

Amoaba Gooden, Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University [email protected]

Charmaine Crawford, Institute of Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit, University of West Indies at Cavehill, [email protected]

Abstract This article offers two unique and overlapping perspectives that explore the challenges and practices faced when teaching and researching Canada from the Caribbean and the United States. Acknowledging that curriculum, which ontologically and epistemologically influences the norms and values of the learning environment, is not a neutral document (Ross 2001, 1) the authors focus on how they enact curricula outside of Canada to discuss issues of rights and diversity as well as to challenge hegemonic narratives of white Canadian nation-building and historiography and ideas of Canada as a benevolent nation-state. Specifically, the authors examine (1) the ways in which assumptions about power and privilege play out in the classroom by either reinforcing or challenging established North/South relations; (2) how the black Canadian experience can be used to disrupt the U.S. black nationalist discourse and allow for an elaboration of the black or ; (3) how dominant notions of gender, race and sexuality are articulated differently outside a Canadian landscape; and (4) Canadian-Caribbean relations when it comes to teaching and learning across borders through student exchange programmes.

nationalist discourses, whether purported by t the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh on politicians like Mr. Harper, by the media or by the A general public, construct the Canadian experience September 25, 2009, Prime Minister Stephen as a celebration of diversity in which differences Harper declared that : "... have no appear to be genuinely embraced by many. This history of colonialism. So we have all of the idea of a benevolent, tolerant Canada effectively things that many people admire about the great minimizes and/or negates altogether the roles that powers but none of the things that threaten or historic colonization and racism have played in bother them” (Ljungren np). This racial erasure shaping social norms and institutions in Canada, or “white washing” of Canadian history makes it whether in politics, employment, the criminal difficult to discuss, let alone historicize, the past justice system, or education. Accordingly, and present racial, ethnic and cultural inequalities through “acts of symbolic and physical that emerged out of sixteenth- and seventeenth- displacement, official Canadian cultural century French and British colonization and led discourses orchestrate and limit” how ‘otherness’ to the systematic importation, domination, can be rhetorically presented in Canada (Harris exploitation and oppression of African, First 367). If the ‘otherness’ or the ‘othering’ of non- Nations and other people of colour living inside white groups has a historical, political and even and outside the Canadian nation. Hegemonic

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corporeal significance in relation to how black simultaneous and sometimes spontaneous within, Canadians are delegitimized as second-class and also beyond, nations and borders. In other citizens, then it is only reasonable to question words, we acknowledge that who we are impacts how knowledge is produced, transferred and what we bring to the classroom and therefore the taught about black Canadian experience across, kind of questions we ask our students. Carney, and beyond, Canadian borders. Sligh et al (2012) state that, “as a strategy of allowing a multiplicity of feminisms inside and This article offers two unique and outside the classroom, transnational feminism overlapping perspectives that explore the focuses on the intersections of gender, race, challenges and practices we face as scholars when sexuality and oppression within and beyond teaching and researching Canada from the borders of the nation-state. It demonstrates to Caribbean and the United States. Acknowledging students that patriarchy [and], in a variety of that curriculum, which ontologically and modalities, operates within a world system forged epistemologically influences the norms and by the ties of global capital, colonialism and values of the learning environment, is not neutral economic exploitation” (136). (Ross 1), we discuss how we enact curricula outside of Canada to engage students in issues of Hence, our role as educators in teaching rights and diversity and encourage them to about Black Canada from the Caribbean and the challenge the hegemonic narratives of white U. S. is to encourage learning on multiple levels, Canadian nation-building, historiography and while using our power in the classroom “in the ideas of Canada as a benevolent nation- interest of democratic life” (Rodrigues et al 97). state. Specifically, we examine three aspects of Alexander reminds us that feminists teach our teaching: one, assumptions of power and everywhere and in multiple spaces, even in privilege and how these ideas play out in the “makeshift classrooms” (8). She finds value in classroom by either reinforcing or challenging teaching about the spiritual, sexual and sacred as established North/South relations; two, how we a liberatory exercise rooted in cultural resistance, use the black Canadian experience to disrupt U.S. especially for women and men of African black nationalist discourse and allow for an descent. Therefore, our post-colonial and elaboration of the black or African diaspora; and diasporic realities disrupt any fixity of our three, the ways in which dominant notions of positions in time and space. This can be liberating gender, race and class are articulated differently as well as demanding, because there is a constant outside a Canadian landscape and the impact this positioning within varying struggles against has on Canadian-Caribbean relations when it racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism and the comes to teaching and learning across borders. like within divergent colonial and post-colonial, This discussion is informed by our own unique and modern and post-modern, modalities within perspectives: while we are both Caribbean-born globalization. and raised in Canada, one of us now teaches in the Caribbean while the other is based in the In discussing black feminist knowledge United States. and transversal politics, Hill-Collins notes that “despite the tensions between sameness (race/gender intersections) and difference (class, Transnational Black Feminist citizenship, sexuality and age) which distinguish the experiences of black women in the Caribbean, Epistemologies and Pedagogies the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, it is important that women of African As educators employing descent remain differentially placed within an transnational/black feminist pedagogies in overarching transnational content characterized different places, there is this constant sense of by a global gendered apartheid” (249). So while contesting linear modes of knowing and we find it necessary to pay attention to the belonging. We understand our realities as being similarities of the global black experiences, we mediated by many different entry points that are also consider the specificity of differences within

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these experiences. Paying attention to people of African descent. However, contrary to particularities allows us to call attention to power popular belief, this act did not ban but differences within and among various global instead left the slave-owning legislators black communities as well as between other unaffected and only freed the children of communities of colour (Mohanty 516). In enslaved Africans—and then only after they situating the classroom discourse around these reached the age of 25. The passages of this bill set facts we are then able to discuss the interlocking the course for an ideological split between a free system of imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy Canada and a slave-holding, oppressive United (Hill-Collins 273; Mohanty 509). For instance, States. race and class are interlocking variables that affect the type of illnesses that disproportionately In addition to the above, the passing by impact the health (cardiovascular, for example) the United States Congress of the notorious of in Canada and the United States Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, the as well as their accessibility to affordable abolition of slavery throughout the British healthcare (Mikkonen and Raphael 47). Empire in 1833, and narratives of the time such as A North-Side View of Slavery and Cary’s 1852 article, Plea For Emigration Canada and the Geopolitics of or Notes of Canada West, all supported this notion of Canada as a haven by comparing the Power and Privilege: living and social conditions of enslaved Africans Problematizing Established North/ living in the with those of South Relations free Africans living in Canada. Such narratives told black Americans that white Canadians were “Canada’s expansion of capital into the not racist, but were merely indifferent to blacks. Caribbean, Africa and Latin America … has As blacks, both free and slaves alike, heard or intensified during recent period due to amplified read about the “Promised Land” they imagined a neoliberal global capitalism” (Gordon 2010). potential “haven” north of the border (see Bramble 1988; Drew 1854; Shadd 1852; Through a geopolitical matrix of Alexander and Avis Glaze 1996; Hill domination, Canada is often regarded as a 1984).Constructions such as these allowed secondary world power that helps with missions Canada “to enjoy a reputation of generosity and of peace and stability across the globe as political neutrality said to be unparalleled compared to its militarized dominant southern elsewhere in the Western hemisphere” (Chancy neighbour, the United States. What is often left 97). out of this narrative is Canada’s asymmetrical neo-colonial relationship with some Caribbean Few Canadians recognize that the and Latin American nations. Myriam J.A Chancy contemporary image of Canada postulated (1997) points out that those who work at through the media by the Canadian government is constructing Canada’s image project the notion of a myth, because Canada, while known for its Canada as accepting, open and non-racist humanitarianism, equal rights, and social throughout the world. Relative to Americans, welfarism, continues to be an imperial power that Canadians have long enjoyed their country’s is an active member of the Group of Eight (G-8). international reputation of generosity when it In this forum of the world's most industrialized comes to people of colour. Tales of Canada as a economies, Canada consistently ranks in the top ‘haven’ for those in search of refuge are told as 10-12 investors (see Gordon 2010). Mohanty’s though they represent normal, everyday, un- reworking of Arif Dirlik’s conceptualization of a pathological acts of a healthy, humanitarian North/South dynamic is helpful in understanding Canadian culture. This emergence of Canada's how nations such as Canada and the United States benevolent image can be traced back to the 1700s represent the North, while the Caribbean, Africa and the passing of the 1793 anti-slavery bill, and Latin America represent the South. As legislation which limited the enslavement of Mohanty reminds us, the concept of North and

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South is a “metaphorical rather than geographical institutions have found ways to increase their distinction, where North refers to the pathways of investment and profit margin in the region. transnational capital and South to the marginalized poor of the world regardless of Teaching about this positioning of geographical distinction” (Mohanty 505). In Canada is particularly important because it teaching about the North/South operative, we counters the idea of a benevolent and juxtaposed it against the quality of life for most multicultural Canada that precludes racism. blacks who live in the North (i.e. Canada and the American students rarely think of Canada, and if U.S) who often have a better quality of life asked to, they can barely express how and what compare to blacks who live in the South (i.e. they think of Canada. For some, words such as Caribbean, Latin America and Africa). Yet, “nice,” “clean,” and/or “safe,” come to mind. within these Northern places, when compared to This is the benign and harmless image of Canada whites, people of African descent and Indigenous that is often promulgated across the globe. In populations suffer from economic and political teaching Canada, we find the need to spend some marginalization. time unraveling Canada’s carefully constructed image of a non-imperialist, peace-keeping In teaching Canada, we explore the country. Todd Gordon’s book, Imperialist geopolitics of power and privilege and their Canada (2010), is useful in the classroom as it impact on people of African descent and people provides a structure for discussion on the ways in of colour, both locally and internationally. For which Canada operates as an imperial and example, we explore Canadian insurgency in colonial power in its empire-building initiatives. Afghanistan and Canada’s participation in the Students are shown examples of Canada’s kidnapping and expulsion of Jean-Bertrand disinvestment in local communities, such as in Aristide in Haiti, in addition to its aggressive in Halifax, N.S., the foreign policy based on the interest of the ruling Corridor in , O.N., and the oppressive class. Canada’s expansion of capital into the treatment of Canadians of colour and First Caribbean, Africa and Latin America, Nations peoples by depriving them of land and particularly in banking and mining, has recently resources.1 In addition, students are given intensified due to amplified neoliberal global examples of how Canadian-based multinational capitalism (see Gordon 2010; Smith 2015). Two corporations also sustain unequal and of the largest banks in the Caribbean region, for exploitative relations in places such as the example, include Scotiabank and the Royal Bank. Caribbean, Latin America and Africa. The financial preponderance that Canada has in the region may make it difficult for local capital In taking up the North/South discourse in to emerge and fully develop. A “Caribbean the U.S., it is important that African American Program” is administered through Foreign students think through what their relationship is Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, which to blacks in other places. In utilizing the maps out Canada’s economic partnership with North/South treatise in teaching, students are The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in given the opportunity to reflect on their social promoting sustainable economic growth in the positions in relation to power and privilege and region through typical neo-liberal measures. also consider how their geographical dominance “Canada-CARICOM trade has more than impacts blacks in other parts of the world. Blacks doubled over the past decade, from $1.0 billion to in Canada and the United States, as citizens of the $2.5 billion” (CIDA 1). However, through typical epicenters of capitalist power, benefit from the neo-liberal measures, the economies of international affluence, power and privilege of CARICOM countries continue to struggle under the nation state, even though they are politically the weight of debt, Structural Adjustment marginalized communities within these nations. Programs (SAPs), unemployment and Students are asked to consider how they may undiversified contracted markets. At the same encounter marginalization similar to what blacks time, the Canadian state and corporate face in other places.

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Since education has also been a vehicle Disrupting U.S. Exceptionalism in through which Canada has promoted its dominant nationalistic interests, it is imperative that student the American Classroom are given the opportunity to explore its Reflections of Amoaba’s Teaching hegemonic impact. The institutionalization of Experience Canadian missionary education was purposefully racist and sexist in its aim to supposedly civilize “Black Canada barely appears on the non-white men and women through Eurocentric itineraries of African Diaspora and Pan-African patriarchal religious ideologies and practices. thought” (Hudson and Kamugisha 3). populations have not fully recovered from the institutionalized violence As a professor working within the U.S. perpetuated against them residential schools that border, I continuously confront the exclusion of devalued their worth and Indigenous knowledge. the African Canadian experience within Black In the Caribbean, different Christian Studies. This erasure forces me to confront the denominations sought to save, convert and power-knowledge nexus expressed through a educate black people by implanting black male heteronormative nationalist discourse, Enlightenment gender ideology that reinforced particularly when it comes to issues around race, asymmetrical gender relations between men and gender, sexual politics, sexual orientation, women. The curriculum for young men was language and geographical locations as important intended to prepare them for their so-called to the empirical and political dimensions on how rightful role as breadwinners and leaders of blackness is positioned. Attending to the society through the fields of technology, science, geographical specificities of black engineering, law and medicine, whereas young intellectual production (Hudson and Kamugisha women were streamed into subjects such as 6), I share with students the long list of Canada’s needlework, drawing and music in order to make activists and intellectuals such as Angela them good wives and homemakers (Moore and Robertson, Rinaldo Walcott, M. NourbeSe Johnson 138). More recently, Canadian influence Philip, , Dionne Brand, on education in the Caribbean has been seen , Clifton Joseph, Makeda Silvera, through development agencies funding post- Althea Prince and Norman “Otis” Richmond, not secondary initiative in curriculum development, as additions to a U.S.-based black radical democratization and governance and tradition, but integrated into the African diasporic technology. framework. Students are able to think of multiple black radical tradition(s) as intersecting and Articulating the discourse around power organically emerging from black people’s and privilege leverages the work of multiple experiences based on geographic specificities. scholars such as Thobani (2007), Alexander (1997) and Mohanty (2003) in critiquing nations While acknowledging that Black Studies such as Canada and the United States as regimes emerged out of a U.S.-based race and cultural in which there is increasingly a proliferation of hegemony, I draw students’ attention to a position poor people of colour and First Nations peoples of Black Studies within a global political and who are oppressed and/or face genocide. In economic framework dominated by the “First addition, this approach allows us to link the World” status of the United States. Students learn everyday Canadian gendered and racialized that while there are similarities with the African context to the “larger, transnational political and diaspora, there is not a common Black Studies economic structures and ideologies of project as each geographical region of the globe capitalism,” imperialism and patriarchy faces unique challenges based on the historical (Mohanty 504). legacies of slavery and colonialism. In critiquing the application of a U.S.-based theoretical framework on Black Canada and the rest of the African diaspora, I teach that the historical roots of Black Studies are in the Civil Rights and

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Student Movement in the United States, while about the Canadian landscape and issues around noting the dearth of a parallel intellectual national identity as a post-colonial site of movement in Canada. I remind students that contested engagements between different racial Canada has no Black Studies program or and ethnic groups instead of it being, simply, department, and the social construction of race in based on the hegemonic experience of white Canada encumbers the viability of Black Studies Canadians. as a discipline2. In disrupting a U.S exceptionalism In teaching Black Canada, I have discourse in and outside of the classroom by way developed a number of courses including the of superimposing Canada and/or the Caribbean African Caribbean Transnational Experience and onto intellectual conversations about the African Gender and Sexuality in Africa and the African diaspora, I am “attentive to the micro politics of Diaspora. In all of my courses, students learn of context and struggle and the macro politics of the legacy of Canadian-born black populations, global economic and political systems and descendants of African-Americans who migrated process.” (Mohanty 501). My teaching pays to Canada as slaves, freed people, and loyalists. attention to power differences within and among Students learn of the experiences of these various communities. In essence, this creates an populations alongside the history of Caribbean academic environment that supports the and African migrants to Canada. I speak to intellectual development of students, as it asks Canada’s long and struggle, them to use a post-disciplinary lens to pay which is often missing from textbooks about particular attention to the ways in which race, North America in general and about the African gender, sexualities, class, culture and geographic diaspora and slavery in particular. I teach students location intersect to impact the life chances of that the marginalization and exclusion of First Africans in the diaspora. I support Hudson and Nations peoples, African Canadians and other Kamugisha’s point that Black Canada has much racialized peoples demonstrate that imperialism to teach the world. The utilizations of insights remains embedded with institutions of higher from the black Canadian experiences can result in learning—and that yet, in Canada and abroad, a renewed need for a rethinking of a grand theory Canadian multicultural policy is assumed to of the African diaspora that is comparative, preclude racism (Douglas 51). international and translocal. African Canadian collective action for example, articulates Teaching difference among African transnationalism, Pan-Africanism, and a diaspora diasporic identity in the U.S offers me the sensibility that can be applied to other parts of the opportunity to speak to the complexities and African disapora. Additional lessons can also be nuances of the African Canadian experience. As learned from the black Canadian conception of others have pointed out, in Canada, race is identity. Black is “subsumed under the banner of anti-racism, heterogeneous, encompassing national, multiculturalism, or a diluted, pan-ethnic transnational and diasporic components. configuration of diaspora studies” (Hudson and Qualified because it is differentiated across Kamugisha, 2014, 7). Crawford, Flynn and ethnicity, culture, language and national origin, Gooden (2013) posit that the way that blackness black Canadian identity moves beyond the is identified and named in Canada is contingent singularity of identity as two or more identities or on such things as time of “settlement, sense of cultures come together or collide, through a belonging, migratory factors and cultural creolized process, to form a particularized connections to a perceived homeland” (p.8). hyphenated existence (e.g. African-Canadian, Teaching about blackness means that I teach black Nova Scotian, Jamaican-Canadian, about multiculturalism, which is situated as an Ghanaian-Canadian etc.), which arguably is what expression of white Canada’s power and control being Canadian is all about (Crawford, Flynn and and subsequent subjugation and exclusion of First Gooden, 2012). Nations, blacks and other citizens of colour. Such discussions offer students the opportunity to think

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The Obscurity of the Black teaching and learning process, encouraging students to share their ‘voices’ has to be carefully Canadian Experience in the facilitated to ensure that racial, cultural, gender Caribbean and sexual stereotypes are not reproduced and the Reflections of Charmaine’s Teaching re-victimization of individuals does not take Experience place. While participatory engagement is encouraged in class, I do not single out Teaching about Black Canada at a individuals to speak on behalf of their social university in the Caribbean has meant I have to identity or background. Instead, I employ re-think how I discuss race and racism in the different pedagogical strategies to stimulate classroom. I realize that some of my Caribbean discussion by drawing on scenarios and popular students’ perspectives on Canada are drawn from culture to foster critical thinking. I also use their experiences or what they have heard about technology through film, music and images to cultural diversity and Caribbean immigrant illustrate or highlight key concepts or ideas. In relocations in Toronto. Media focus on the discussing race and identity in the classroom, American politics of race relations, racism, and black and white students may express their the African American experience, especially viewpoints differently in attempting to articulate within the Obama presidency, has occluded black and make sense of racial inequality, power and Canadian experience in many ways. Racial privilege in their lives. Donadey notes that “the politics in Canada is often not seen as exciting concept of voice becomes particularly and impactful compared to popular discourse in problematic in two specific instances: “when the the U.S. Discussions of race and culture, student of color finds a voice and then gets told especially related to the black Canadian repeatedly that the voice distracts from the issues, experience, often get lost under the façade of and when the voice white students find is a racist development discourse that highlights the one (or more generally one that reproduces transformative aspects of foreign intervention ideologies of dominance” (215). Therefore, I am through the transfer of knowledge, technology, interested in the ways in which some students finances and the like, while local concerns about may use their ‘voice’, sometimes uncritically, to dubious trade agreements and sovereignty discuss race and/or racism, generally, as well as infringements are overlooked. Caribbean to assert or maintain power over others in the feminist scholars (Barriteau 37; Parpart et al 51; classroom. Tang Nain and Bailey xx; Antrobus 67) have rightfully critiqued top/down development The gender courses that I teach at the planning and policies that overlook gender undergraduate level are on a variety of topics, disparities in relation to how women and men are themes and social justice issues that include the unequally positioned and treated within historical moorings of racism and sexism under employment, family, the state and political colonialism and the impact that this has on black leadership. Caribbean women; gender, migration, work and globalization; and the black Caribbean diaspora In teaching transnational and black in Canada and sexual diversity in the Caribbean. feminist perspectives in the Caribbean, I am The majority of my students are of African- aware of the different ways that students process Caribbean descent, but I usually have a handful information and construct knowledge about race of white exchange students from the United and racism when it comes to how black women States and Canada during the academic year. and men have been historically dehumanized and Given the composition of my students, not disadvantaged as a result of European racist surprisingly, contemporary discussions about patriarchal colonialism and the aftermath of that race and racism and the politics of identity around in the Caribbean. While critical pedagogies “blackness” and “whiteness” are brought to the emphasize the importance of utilizing the forefront in the classroom. While discussions on experiential knowledge of students in the “blackness” in North America tend to be focused on the marginalization of black people within

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white majority societies, “blackness” in the Black Feminist Thought, I have had mixed English-speaking Caribbean is articulated responses from white students who have differently because black people and people of participated in the session. Some students have colour are in the majority due to the legacy of been able to understand and articulate the slavery and colonialism in the region. Therefore, relationship between anti-black racism, white discussions on race and racism are more nuanced, privilege, and sexism and its negative impact on and are often times contested, amidst the black women and men while others have acceptance or denial of racial/ethnic politics, remained uncomfortably silent when racial issues racial admixture, racism and colour caste were discussed. prejudice, and the call for reparatory justice for people of African descent. In one situation, a white Canadian student overtly expressed racially and culturally insensitive and prejudicial views in class about Dealing with in the black people and people of colour. I was caught off guard when this occurred. Since I have been Classroom working and living in a society where there is a non-white majority, I have not had to deal As part of a gender-training course, a co- outright with everyday racism and being belittled taught programme by multiple instructors, I have as a racial minority—something that many black instructed a module on Black Feminist Thought. people and people of colour in Canada and the In this session, I have examined the importance U.S. are quite familiar with. This does not mean, of black feminist and anti-racist feminist however, that white privilege and racism do not contributions in the United States and Canada in exist in my current location: they exist in the centering the lives and knowledge of black preferential treatment that white tourists may women in black history and culture. I have also receive in the service industry compared to black discussed the significance of black feminist locals; they exist in the economic influence of a epistemological standpoints in addressing small white elite with limited redistribution to the interlocking oppressions - race, sexism, classism, rest of society; and they also exist in the way heterosexism and the like - which have been some white students may reproduce missionary overlooked in both black masculinist nationalist tropes about saving backward black/Caribbean and white feminist movements. I have utilized people. In dealing with the latter scenario in the Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of difference to classroom, I have had to challenge the problematize how identities and social relations ‘colonization’ of knowledge exported from the are normalized through dominant discourses— North (Canada), whereby black Caribbean male, white, heterosexual, Christian and the experience was infantilized as not being like—whereby anything or anyone in opposition progressive or evolved enough, especially related to, or different from, the established norm is to how black women have been stereotyped as devalued as ‘other.’ This results in difference mammies, mules, whores and the like. being seen as a problem instead of being celebrated and used as a catalyst for change for Dealing with racism in the classroom, more equitable social relations among whether it is overt or whether it is cloaked in individuals. nativist discourse, can be a pedagogical challenge when you encourage students to draw on their In addition, accounts of slavery, experiences with one hand while they integrate colonialism and racism usually resonate with new knowledge with the other. Donadey notes black students. They may want to learn more that “When a ‘reconstructed racist’—that is, about the collective experience of racial injustice someone who has been made aware of her/his and resistance that their ancestors had to endure, racist assumptions but refuses to question them— or their interest in the subject matter may simply monopolizes class time, thereby reinforcing be relevant to their current situation. But domination, is it not the teacher’s responsibility throughout the years of teaching this session on to stop this process?” (215). I would have to

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answer this question in the affirmative. An of political and cultural communities and their instructor should not ignore a student’s racist operations. These communities were themselves assumptions and domination of class time, constructed in agreement with certain ideas because s/he would be complicit in reinforcing regarding skin colour, history, language the very thing that s/he is advocating against. (English/French), and other cultural signifiers— Ultimately, it does not set a good example for all of which may be subsumed under the classroom dynamics and for challenging stigma ideological category “White” (24). and discrimination. Based on Bannerji’s critique, ‘Canada’ is It is frustrating to deal with a white taken as representing the a priori rights of white student who ignores what you have said about Canadians when a white settler myth is their cultural and/or racial insensitivity. As supported. In challenging this, I am reminded of Donadey notes, when a white student acts as a the piece “Unpacking White Privilege” by Peggy “reconstructed racist,” especially when you think McIntosh that addresses whiteness, power and they should know better, s/he is exerting their entitlement in society. As an educator, I believe white privilege in the classroom. When this that it is instructive for me to demystify how occurs, a student engages in a kind of willful racism operates in Canada in overt and structural ignorance by minimizing or denying the ways, especially for students who are not familiar historical and present-day systemic racism that with racial politics in Canada. I think that while black people encounter in Canada, the U.S. and in a participatory classroom setting it is important elsewhere, when the facts about racial injustice for students to have their voice, it is just as are presented and/or reflected in personal important for instructors to debunk opinions experiences. Charles Mills, in examining based on faulty premises and stereotypes. But this systemic racism in the U.S., discusses how an is a difficult task when you are dealing with social epistemology of ignorance operates when white identities and experiential knowledge, because people, through cognition, culture, and code, the subjective is presented as fact. Nonetheless, a adopt patterned practices that prevent them from counter-narrative to white privilege and anti- seeing racial inequality in the society that they black racism is essential in critically examining live in and how they might contribute to it. In the race and and USA in the classroom, I have had to challenge racist classroom. assumptions about people of colour stealing jobs from white Canadians as well as comments about diversity having gone too far in violating the Gender, Race and Migration rights of white Canadians because of employment equity policies. While some of my Caribbean students may not readily understand how Black Canada Racism and a white settler mentality are has been constructed in a marginal way in reinforced when a student exhibits white Canadian discourse, they seem to understand privilege and intolerance in the classroom. This some of it when I teach about Caribbean mentality ultimately makes the learning process migration to Canada. The image of the nice, extremely uncomfortable for students of colour, clean—yet climatically cold—Canada is which can in turn contribute to their re- juxtaposed with a Canada where Caribbean victimization. A kind of epistemic injustice takes people have to deal with being cultural and racial place when Caribbean students are given a one- minorities within a new socio-cultural sided or selective viewpoint on racial politics in environment. Some students are surprised to Canada from a ‘white expert’, making it difficult learn that Canadian immigration policies were for them to challenge what is presented. In overtly discriminatory against blacks and people discussing Canada as an imagined nation, of colour prior to the 1960s, which forced many Bannerji rightfully argues that “Canada” cannot black Caribbean men and women to strategize be taken as a given. It is obviously a construction, around working and settling in Canada. Drawing a set of representations, embodying certain types on the work of Silvera (1989), I also focus on the

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gendered and racialized dimensions of women’s constructing multiple identities and subjectivities work within global capitalism. My discussion of in relation to how they are defined by society is Caribbean domestics in Canada during the 1970s critical in examining how blackness is and after includes not only the struggles they constructed in Canada. We are careful not to faced with employment and immigration, but also reproduce black hetero-nationalistic narratives. their resistance against discrimination. I also Therefore, it is important to challenge interrogate African-Caribbean familial androcentrism and heterosexism, as some formations within a transnational context and perspectives of black Canadian social and further complicate this discussion with narratives political thought have overlooked or of women migrating without their children marginalized the voices and contributions of (Crawford 325). This resonates with students black women and/or black gay men and women. because some of them may have experienced Teaching using collections such as Back to the being raised by a guardian other than their Drawing Board: African-Canadian Feminisms biological mother or father. More importantly, (see Wane, Deliovsky, and Lawson 2002) and my discussion of how some women face Theorizing Empowerment: Canadian challenges in reuniting with their children, due to Perspectives on Black Feminist Thought (see problems with immigration or not having the Massaquoi and Wane 2007) underscores how financial means to send for their children, provide race, class, gender and to a certain extent further insights into the gendered, racialized and sexuality operate as simultaneous oppressive classed dimensions of migration which cannot forces. Additionally, using the works of scholars simply be reduced to economics or maternal such as Silvera (1997) and Crichlow (201) who abandonment. While students have shared how have explored same-sex relationships and the their own stories of migration had affected them, impact of homophobia on the lives of black gay by teaching Black Canada through a diasporic men and women from a Caribbean diasporic lens they are better able to understand how perspective, demonstrates how black Canadians international labour within globalized processes deal with the additional oppression that they operate along lines of gender, race and class in encounter when confronted with racism in white shaping black Caribbean immigrant experiences gay organizations and spaces in Canada. In in Canada. addition, such teaching highlights how Caribbean migrants construct, negotiate and name their same-gender desire despite the globalizing of Gender, Race and Sexuality Western normative and essentialist sexualities Race is not the only position by which (Callixte 128). to understand the experiences of As educators, the decisions about what people of African descent content to teach, which materials to use, which discussions, assignments, and experiential Both of us, in articulating the multiple learning activities to assign are reflective of how experiences of Black Canada, remind students we want to direct the learning, thought, and action that race is not the only position by which to of students—and, we must admit, are influenced understand the life experiences of people of by our socio-political Canadian and Caribbean African descent because blackness is complex cultural assertiveness (Rodriguez et al 96-97). In and its distinctions and reproductions matter that sense we use the classroom to identify urgent (Wright 87). Crawford, Flynn and Gooden needs facing our disciplines of Gender and remind us that “the black Canadian experience Africana Studies and use examples from our cannot be explored in isolation of mutually geographical locations to broaden student constituted factors of gender, class, sexuality and understandings of our disciplines and of Canada. other markers” and that much work needs to be done to incorporate sexuality into discussions of Within the context and content of the blackness (13). In the classroom, an examination classroom discussions, assignments and reading of how black people have participated in materials, the power differentials that were

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experienced in the classroom are salient as we complexities surrounding the experiences of seek to impart knowledge to our students as well peoples of African descent” (Guy-Sheftall 11) as provide frameworks to assist them in “finding while simultaneously interrogating unequal voice and gaining critical consciousness” about power relations between men and women. oppressive forces and ways to resist them (Rodrigues et al. 96). Hooks passionately professes, “education is a practice of freedom” Conclusion (204). Some students resisted the idea of an oppressive Canada. However, as an extension of Teaching Black Canada in the United this principle, our role as educators is to States and the Caribbean by incorporating encourage learning on multiple levels by assisting transnational black feminist perspectives has students to move beyond their current level, allowed us to consider how the black experience encourage them, and create a learning in Canada has been obfuscated by the plight of environment that supports a positive teacher- African-Americans on the one hand and the white student relationship based on reciprocity and settler mythology on the other. While dominant partnership. white discourse seeks to forget, or negate altogether, Canada’s colonial past and neo- We recognize that our authority in the colonial influence, the Black Canada experience, classroom as teachers in making decisions about particularly since those subjectivities are curriculum, materials, instruction, and classroom pluralized and diasporized, offers a challenge to environment (Rodrigues et al. 97) has a direct the racial erasure that minimizes how people of impact on the educational success of our students, African descent in their multiplicities across and we realize that this right granted to us is only gender, race, sexuality, culture, and nationality as good as the approval or acceptance that we get have resisted oppression as well as contributed to from those whom we teach. Therefore, we knowledge production and betterment of their approach power relations in the classroom as a communities. Moreover, our teaching, as a dynamic negotiation between our students and platform to engage in critical pedagogies, ourselves. Critical thinking and dialogic provides students with the tools to critically engagements facilitate active learning among our analyze how racial/racist politics are imbued in students whereby they learn to identify, the history and culture of the Americas, how articulate, and problem-solve (Chow et al 260) Canada is not an innocent bystander in around some of the important issues facing our establishing unequal North/South relations, and disciplines in Africana Studies and Gender and how these relations are maintained within global Development Studies. Our approach is aimed at capitalism. probing the “silences, erasures, distortion and

1 For issues faced by residents in the Black Creek as employment, high school graduation rates, (Jane-Finch Corridor) Toronto area see Access mortality, green space and walkability. See also Alliance research bulletin at http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/03/13/bla http://accessalliance.ca/wp- ck_creek_neighbourhood_deemed_torontos_leas content/uploads/2015/03/ISRH-Research- t_livable.html. For more information on Bulletin-3-Neighbourhood_Discrimination-and- Africville, see Africville Genealogical Society. Health.pdf. The bulletin details the lack of The Spirit of Africville. Halifax: Formac services, unemployment and other socio- Publishing, 1992. economic conditions that plague the area. Under 2 Dalhousie University launched a Black Studies the City of Toronto “equity score,” card, the area minor program Fall 2016. is considered the least livable of Toronto’s 140 neighbourhoods. This is based on 15 criteria such

Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 7, 1 (September 2016) 13

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