Was the icon of feminism really a racist?
Oh, dear, the statue-defacing vigilantes are at it again! One of the latest targets is erstwhile Canadian feminist icon Emily Murphy (no relation). Her Edmonton statue got the red paint treatment in mid-July. Predictably, the ‘racist’ epithet was deployed. Indeed, the National Post’s news story went beyond merely noting the racist allegation. It accepted it…
The graves of residential school children symbolize the abject failure of decades of government policy
People are mad. Finally! And sadly, belatedly. The discovery of the locations where hundreds of children were buried around abandoned residential school grounds has touched the country in ways that perhaps even the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not. People are responding to…
Good people and bad people can be found in every group
We’re all influenced by the environment we grow up in and our life experiences. We thus adopt paradigms in our effort to make sense of the world around us. Sometimes these perspectives serve us well but other times our core beliefs prevent us from seeing the truth. Yet there’s perhaps nothing more life-giving than experiencing…
For Evelyn Asiedu, graduate school was not just about finding her path as a scientist; it was also about finding her path as an activist against anti-Black racism. Asiedu, who will soon graduate with a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, didn’t talk about her experience with racism during her first few years at…
BlackTalk offers an ‘ethnic, modern, inclusive and informative’ take on the Black experience for listeners of all backgrounds
The murder of George Floyd last year was a pivotal moment for University of Alberta political scientist Andy Knight. The expert in international politics is acutely aware of his good fortune throughout his distinguished career. Growing up in Barbados, then immigrating to Canada in his teens, he felt insulated from the worst of the anti-Black…
Canadians believe in equality and compassion; we don’t believe in pitting one group against another
Canada has always prided itself on being one of the most open and least racist countries in the world. This view may not have always been true, particularly when it comes to our past immigration policies, which only became colour neutral in the 1960s. But since then, and continuing today, the vast majority of our…
Undermining staff, students and faculty members who experience it
Racism is often too easily shrugged off as someone being “overly sensitive” or “misunderstanding” what was done or said. It’s that invisibility that makes systemic racism against Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour so difficult to dislodge at the institutional level in post-secondary schools – and so undermining of staff, students and faculty…
Too many police officers across the U.S. have been complicit by failing to intervene during their colleagues’ egregious misconduct
The trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd exposed Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and forced him to give evidence and account for – or, more correctly, reject – Chauvin’s actions. The televised trial, with testimony from other police officers, including Arradondo, was an extraordinary event. Chavin was found guilty on all…
Reporting on the George Floyd and Colten Boushie deaths twisted the facts to meet the agendas of mainstream media
Derek Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who achieved international notoriety for his role in the death of George Floyd. A video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, as Floyd pleads that he can’t breathe, has been viewed millions of times around the globe. Floyd’s death sparked months of protests, rioting, looting…
Race-based programs are an insult to those who have achieved success on their merit and hard work
‘Pretendians’ are what Indigenous people call non-Indigenous people who claim that they are Indigenous. Government financial incentives reserved exclusively for Indigenous people – supposedly, to achieve equity – have created pretendians, who are increasingly called out by other Indigenous people for not being Indigenous enough. Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden and filmmaker Michelle Latimer (maker of…