Black Bodies in Canada: Epistemological Ambivalences and Systematic Exclusion

• In Event: The Edge of Race: Critical Examinations of Education and Race/Racism

Abstract

'How is it decided what a nation remembers, forgets, or celebrates?' (Hamilton (2009)

This paper explores the ‘edge of race’ in the context of Canadian multiculturalism, most particularly, questions that engage the gendered bodies and realities of Black women. Canada prides itself as a nation with an official multicultural policy since 1971. Its educational institutions boast high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity despite the high drop-out rates of Black and aboriginal students, and their disproportionate incarceration, among other structurally-imposed ills (Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, 2007; Reece, 2010). This paper draws attention to the racial mythology of Canada and the challenges for Black communities through an examination of how, across social classes, race and gender as interdependent dimensions are ignored, forgotten, and rendered invisible in official multicultural discourse and in education programs.
First, I analytically map out extant literature on Canadian Black education, as a way providing a taxonomy of the various strands of research. I am especially interested in a close examination of Black feminist theorizing in Canada –an emergent area that, in education, tends to lean heavily on African American theorizing. There is a great need for specifically Canadian feminist theorizing that addresses many of the issues that students are facing in schools. The literature, to date, tends to address Black women’s experiences in academe as well as in ‘female’ professions.
Next, I draw from a range of critical feminist and postcolonial theorists (e.g., Ahmed, 2007; Gunew, 2004; Razack et al., 2010; Tavares, 2011) to frame empirical data from my interviews with three contemporary Black feminist educator-activists in British Columbia, a preliminary data set intended to grow in to a larger national corpus and build on former work. Each respondent was interviewed at least twice for 1.5 hours. These recorded, transcribed oral histories are important because they show how the national narrative does not allow the histories and experiences of Black Canadians to be adequately represented (Henry, 1998, 2006, 2011; Howard and S. Smith, 2009); that recent equity efforts have been to the advantage of White women (Smith, Razack and Thobani, 2010); and that Black efforts circumstantially and necessarily lie outside the formal mechanisms of state-sanctioned programs and initiatives (Henry, 2011). Indeed these respondents’ very ways of being challenge the prevailing multicultural discourses, founded on a particular view of Whiteness and ‘Canadianness’ that erases the historical realities of a substantial black presence since the 1600s, and in BC since the 1850s (White, 2009). These interview data address participants’ educational activities in formal and informal educational contexts on behalf of the girls, women and their families in the British Columbia Black community. I contextualize their lives in a larger theoretical socio-politico-historical context of immigration, citizenship, and democratic participation.
Through both the conceptual and empirical exploration, I aim to work towards forging a model for a new research and action agenda for Canadian Black education. Non satis scire- The question becomes, how do we negotiate a transformative research agenda that addresses the needs and realities of marginalized communities?

Author

• Annette M. Henry, The University of British Columbia