Witnessing Exclusion: Oral Histories, Historical Provenance, and Antiracism Education

• In Event: Power and Possibilities of Oral History Education: Addressing Redress and Reconciliation

Abstract

The structures of racisms make oral histories a key tool for antiracism education. Since as Goldberg (2009) reminds us racisms are exclusions, antiracisms must create inclusions. Racist exclusions not only structure the social experience of the excluded, but also of the excluders. In effect, racisms work because the dominant do not need to engage with the realities of the excluded (Hall 1980; Ahmed 2012). Over time dominance can come to be seen as normal by the dominant and even some of the excluded themselves, as “just the way the world is.” Indeed, constructing such dominance is the very point of racisms (Stanley 2009; 2011). Critical Race Theorists have long advocated the development of counter narratives to assist people in coming to terms with racial stratification (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1998). In this context, directly engaging the transformative effects of people’s own narratives can lead to transformation of understanding, provided those stories are collected by people who themselves understand exclusion and their consequences. This paper presentation will argue that the structure of racisms work again antiracist education for the dominance, except through direct engagement with the narrative of those who are racialized and excluded. It explores the challenges of fostering antiracist understanding and transformation in the university classroom and build on the historical examples of three redress movements in Canadian contexts: the Japanese Canadian Redress Movement, the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Movement and the importance of the narratives of residential school survivors in the case of First Nations People.

Author

• Timothy Stanley, University of Ottawa