Date:
Location:
THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED
“Racial Justice Across Borders: A Conversation on Policy, Politics, and Social Movements”
The workshop brings together a group of international scholars to reflect on the state of public policy and the quest for racial justice in North America and Europe. Everywhere, problems of racial inequality and racism remain deep-rooted and pervasive; yet, the prospect that legislation will be improved looks dimmer than ever if we take into account the spread of neo-liberalism, cultural nationalism, and the belief that societies have entered a color-blind and post-racial period. The policies established to tackle racial inequality have never been adequate to meet the scale of the challenges, partly due to their preference for individual solutions as opposed to systemic reforms, and their tendency to reduce race to class or culture.
In traditional immigrant-receiving countries such as the US, Canada, France and Britain, progressive race policies are either stagnating or in retreat. Scholars write that “race” is becoming invisible in policy and being replaced by policies that commodify “diversity.” The European Union’s Race Equality Directive gave birth to policies against racism in countries where it did not exist before; however, its translation into practice has been uneven and slow at best. In place of anti-racism policies, security policies aimed at controlling would-be threats from vulnerable racial minorities, be they “street gangs,” “Muslim terrorists,” and “underserving asylum-seekers” have been growing dramatically and show little sign of slowing down. The contradictions between anti-discrimination policies and the actions of the state in criminalizing race have become ever more acute. In Canada, the federal government introduced its first-ever anti-racism strategy, even as law enforcement practices that violate the rights of racial minorities and Indigenous people are allowed to persist and be ignored.
The workshop will wrestle with the above questions and consider their implications both for policy and for scholarship. It will ask: what do present conditions spell for the future of progressive race policies? What are the main obstacles to progress? How do we juxtapose anti-discrimination policies and state practices that reproduce racial injustice? What conceptual tools are most relevant for understanding the positive and negative developments in race-conscious and anti-discrimination policies in different countries? What openings exist for reforming race policies? Finally, looking at the history and present-day character of minority political mobilization and social movements, what can we assume to be the contributing factors
to progressive change in race policy, and what questions or issues should scholars be examining to improve the knowledge base and stay atuned to developments?
Breakfast | 8:30am–9:00am (coffee/tea, pastries, fruit)
Welcome and opening remarks | 9:00am–9:15am
PANEL 1 | 9:15am–11:00am | Anti-Racism in Canada
“An Outsider Working on the Inside: My Experience Developing the Ontario Black Youth Action Plan”
Danavan Samuels, Former Manager of the Black Youth Action Plan, Ontario Government, Ministry of Child and Youth Services, Toronto, Ontario.
The presentation will offer reflections on the political climate, social conditions, and internal advocacy in government that set in motion the first-ever race-based strategy for black children, youth, and families in Ontario. It will present a first-hand perspective on the political and technical decision-making processes that went into establishing the Black Youth Action Plan of Ontario, and the author's own experience of working within government while remaining firmly embedded in the black activist tradition in Toronto.
“The Promise of Participation: Consultation as a Challenge to Racism and the Limits of Democracy”
Shana Almeida, School of Professional Communication, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario.
Drawing on the City of Toronto as a case study, this talk illuminates the terms, implications and outcomes of consultation with racialized and Indigenous groups in the development of state anti-racist policies and practices. Specifically, I situate consultation with racialized and Indigenous gorups in the City of Toronto within local, political and discursive processes whereby select racialized and Indigenous community members are produced as state actors who shape the terms under which racism is addressed. A detailed exploration of City of Toronto policy documents from 1975 to 2018, which report on consultations with racialized and Indigenous groups, reveal that specific accounts of racism in the City become deligitimized through the inclusion of these state actors. I conclude by adding critical depth to claims that more consultation with racialized and Indigenous groups is needed to address their social, political and economic exclusion.
“Title TBA”
Fo Niemi, Centre for Research and Action on Race Relations, Montreal, Quebec
Break | 11:00am–11:15am
PANEL 2 | 11:15am–12:30pm | Race Policies in France and Britain
“Anti-racist and migrant integration policies in Britain and France”
Romain Garbaye, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France
Governments in Western Europe are converging towards ever more illiberal patterns of policy-making in the fields of migrant integration and policies against racism. This paper shows this convergence with reference to Britain and France. It starts by highlighting key contrasts between the two countries’ approaches to migration and racism in the 1980s and 1990s. It then documents the “retreat of multiculturalism” in Britain and evolutions in migration policy around the turn of the millenium and in the 2000s, in addition to France’s limited efforts to set up meaningful anti-discrimination policies in the same period. It goes on to argue that current evolutions in the two countries, including Brexit or the British Conservatives’ hostile environment policy, must be understood as the continuation of these patterns dating back to the late 1990s.
“Unresolved anti-racisms, from the suite to the street”
Karim Murji, University of West London
Lunch | 12:30pm–1:30pm
PANEL 3 | 1:30pm–3:00pm | Political Mobilization and Social Change
“Prendre en compte les femmes à bas salaires et racisées”
Carole Yerochewski, Department of Sociology, University of Montreal
“Identity politics and racial justice in contemporary France: A case-study of contemporary French-Caribbean protests”
Audrey Célestine, Département d’Études Anglophones, Université de Lille, France
“Reimagining the Academy through Freedom School: A Seminar on Theory and Praxis for Black Studies in the United States”
Nahja Zigbi-Johnson, Harvard Divinity School
In this presentation, Najha will explore her work as the founder and leader of the student-led, population education colloquium, “Freedom School: A Seminar on Theory and Praxis for Black Studies in the United States,” a course run through the Harvard Divinity School and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Grounded in the legacy of the original Mississipi Freedom Schools founded by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this iteration of Freedom School strives to see our contemporary situation more clearly, and devise new strategies to confront the dire threats of climiate change and the racist, patriarchal order that underlies contemporary global capitalism. Freedom School is guided by a series of questions: how can we re-imagine the “canon” of contemporary Black radical thought and scholarship to be more inclusive and expansive? How can we use student scholarship and community leadership to expand our conceptualization of this canon? And, how do we, as scholars, engage in material and structural change in response to our present socio-political, cultural, and economic realities? Through tracing the limitations of intellectualism in the academy, alongside the urgency of racial equity and systems change work, Najha will situate the creation of the “Freedom School” as a model of praxis-oriented scholar-activism.