Historically, white supremacy culture has ongoingly instrumentalized academia’s systems to strategically co-opt social change in a context of institutional oppression.
The danger here is that, as concepts like decolonization, anti-oppression, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) trend higher and higher, we need to be wary of them being subverted and re-appropriated by gatekeepers disguised as allies through initiatives that only pay lip service to the revolution. Thus, policies are systemically formalized and language is aesthetically revised to be performatively “inclusive.”
Meanwhile, we aren’t expected nor empowered to extensively and properly learn Indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge systems of the stolen lands on which we stand. Racialized and marginalized students are set up to fail and incur poorer and underperforming educational outcomes than their privileged counterparts stemming from racial disparities like underrepresentation in STEM and the highest-profile and highest-paying career tracks, language barriers, lower salaries and higher unemployment rates, the highest dropout rates, the highest borrowing rates and largest debt burden. The institutional structure of student leadership is predicated on white privilege. Alongside this, non-STEM disciplines and humanities departments are significantly underfunded.
As a result, systemic biases pass off as methodologies and sciences in how data, history, research, and
in Collaboration with Chesline Pierre-Paul
knowledge systems are framed and re-appropriated. Thus, research acts as the de facto institutional echo chamber of systemic privilege by failing to concern itself with practice-based models that engage the root cause of real-life systemic problems that affect the most and benefit the few.
Decolonizing the institution isn’t about performatively publicizing poorly funded, one-and-done, episodic JEDI and anti-oppression trainings led by underpaid, marginalized, and racialized bodies and thinkers, especially during Black History Month or National Indigenous Month.
Decolonizing the institution isn’t about issuing a findings report and disinterestedly reverting back to our institutional modus operandi with no accountability towards demonstrable sustainable institutional change. It is about making sure change becomes long-lasting beyond low-scale JEDI programming which should not have an expiry date.
Decolonizing the institution is not a one-off or time-bound initiative, it is organization-wide and should aim to be far-reaching. It means that no department, program, body, office, or faculty can evade responsibility by opting out. At an operational level, it means that JEDI, anti-oppression, and decolonization are structurally embedded within standards of operation and procedures.
When applied holistically with due integrity, decolonizing the academia stands for:
Instituting internships with minority-owned local businesses
and organizations. Increasing student enrollment within marginalized communities and instituting mentoring support programs to assist them in their educational development and mitigate the racial disparities of academia. It stands for focusing on research led by meaningful and ongoing consultation with local marginalized groups and communities on their real-life systemic problems. It stands for making sure that these groups and communities inform and shape the entirety of the research process; and strategically enforce the institutionalization of anti-colonial and decolonial frameworks.
This means centering anti-colonial and decolonial knowledge systems, discourses, and reading lists, across all disciplines, including STEM. Not just through hypothetical discourses, but through relevant actionable case studies directly sourced from local marginalized communities or working with vetted local community leaders in direct partnership with the professors and their students.
It means changing the face of student leadership and forcing it to take into account and act in the best interest of the members it represents. Promoting a multilingual higher education system where we go beyond French and English and honor Indigenous languages as a valid and mandatory language of instruction. It means normalizing land-based pedagogy across all fields of study as a means to tribute institutional sovereignty of Indigeneity as a leading institutional approach to teaching, learning, and research.
It is also to generate outstanding educational and professional outcomes for marginalized students by producing entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial paths that creates viable and sustainable economic empowerment for those who are historically and institutionally excluded from the culture of systemic privilege.
That is what real decolonization looks like; it isn’t a gimmick, a PR stunt, or a manipulatively performative re-languaging of institutional messaging and policies. It is an inescapably integral systemic commitment enforced through action and pragmatics programmed to make sure privilege isn’t the gateway to access.
What’s more, real decolonization means committing to generating sustainable solutions to systemic problems by addressing the root-cause issue rather than its periphery. In order to do so, we need to be leveraging research, student leadership, inclusive hiring, and meaningful consultation and partnerships with local marginalized communities.
Real decolonization means not hiding behind slacktivistic intellectualism to mimic institutional change. Instead, it ensures that there be a consequential economic contribution to the reality of struggle for those born into systemic disprivilege.
Too often as minorities we are expected and conditioned to content ourselves with having enough to survive but never enough to thrive. A real decolonial standard of success is for us to dare thrive where we are expected to survive.
Decolonization is not about empowering disenfranchised Peoples into a level of survivorship that makes white supremacy content. It is about enforcing the most paradoxical level of joyfulness, bountifulness, and happiness for and by our Peoples in spaces where we are expected to die not survive, and survive not thrive.
That is what actual decolonial action needs to look like in academia.
More often than not, what happens is that a metric of JEDI success is set up by gatekeepers and once it is reached, we settle as an institution; this is because the minimum is the attainment, instead of what is truly needed. We look to other struggling institutions to justify our standard and find contentment in the comparison, rather than go beyond it to create new and better standards and metrics that compel us to do more than conform. We rather have biased data to comfort us in justifying that we are “decolonial” enough, instead of morally and sociopolitically challenging our norms to be more than our system.
That’s why I say decolonization is more than our complacency has made it out to be.
That’s why I say decolonization is the opposite of what our institutions were created for.
That is why when the system chooses the privilege of its own complacency over its accountability towards justice for all, we have to be the daring voices in the room that make social change the one thing the system can’t escape from.
Since its Implementation in 2021, the Chinatown Action Plan’s Purpose Was to Propel the Future of the Neighbourhood. How Much Has Been Done?
ent Chong’s slumber was interrupted by drilling sounds coming from his backyard. Two holes had been freshly dug into the asphalt—his home was transformed into a sandbox overnight.
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After early warning signs of nearby construction in 2019, Chong was surprised his property was in the middle of a high-rise construction project.
Chong’s property sustained major damage, reducing his storage space, roof and balcony. Fallen debris chipped his roof and sides of his home, making the property a safety hazard for the three generations of his family living together, including his parents and two young children.
“When [the construction workers] dug the holes, I told them: ‘You just come and dig these holes, you leave a massive mess. You leave these holes here that my kids can trip over,’” Chong said. “My father also lost the space to be able to go out in the back because he still tries to stay active. They refused to clean up, I tried to do some of it, but I couldn't do all of it.”
In Jan. 2022, the provincial government granted heritage protection on two historic building blocks in Chinatown and the city placed new urban development parameters. While some of the newly-implemented policy goals to protect the area were met, the construction on Chong’s property shows the city’s broken promises for Chinatown’s longtime residents.
In July 2021, Montréal’s city council, Chinatown’s community groups and Heritage Montréal, released a five-year action plan which aimed to improve the qual-
ity of life for Chinatown’s residents and preserve the physicality of the neighbourhood.
The plan includes implementing heritage protection on buildings, incentives to renovate commercial buildings, economic measures to help businesses flourish, investing in cultural and community activities, additional green spaces, and building affordable housing units.
But two years into Montreal’s Chinatown action plan, the neighborhood continues to face issues with challenges that remain to be solved adequately. From further gentrification of the neighborhood to cultural incompetence from city officials, advocates say there is a lot of work left to be done.
According to May Chiu of the Progressive Chinese of Quebec (PCQ), the current action plan was based on previous meetings with city council members.
In 2019, Chinatown’s community members released a petition for the city to engage in public consultations with residents and implement an action plan to ward off impending real estate projects from the neighbourhood without proper consultation.
Sections of the action plan receive support from Montreal and Ville-Marie’s services, such as the urbanism, mobility, cultural and social development services to improve public space in Chinatown.
In April 2021, consultations with the city were enacted after notorious real estate companies Shiller Lavy and Kornbluth bought off a historic block of Chinatown’s residential buildings.
In the city’s action plan, a roundtable committee was created to engage in conversations with
residents of all generations, experts, community organizations, urban planners and real estate developers.
According to Chiu, the first phase of consultations with the Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal (CEUM) were fruitless and required a “massive amount of volunteer work” to educate consultation members.
Since her work began on Chinatown years ago, the largest barrier has been the local government’s lack of cultural competence in planning. “This has been our systemic challenge working with the city since 2019,” Chiu added. “It’s been exhausting.”
“Our first hurdle was, we wanted an executor of the consultation to be someone with cultural and linguistic competence,” said Chiu. “Whenever [the city] put money into hiring an expert to do something about Chinatown, to be blunt, they always hired white people.”
Chiu expressed that it was “tiring” that people hired by the city often have “no linguistic or cultural” knowledge, forcing the community to volunteer their time to “teach these so-called experts or professionals on how to do their job.”
“The massive amount of volunteer work that we had to do to educate the CEUM on how to conduct the consultation, what kind of questions to ask, who to consult, how to do the outreach was so and then we ourselves did a lot of the mobilization and we participated in every single meeting. That was part of the consultation process,” Chiu said.
Chiu added that one of the challenges going forward is having an equal partnership with the city, allowing the expertise with-
in the Chinatown community to be respected.
While the consultations did not reach the same goal, both sides of the committee were open to suggestions and solutions. The Chinatown Roundtable was created alongside residents, business-owners, urban planners, environmental activists and housing rights activists to advocate for the preservation, protection and amelioration of the neighbourhood.
In Oct. 2022, the Office de consultation du Montréal (OCPM) wrote a report on further measures the city could implement to protect Chinatown, which included
zoning by-laws to reduce the average height of newly constructed buildings from 65 to 25 metres.
Chiu mentioned that another roundtable discussion with real estate developers and lobby groups was supposed to take place in April 2022, but none of developers and lobby groups showed up.
“I think that they're probably disappointed given the interim measures that the city had declared way back in January 2022,” Chiu said. “And then the recommendations of the OCPM made it very clear that there's not going to be more monster constructions in Chinatown, that do not respect the heritage landscape of
historic Chinatown, so we haven't seen them.”
Despite residents’ discussions surrounding heritage protection and improving infrastructure, the action plan helped bring business into Chinatown by proposing a merchants’ association.
The purpose of the association would be to revitalize businesses belonging to community members. When the pandemic ripped through Montreal, Chinatown’s businesses bore the brunt of lockdowns, vandalism, reduced foot traffic and anti-Asian racism.
Over the summer of 2022, Montreal’s tourism sector funded
special events in Chinatown, such as the Asian Night Market, a Pride celebration and stand-up comedy special, bringing local vendors and artists to showcase their talents.
Among the performers was Bahay Collective member Chuong Truong, also known by the stage name Lil Waterboi, who illuminated the Night Market with dynamic performances alongside his labelmates.
For Chuong and Bahay, a music collective, Chinatown is meaningful for BIPOC performers to express themselves. “What I really appreciate about this event is [the tourism sector] let us do our thing, and I think that makes things spe-
cial,” said Chuong. “Having the platform and voice is everything.”
The Link reached out to the city of Montreal for comment on future developments on the action plan but did not respond by the deadline.
While Chong embraces the idea of development in the area, he wants a more ethical approach to existing residents.
“I can't expect Chinatown to remain a village. It has to integrate, it has to modernize, it has to change,” said Chong. ”But at the same time, we have to be respectful to the fact that it's still residential. There's still a very large residential component here.”
On Sept. 28, 2020, Joyce Echaquan, an Atikamekw mother, died at the Centre Hospitalier de Lanaudière in SaintCharles-Borromée. The coroner’s report concluded that racism and prejudice were contributing factors to her death.
Following Echaquan’s death, the Quebec government implemented mandatory training about Indigenous peoples and the challenges they face for all healthcare workers. However, it did not focus on the more pressing issues of systemic racism, residential schools or culturally unsafe care.
In early 2022, the Quebec government announced new healthcare reforms in the hope of revitalizing its system, which would take effect in 2025.
The plan would include improvements like the end of mandatory overtime for nurses, more staff in health institutions, better access to family physicians and even improved at-home care.
However, Quebec Premier François Legault has simultaneously supported a push towards privatized healthcare, publicized by Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Research shows that a push towards privatization and the pursuit of profit in healthcare would result in the exacerbation of the systemic mistreatment of BIPOC individuals.
The public healthcare system is already at a breaking point.
According to the Angus Reid Institute, 9 million Canadians have chronic difficulty in accessing
healthcare due to shortages and the system’s deterioration.
But this has not deterred politicians like Ford and Legault from increasingly propping up the idea of expanding privatization in healthcare to help meet a growing demand.
In January, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced his initiative to give a greater role to private, for-profit clinics. The alleged goal of the initiative is to seek to relieve the engorged public healthcare system and reduce wait times.
Should privatization take more space in Canada, Ford’s proposal promised that Canadians will not be paying out of pocket for their surgeries. In fact, the Canada Health Act protects Canadians from any healthcare provider directly charging patients for insured health services.
On Feb. 6, CBC News aired a discussion between healthcare workers, patients and economist Armine Yalnizyan. During the talk, Yalnizyan confirmed that the profit private clinics will make would most likely be through patients paying for their rooms, analgesics, food, physiotherapy and other services.
While surgeries will be free, the price of everything else related to them would increase. For instance, a patient who receives a colonoscopy in private care may not get the surgery done if unable to pay out-of-pocket for a dietician consult, said Danielle Martin, chair of the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto.
According to her, this upselling is already happening in private clinics.
Unequivocally, the costs of private healthcare will render BIPOC communities an afterthought. Exclusion from such care is medical racism, according to Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, co-editor of the book Color of Violence
The benefits of privatization would likely be accessible only to people who have the means to pay for it. Concurrently, BIPOC demographics are less likely to reap the benefits of private care. “When we talk about patients not being charged,” Martin suggested, “that needs to be the case across the whole of the experience if we want this solution not to undermine equity.”
Systemic racism is caused by institutions that consciously or unconsciously create policies disadvantaging certain groups, causing a discrepancy in their access to services.
Because of systemic racism, BIPOC communities are more likely to have lower socioeconomic status, which is a major contributing factor in poorer health outcomes. For example, in 2016, 20.7 per cent of Black Canadians aged 25 to 59 lived in a low-income situation, compared to 12 per cent of their white counterparts.
According to Megan Sieroka, program coordinator at
Reports show understaffed healthcare systems may lead to more medical errors. It has been proven that medical errors on test diagnoses, for instance, were at 32 per cent for minority groups in comparison to 18 per cent for white people. Minority groups are more likely to experience harm and adverse consequences due to medical errors.
Meanwhile, an increased underfunding in the Canadian health care system is requiring nurses to take on more patients per day, seriously undermining their care, said Dr. Alika Lafontaine, president of the Canadian Medical Association. He also added that support for the public health system should be addressed before looking at other options, referencing Ford's privatization proposal.
Reports also show that underresourced health environments may perpetuate racism because providers will resort to shortcuts, exacerbating the likelihood of racial bias in care.
Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre, medical professionals barely observe the existing inequities between BIPOC patients and white patients.
Sieroka explained that this results in a lower quality of care for those communities, and leads to a growing distrust of the healthcare system.
Medical racism is not only shown through the experiences of BIPOC patients, but of BIPOC health workers and experts too. Many Black doctors like Dr. Notisha Massaquoi denounced the lack of race data collection in the Canadian healthcare system.
Race data could significantly improve the care of racialized patients, while the absence of it hides the reality of racial inequities.
With the increase of private, for-profit clinics, experts warn that the public healthcare system risks a significant understaffing and underfunding crisis.
Who suffers most from underfunded healthcare?
Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union, told CTV News: “Understaffing has become an even bigger issue over the pandemic as many workers have been left burnt out and unable to provide patients with quality care when they become overworked.”
The consequences of understaffing and underfunding the public health system would result in a lack of resources, heightening medical racism.
Colleen Flood, a research chair in health law and policy and professor at the University of Ottawa, told the CBC: “Countries that have public-private systems, they spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to regulate the private sector so that it doesn’t absorb all the resources from the public health-care system.”
Serious shortages are more likely to affect public hospitals that primarily serve minorities in poorer areas. There are high chances that those hospitals have to lower their standards of care to palliate shortages, adversely affecting minority patients.
Because there is a lack of race data in Canada, it is hard to comprehend the inequities in health care caused by health policies. Expanding healthcare privatization could result in aggravating the existing understaffing and underfunding crisis in public hospitals.
Consequently, these crises could exacerbate medical racism, especially since they happen to be greater in poorer and minority communities. BIPOC communities are likely to have a lower socioeconomic status and experience discrimination and medical errors in such circumstances.
To combat medical racism, the Canadian Medical Association Journal recommends training healthcare providers in anti-racism, anti-oppression and decolonization. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada calls for physicians to use Indigenous healing practices in the treatment of Indigenous patients.
Ayeza Hussain is a 16-yearold Pakistani student from Antoine-Brossard High School in Brossard, Que. Though she finds the student body diverse, this has not stopped her from facing Islamophobic violence in school.
During a lunch period, a white Québecois student approached her and began harassing her. “He threw his lunchbox at me and screamed ‘Allahu Akbar,’” Hussain recalled.
She could not believe the assault was committed against her.
“I was so shocked, my school is very ethnically diverse, there are a lot of different religions and cultures,” Hussain said. “There is even a prayer room. A lot of Muslims go there and we have Muslim teachers at our school.”
Diversity and community were not enough for her to avoid experiencing direct Islamophobia for the first time in her life.
For years, there has been an increase in Islamophobia in schools across Quebec. Research finds the province is growing increasingly hostile towards Muslims, making it harder for people of faith to freely express themselves without the fear of harassment.
Combined with the Coalition Avenir Québec’s anti-religion policies in schools implemented in the name of secularism, Muslim students are scared of being harassed. Students and teachers alike are calling for action to be taken.
In Quebec, Muslims are regarded as one of the most stigmatized religious groups.
Laws such as Bill 21, also known as laïcité or Quebec's secularism bill, deny Quebec citizens from wearing religious symbols such as the hijab, kippah, the dastar and the cross in academic, government and law enforcement positions, further stigmatizing religious minorities and inhibiting the path to fighting against discrimination.
In the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council on Novem-
ber 2020, the working definition of Islamophobia consisted of the following: “A fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims or non-Muslim individuals that lead to provocation, hostility and intolerance utilizing threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world. Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that tran-
Karishma Kheterpal, a teacher at Good Shepherd elementary in Brossard, Que., shared her experiences witnessing Islamophobia. She recalled when a Muslim student teacher left a classroom and went outside the door to pray. One of her colleagues then made disparaging comments towards her, Kheterpal said.
Noticing the comments, she questioned the teacher’s racism
doing something to combat it, not ignore it until it goes away, and I feel like that happens too much,” expressed Khan.
Teachers are raising concerns about the further secularization of the primary and secondary curriculums, which could increase the alienation and ostracization of marginalized religious communities.
An example of this is the course Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC),
suit of the common good" according to the Government of Quebec.
“I teach about Ramadan, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Dia de los Muertos, all of these holidays are talking about Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam, and all the religions,” Kheterpal added.
“But now they're taking off the religion and cultures part, so kids will no longer ever be learning about other religions and other cultures.”
With the removal of ERC, concerns have been raised as to how issues related to race and diversity will be taught.
“In the more rural remote areas, academia is the only exposure they have to the outside world, the rest they get from online,” said Khan.
Kheterpal and Khan believe that teaching religious diversity in elementary and high schools are key to preventing discrimination against Muslims.
“Everything starts when kids are little, you know. They're impressionable when they're younger, and that's where they pick up on things,” said Khan.
“We need to have more workshops, where kids get exposed to different religions and cultures,” Kheterpal added. “For Black History Month, for example, we've had two different workshops where people have come in from who are Black who have taught or shown things regarding their culture.”
“Implementing multicultural activities will show students that there are different cultures and religions, that must be respected,” she continued.
scends into structural and cultural racism which targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.”
In the years following the 9/11 terror attacks, there has been a notable increase in hate crimes, racialization, mistrust, and prejudice toward Muslims around the world, including in Canada. Researchers have found that 69 per cent of Quebecers hold a negative judgment about Islam.
After 9/11 in Quebec, clichéd stereotypes of Muslims has influenced secularism and media discourses. Identity politics, merged with secularist discussion, have portrayed Muslims as a threat outside the “nationalist space” in aiming to preserve Quebec sovereignty.
and prejudice.
“But, what would [the student teacher] have done if she was teaching and it was her time to pray?” said Kheterpal.
However, she said the situation was handled appropriately and soon after, a prayer room was set up in the school.
Although Good Shepherd does not support Bill 21, no strategy has been implemented to address Islamophobia.
Saeed Khan is a Muslim high school teacher who works in StJean-sur-Richelieu. In terms of combatting racism and Islamophobia, he feels that his school has been inadequate.
“The school is supposed to be
being removed from primary and secondary schools province-wide. Instead, the government has opted to teach a class called Culture and Citizenship in Québec.
The process began in January 2020 and will be implemented in the 2023-2024 school year.
“We're no longer going to be teaching about religions and other cultures. We're going to be teaching about Quebec culture, the whole program is being removed. It's becoming secular, which is a horrible decision,” said Kheterpal.
In 2008, the ERC program was mandatory for all Quebec schools, elementary and secondary, public and private with the objective of "the recognition of others" and "the pur-
Activities such as culture week, an event held at Antoine-Brossard High School allows Muslim students such as Hussain to feel proud of their identity.
Learning about religious cultures in school is different than experiencing it.
Engaging in one’s culture provides a better understanding of what individuals from different backgrounds experience in their daily lives, which is something that students are more likely to remember, explained Kheterpal.
“The way I see it right now, in Quebec, whatever little connection they had in the curriculum and progress is being eliminated,” stated Khan.
Within Canada, we have a massive role to play in transforming our world towards sustainability, which includes openly naming colonialism as a root cause for contemporary concerns like our global food systems and climate crisis.
In a piece published by The Narwhal about mining in foreign countries, Andrew Findlay reminds us that “Canada is the undisputed powerhouse of the mining industry, home to 75 per cent of its companies. Figures from the Mining Association of Canada show that Canadian investment in mining abroad more than tripled between 1999 and 2016.”
I, Meredith Marty-Dugas, am the Sustainability Ambassadors Program Coordinator in the university’s Office of Sustainability (OoS). My position started as a collaboration between Concordia and Sustainable Concordia, while I was a student and working part-time. I’m also a poet with a never-ending to-read list, a lover of reuse with six projects going at once, and a prison abolitionist.
Duha El-Mardi is the fee levy Sustainable Concordia’s Engagement and Education Coordinator. She is also an amazing community organizer, Sudanese activist, projects coordinator at the Sustainability Action Fund, Master’s student in Human Systems Intervention, and holds degrees in Community Economic Development and Environmental Studies.
We must start by clarifying who we are, what we do, and how our shared trust and respect allows us to imagine new futures and partnerships so that we can resist the capitalist and colonial expectation to disappear behind our positions and the institutions.
Duha and I develop and provide learning opportunities for students and the public that teach about the effects of colonialism and the necessary steps we must take to achieve a sustainable future. Educational programs will not replace the required active resistance to governmental and corporate extraction of nature. Rather, we are aiming to facilitate solidarity across diverse groups of people to prepare them for this tough work ahead. To do that, we must practice very intentional, transformative care for everyone and in the ways people are ready to participate. We must disrupt the idea that anyone is disposable and instead prepare ourselves to be a part of something bigger than us.
Universities are structures, but
they are also people. It is our investment in our relationships, in fostering connections and complexity, that allows us to move forward into creative solutions for sustainable futures that includes everyone, not just white academics worried about carbon emissions. We must talk about underprivileged Black and Indigenous communities living near landfills, contaminated waterways, pipelines and mines, who witness firsthand the violence that permeates our environment; as well as refugees that have been displaced by climate crises and violence spurred by extractive industries;
day, thefts have been occurring under the guise of ecological preservation—green colonialism.”
Jago details how the borders created by white colonizers under the guise of protecting nature have been used to justify the eviction of nations who have lived there for thousands of years. Since the late 1800s, Canadians have been using the nostalgic wild fantasy as a tool to abduct and criminalize Indigenous relationships to land.
By making white government administration responsible for care of our landscapes, the rights of Indigenous nations and communities living on the land have
ities on issues like environmental racism has brought the subject to the mainstream, including the Elliot Page-produced and directed documentary There’s Something in the Water. Projects like Rural Water Watch and the ENRICH Project, continue to demonstrate how mutual respect and support can benefit academic research and the communities most affected by issues like the climate crisis and poor waste management.
Neither Duha nor I are researchers, but we hope that our partnerships and programs offer our community renewed perspectives on the connection between community and ecology. We each have opportunities to do so through the educational programs we design and deliver. When I teach the “Introduction to Sustainability for Employees” module, alongside traditional definitions, we include a history of sustainability that begins with modern colonialism. In the student Sustainability Ambassadors Program, Duha joins me so we can talk about how environmental racism is created in Canada through regulatory systems and corporate greed.
We also facilitate conversation so everyone has a chance to position ourselves in relation to our pasts. Meanwhile at Sustainable Concordia, Duha facilitates a session about the ways we can integrate a decolonial and anti-oppressive lens to environmental justice in “Organizing Sustainability” to introduce community-centered organizing for environmental justice campaigns.
Defining our beginning is imperative to defining how a problem comes to be, how it continues to work.
crises we now hope to solve. By acknowledging that these issues are directly caused by colonization, Duha and I aim to find new strategies for achieving sustainability that destabilize white institutions as the sites of solutions.
We cannot diffuse the responsibility of the climate crises onto everyone equally. For instance, the entire continent of Africa makes very little emissions in comparison to the colonial powers of the Global North. Although we all have responsibility to work towards sustainability, our responsibilities are different. My own relationship to being sustainable is in direct relationship to my family’s history as colonizers of Turtle Island. That is a legacy I must carry and disrupt, as I reconnect with the land and environment I am in.
Together and separately, facilitating anti-colonial approaches to sustainability is what allows Duha and I to bring joy and hope into hard work. We imagine futures and worlds outside a narrow, white supremacist lens where building, nurturing and sustaining healthy and happy communities is always the priority.
and moose that are losing their fur to tick allergies because warmer climates keep bugs alive longer; the city kid breathing in too much smog; the monarch butterfly that is losing its own migration pattern; also the right whale that is trapped in our fishing nets; also; also; also.
In 2017, Robert Jago published an article titled “Canada’s National Parks are Colonial Crime Scenes.” In it, Jago details how conservationism that celebrates wilderness in Canada is a colonial fantasy built to gloss over the murder and theft of Indigenous people and their relationships to nature. Jago claims that “throughout these years, continuing to this
been greatly restricted. Instead, this ideology pretends that these communities pose the same kind of destructive threat to nature that colonization and colonial extractive industry does and therefore must be alienated from the ecosystem. Unfortunately, this forced segregation of social justice and environmental justice remains in many powerful places today, including in how universities teach about sustainability, as a way to maintain white supremacist settler states like Canada.
There are, of course, beacons of hope. Ingrid Waldron’s research in collaboration with Black, Indigenous, and lower income commun-
The modern wave of colonialism began in the 15th century with the Catholic church’s Doctrine of Discovery. This issued a justification for mass murder and pillaging as a glorious duty from God. The Church considered land without Christians on it to be “unoccupied” and obliged colonizers to exploit the resources and people they came across. This ideology that allowed for the destruction of other nations and the worlds they inhabited; that broke people and nature down into bits and pieces, still affects us today. It is found in the racist conservation strategies of our national parks and the extractive industry socalled Canada manages globally.
Colonialism is the man behind the curtain, acting as the architect of the climate and social
Duha and I hold very specific responsibilities to each other, our employers, communities, students and attendees. We are in continual conversation about how we remain accountable and approach this position ethically. By taking anti-colonial approaches to sustainability, we restore opportunities for our community to collaborate, to dream up worlds that white supremacy tells us is impossible. The fight is not humans versus nature, the fight is us versus white supremacy and the industries that power it. It is our multiplicity that allows us to welcome different people on different journeys and focus them on the same goal: to achieve wellbeing for everyone, people, plants, animals, rivers, mountains, mycelium, and more.
Colonialism is the problem we are trying to solve, sustainability is the (re)new(ed) world we are working to achieve.
In high school, my identity as a Haitian was especially odd to navigate in a predominantly white institution.
Whether it was my hair or the food I brought to school, I was constantly reminded that major parts of my culture did not fit in. All of it was scrutinized by my white counterparts and was often mocked.
Imagine my shock when one of the white boys in math class tapped my shoulder and called me “djol-métallique”—djol meaning mouth (derogatory) and métallique meaning metallic (I had braces at the time). This kid not only had the audacity to misuse my language to berate me, but then asked me to give him a rundown of all the Creole (Kreyòl) insults I knew. This type of interaction has kept recurring throughout my life.
The conjunction of Kreyòl and French-Quebecois is vastly spread out today. However, when asked if they know where their borrowed vernacular comes from, nonBlack people usually struggle to find the answer.
The mixing of Kreyòl within the French language was to be expected with the prevalence of the Haitian community in Montreal. I just never expected it to be so widespread, yet so estranged from its origin. At the end of the day, Kreyòl is not a slang from Montreal, nor is it considered to be a part of Quebec patrimony.
Similarly, Ebonics or African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is frequently mistaken as internet slang. This mindless habit simultaneously ignores the ballroom origin of the language and the struggle of the people who birthed it out of resilience.
The Linguistic Society of America asserts that “the term [AAVE] was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms
like 'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech-communities began.” Therefore, historically, this adaptation of language has been downplayed as inappropriate for "standard" society and disregarded as unworthy of acknowledgement. But AAVE, just like Kreyòl, was born out of colonial necessity.
In my experience, non-Black people borrow from this vernacular to add comedic effect to their speech; it serves as a way to relate to experiences of blackness without having to endure its embodied consequences. It is completely natural to want to relate to each
other; however, this should not be done by mimicking a core part of black resilience.
This is a contentious topic that Samantha Chery’s article “Black English Is Being Misidentified as Gen Z Lingo, Speakers Say” addresses. Chery highlights the experience of Kyla Jené Lacy, who identified AAVE as being a refuge. It is clear from this article that Lacy gets validation from attending a predominantly Black college later in life. In this particular setting, she is able to use AAVE, without fear of having her intelligence undermined; without the need for code switching— a way to appease white discomforts towards blackness through speech.
I can recall a phone interview I had for a job where I code switched.When they saw me in person, they were stunned that I was Black and able to “speak so eloquently.” Throughout the meeting, I kept getting remarks on how impressed they were that I nailed my French test. There was always an incentive to emphasize that my ability to tame tints of my blackness through language made me better than Black people who didn’t. For Chery, “AAVE serves as communication among people with a common culture.” This is what Kreyòl is for me; this usurping of language is as prevalent in English as it is in French.
In Quebec, the creators of this conjunction of languages are actually Haitian kids who have developed a method of adaptation to a Quebecois culture that has alienated them. In this optic, when
white people use this dialect without awareness, resilience is distorted as something "fun" for them to mock and fetishize. Rendering Black forms of linguistic adaptation the center of comedic relief.
Perrye-Delphine Séraphin’s article titled (Créole 101) testifies that this can feel like mockery. “I always felt like it was to ridicule my culture of origin and it insulted me a lot” stated Séraphin.
For me, the feeling she is describing is insidious. It makes my ability to experience my Haitian identity challenging to come to terms with.
Chery’s article extends the sentiment that there is an incessant narrative of comedy attributed to AAVE by non-Black people. According to Chery, “These nonBlack people speak it as a form of entertainment, giving them a Black caricature in a way, kind of like a minstrel show.” In essence, creating a form of linguistic blackface. For reference, minstrelsy was racist theatre. They were performances by white actors in blackface specifically made to caricaturize and mock Black people. The danger here is that some may tend to internalize that comic relief role as their place in society instead of the continued demonstrations of resilience it is. I was foolish enough to think we could have avoided this linguistic blackface, but here we are.
The blatant erasure of the Black origins of Kreyòl is hurtful for many reasons. One of my first philosophy teachers told our class: “If it wasn’t for the Haitian nurses in Montreal, there would be no working healthcare system.” Haitians began to mi-
grate to Quebec in 1963. It was encouraged by the Canadian need for labour. The West Indian Domestic Scheme is a great example of the institutionalization of Caribbean identity to profit off of and exploit Black bodies. We still benefit from this Black labor today.
Although Haitian influence in Montreal is undeniable through the history of its institutionalization, we cannot omit the circumstances that have forced Haitians to demonstrate resilient qualities as they arrived here. This generational resilience goes all the way back to the Haitian Revolution of 1804 and has only endured since. The mixing of languages, especially for young people, is very much a part of that.
I struggle to understand how practices of adaptation become trendy. While white people want to be oppressed in order to win the oppression olympics, Black people still have to work doubletime to counter its effects. The negative underlying perception attributed to the vernacular is exemplified in the La Presse article by Amin Guidara, Le Nouveau Joual de La Métropole, which— despite its attempt to contextualize linguistic integration—states that this assimilated language is a “gibberish-like slang.” To me, this is a reduction of the complexities of integrating Kreyòl—a language which is often devalued as a dialect—into an established Quebecois French, which carries its estate by racist threads.
The mixing of Kreyòl with French is seen as a downgrade of
the French language for supporters of Bill 101—the people concerned with the decline of French language. As a result, we code switch when we face the reality that our natural ways of expressing ourselves are political. We are aware that we will be judged and discriminated against for the resiliency of our speech because it fails to lean into a code that does not fit Quebecois puritan standards.
I am very well aware that some white folks have lived in predominantly Black neighbourhoods in Montreal and have “talked like this their whole life.” In spite of this, they are not subject to the same gaze as Black people are when using the vernacular. Additionally, their whiteness may provide them with additional protection from the judgment often associated with the use of Kreyòl in French.
Black joy endures the process of integration. In order to experience that state, we have to first undergo the labour of building resilience. This is something that needs to be acknowledged when speaking Kreyòl.
This is not to say that I think non-Black people should be forbidden from using any of this mixing of language; at this point, Haitian influence is ingrained. It is pointless to try and dictate how people should speak. However, I do believe that a more productive course of action involves having conversations on ways to honour the Haitian origins embedded in Quebec History and avoiding using Kreyòl as a punchline.
On Feb. 6, Turkey was struck by the world’s deadliest set of earthquakes in over a decade. With magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.6 and just nine hours apart, the destruction was comparable to the size of England.
On top of over 6,212 aftershocks experienced in and around Kahramanmaraş since, there was yet another separate earthquake of a 6.3 magnitude with the same epicenter on Feb. 20 and another of magnitude 5.6 a week later.
On Feb. 8, the death toll surpassed 9,000 as I was awaiting my bus. The clouds parted and the sun touched my face. I felt the sun’s warmth deep in my skin as tears uncontrollably ran down my face. I did not understand why this was happening right away. It was a mix of gratitude, shame, desperation and anger that made me cry: the gratitude that this sun could warm me; the desperation of knowing that the warmth of this sun couldnot reach under the rubble.
I got on the bus and cried the whole 40-minute ride. Ashamed that I was alive, ashamed that I was lucky. Desperate from knowing there was nothing in my individual power to do to save hundreds of thousands of my people who were longing for light. Angered because I knew this was not my fault. I knew whose fault it was and they remained unharmed. They always remained unharmed. I felt like I could very well lose my mind. As a Turk, I walked the streets with my chest tight; heart heavy, and I had to mourn and go about my day. No one around me had the slightest clue.
It was the middle of the night when the first tremor struck, which meant most people were sound asleep in their beds. Their leftovers saran-wrapped in the fridge. Children had already been tucked in and kissed goodnight. What does “sound asleep” or “home safe” mean if your home is where you are at the mercy of danger?
I was scouring the internet for the latest information, but couldn’t seem to get a straight answer. Hundreds were expected dead, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Twitter flooded with people tweeting their addresses out: “This is where I live. I am under the rubble here. Someone save me.” I knew this was going to be a massacre.
The failure to acknowledge the weight of the earthquakes on the part of my peers was not just incredibly isolating, but disturbing. These friends were a part of the life I had built here; my world was si-
lently crumbling. I watched the tragedy of my people be omitted from my friends' social media when the year prior, they rallied and shared links over a building. I didn’t know where to go from here. Was my tragedy not ‘trendy’ enough to be worthy of an Instagram story? Perhaps the buildings that crumbled in Southeast Anatolia were not as easy on the eyes as the Notre Dame.
happened. I had to reevaluate my place in the diaspora and who I was. I felt like I was betraying those who lost their lives to the earthquakes and disrespecting their memory by indulging in these friendships.
As I scrolled through socials, I came across a post that was a collection of notes and diary entries that were found in the rubble. One of them read: “Hi handsome, you’re becoming a father :)” with a sonogram attached. I froze from despair. The image broke me. I was nudged out of this painful haze when my deskmate was tapping my shoulder repeatedly; I looked at him with confusion. He shook the paper aggressively and told me to take it. It was a Scantron sheet; my midterm was starting.
GRAPHIC RIBS BEAUCHAMPWhen Notre Dame in Paris was caught on fire, it took two days to accumulate donations of nearly $1 billion. Conversely, it took Canada four days to send search and rescue teams to Turkey, despite the death toll already nearing 35,000 at the time. Canada has pledged to donate $10 million to Turkey and Syria through the Red Cross, although we have yet to see any details or a confirmation pertaining to the aid.
Not to mention the Red Cross was disfavoured by the Turkish community due to suspicions of the Red Cross mishandling the resources allocated to the quakes.
The activism I saw on social media and in person was extremely lacking when compared to reactions to crises that have happened in other parts of the world—specifically the West. The world is abundant in resources, and we surely have the power to alleviate countries like Turkey and Syria in moments of unexpected loss and devastating damage. The problem is they choose not to. Crises of any level in the West receive attention much faster and efficiently than crises in the East, even when quantifiably worse.
I became unable to laugh with my friends without feeling shame. I had to reevaluate my friendships because I had close friends who were not acknowledging what had
The blatant disregard I felt for our lives was echoed in the media response to the tragedy. Deeming tragedies in the Middle East as secondary to world news has a fundamental role in the alienation of people from the ‘periphery’ as opposed to the imagined ‘centre’ of the world. Why do Western governments and media get away with normalizing the negligence for Middle Eastern lives and relentlessly sustaining the notion that people from the Middle East are programmed to endure trauma? It’s rooted in the history of colonialism and imperialism, through which orientalism has been created to perpetuate harm against the Middle East.
Post-colonial governments perpetuate the narrative that the Middle East is an unsalvageable, poor, war-torn dystopia—not to mention the West’s inclination to see the entirety of the Middle East as a monolith when we are made up of complex identities and cultures.
Mediatic orientalism impedes the process of uncovering and addressing the root problems of what happened surrounding these earthquakes. The deaths of over 50,000 people is referred to as a mass murder by members of the Turkish community, and rightfully so. Fingers are pointed at Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, for allowing the construction of buildings, residences and hotels that were not up to earthquake safety regulations despite being advertised as such. Earthquake safety checks were falsified at the expense of the lives of Turkish citizens and the profit of the Turkish government. Under Erdogan's rule, the government has indismissibly betrayed its people. This injustice is a violation and a
threat to freedom—it should not serve the purpose of enabling ignorance within Western discourses. The role Western powers play in the portrayal of Middle Eastern countries should also be considered. During his presidential term, Donald Trump did not hesitate to publicly threaten to “totally obliterate and destroy the Turkish economy,” exemplifying how power dynamics are established within the Western narrative. The media projects a one-dimensional view of the Middle East where its complexities are not addressed, further dehumanizing us. Western media outlets ensured the propagation of this view like when the New York Times tweeted an article regarding an explosion which took place in Istanbul in late 2022 and chose to exclusively highlight the amount of tourists which visited the area where the bombing took place. Presuming that the lives of Turkish civilians were disposable, and disillusioning the masses to adapt a learned division; an us and them, an othering that allows for the
justification of their tyranny, ignorance, innaction and discriminatory resource and aid allocation.
Concordia was no different. They did not provide comprehensive or timely coverage on the matter, nor was there any relief provided to Turkish and Syrian students, except for a quick email sent out by the International Student Office. Having to reach out to professors one by one—or not reaching out at all and trying to keep it all together—and having to explain why we were not okay despite the survival of our immediate circle was simply excruciating. Surely, we were not new to having to put on a happy face, but repeated exposure to trauma does not make us immune to pain.
While we impatiently awaited empathy from our professors, sympathy from our peers, statements from our student union and university, we found comfort in each other. In the face of lacking institutional support and colonial indifference, the Turkish diaspora found strength in coming together.
Looking out from the 11th floor terrace
At these buildings
Sturdy
At these buildings
Strong
At these buildings that would shake
But not fall
To live and to never worry
That the ground may crumble beneath your feet
To live and to never worry
Because the ground may shake beneath your feet but never crumble
To live and to trust
To not have to think to trust–
That the ground you walk on will not fall.
I’m looking out from the 11th floor terrace
And all I can see is rubble
From the 11th floor terrace
From the 11th floor terrace.
The acronym BIPOC is often associated with oppression, struggle and marginalization. But beneath the resilience of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour lies an oasis of joy; let’s spread the love in all its wonderful colours.
"Sandra, before I respond to your apparent assumption that I am ‘white,’ and also to your assumption that you know who I am and what I am about, I want to state that I do not take your essay as a personal attack. I mean this," introduced my white-passing professor in response to my essay criticizing her choice-feminism approach to pedagogy.
"I am NOT white. I am sorry you see me as such," she later insisted in the same response.
I understood then that she had been triggered at the notion that I saw myself as her equal. It disturbed the inherent sense of intellectual superiority she harboured over me. In fighting the system and saying that she was not above me, that she had not adequately represented the teachings of bell hooks, by criticizing her approach to feminism and stating that she had not been a good educator to me, I triggered a white fragility-inducing response. A response
essay was pointing out, white (passing) women have a long history of yielding their privilege as a way to exert violence over groups they hold more social power over like racialized men, children and women they consider weaker than them; all through the enacting of a tear-jerking performance of distress and victimhood.
These types of women use feminism and feminist theory as a way to coerce people into offering them the sympathy they willfully
as their male counterparts, especially towards other women. This phenomenon is echoed in what is called the race to innocence.
The race to innocence is a term coined by professors Mary Louise Fellows of the University of Minnesota Law School and Sherene Razack of the Department of Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. It describes the way “feminist political solidarity has failed because of what we identify as the problem of competing marginalities. These moments of conflict and political immobility seem to center around the deeply felt belief that each of us, as women, is not implicated in the subordination of other women.”
Over the years, I came to realize that I was to others what they experienced first. Most often that was my Blackness; my dark skin is seen as a weapon I may never be disarmed of. Although defining myself was internal, qualifying what I was remained external as my experience of identity is imposed on me through the treatment the perception others have of me begets. As such, I was always denied the agency to define my Blackness for myself.
stead, it promotes an undue sense of righteousness and indignation like it did with my professor. It gives more power to a post about marginalized people than actually treating us with dignity in real life; it uplifts symbolism over actions.
As I stated in my essay: "Women with intersecting marginalized identities’ voices are reduced to what white women are willing to listen to and concede to. If my agency is limited to the truth white women are comfortable with, my ability to change the discourse is nullified.”
It is crucial to understand that the labels were never the resistance or weapons used against the violence marginalized folks are subjected to. Violence is the root of victimhood. Violence is the reason why resistance is required in the first place. It was never about anything else, certainly not identity politics.
I was surprised because my mention of her whiteness constituted a very small fraction of my sixpage-long essay. Yet, her feedback revolved almost entirely on my perception of her as white. Why was she so angered and hurt by my perspective? After all, it was merely an offering of my truth, one that had been explicitly requested at that.
"[...] what I find perplexing is you deciding that I am white. I actually laughed because I could not understand how you could come to this conclusion," she later continued. "[...] your essays are so interesting to read, but when you deliberately attack my ability to evaluate your reading of a theorist that I have worked years on, you actually stoop to the same level that all white men stoop to when they want to devalue a woman—when they feel challenged and when this challenge makes them uncomfortable. Don't be offended. Exercise your agency. Do you have it? Don't let me affect you. Are you able to resist the offence? Are you agentic? What to do? How to respond? Using the oppressor’s tool, is this agency?"
that somehow came without any reflectivity or acknowledgment of the "wonderful intellectual rant that emerged from a standpoint of a person who is challenging the white academy." She herself described my essay to be but firmly insisted on her non-whiteness and my (intellectual) inferiority.
The rest of her response mostly constituted an attempt to compete in the Oppression Olympics against me. However, unlike her, my marginalization was never a badge I wore with honour.
During a Saturday Night Live monologue, comedian Bill Burr stated, "the woke movement was supposed to be about people of colour not getting opportunities... finally making that happen. And it was about that for about eight seconds. And then somehow, white women swung their Gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line.” He was right.
As my professor herself put towards the end of her lengthy response to my paper, "I will accept your perspective until I am bored and move to another perspective. Agency or not?" As my
deny others. Meanwhile, white women's boredom comes at the cost of our safety. Their agency costs us freedom and their tears can cost us our very lives.
We saw it in the likes of Carolyn Bryant Donham, Fannie Taylor, Amy Cooper, Jen and Sarah Hart, Eleanor Williams, Dr. Cynthia Villagomez and many others who yielded their agency to instill violence on marginalized folks but cosplayed victimhood as a shield for justified criticism and due repercussions. Such is the power of white women's tears.
This habitual practice of political whiteness was exemplified in the rise of Karens, which showcased the social construct of white womanhood: weaponized victimhood. The portrayal of white women as docile, kind, nurturing, passive people remains ingrained in our collective epistemology of victimhood, is alive and well despite the mountain of evidence pointing to its fallacy, like the concealed involvement of white women in the slave economy. This exists to uphold the lie that it is against white women's nature to be as capable of harm
Conversely, Rachel Dolezal, Carrie Bourassa, Jessica Krug, Ellen Turpen-Lafond, Raquel Evita Saraswati, and other identity hoaxers can cosplay the reality of systemic racial inequality without ever having been on the receiving
While we distractedly argue over labels, we increasingly struggle to discern those fighting for individual power from those fighting for our collective liberation. We should yield our agency to dismantle oppressive systems, not reshuffle them to our individual benefit.
Identity politics creates an environment in which attacking the harmful system is seen as a tragedy whilst attacking its victims remains tradition. But we need to evolve from a place of conscious
end of its whip. These unremarkable charlatans appropriate the labels of marginalization to escape the boredom of their privilege and respective mediocrity.
This identity-stacking of marginalization renounces any sort of accountability for their complicity in the systems they yield power and benefit from; all while calling themselves “Muslim activist” , “Indigenous feminist”, or–my personal favorite–“woke soul sista." Meanwhile, their performative outrage is socially and financially rewarded while their whiteness affords them shelter from material repercussions.
As a result, white allyship has become a lucrative social currency that does nothing to support personal evolution, solution-driven dialogue or social justice. In-
intentionality. We have the agency to take responsibility for the feelings others bring up in us without centring ourselves. We have the agency to observe and sit with the discomfort others’ perspectives of us may spark in us rather than dismiss or violently react to it.
At the end of the day, a perspective is an offering of one's truth. It is a mere gift from one human being to another. It was never meant to be agreed or disagreed on. The weight of that perspective is in the energy behind the words chosen to explain it.
Once you get reactive at the offering of another's perspective, you have to ask yourself if you're confident in the value of your own offering—in the integrity of your own walk. Are you?
“We should yield our agency to dismantle oppressive systems, not reshuffle them to our individual benefit.”
—Sandra MouafoGRAPHIC FANNY LORD-BOURCIER
When I was 19 years old, I went into psychiatric care and met a psychiatrist who forever changed the way I looked at the healthcare system. I had no expectations about how my life would change. I had been struggling for so long that I had never imagined that my life could get any worse, but it did. I was under my psychiatrist’s care for five years and it was pure agony.
I wasn’t listened to by my doctor. She mocked me for sharing my thoughts and experiences. Her reactions were inappropriate at best. She always denied me access to psychotherapy because she didn’t believe that it would be helpful. She believed that therapy couldn’t help someone like me, someone with a severe mental illness; the nature of my diagnosis made me automatically lose any credibility. It was upsetting not to be taken seriously by a few people in my life, but it was especially upsetting coming from the staff assigned to my care. I felt like my account of events and perspective didn’t matter. I felt like a statistic rather than a person.
My psychiatrist created her own narrative of what I was experiencing. She told me that I couldn’t work or go to school; I’d need to be on welfare despite being already enrolled in college and having good grades. She threat-
ened to hospitalize me or increase my medication when she had no valid reason to. My doctor used intimidation tactics. She was cruel and insensitive when I was in my most vulnerable state. It terrified me to see how a health professional like her could work in healthcare, especially in mental health.
Epistemic injustice is far too common among patients with a mental illness. A young woman in Quebec took her own life after the way she was treated when she sought care. She was also not taken seriously. Her doctor stated that she would have taken her own life already if that was her true intention, and felt that it was an act for attention. This problem exists beyond the province of Quebec.
Judgements are often made based on a diagnosis. Although each disorder has a spectrum, most people, including medical professionals, recognize and consider the label first. This is a common instance of lack of care within the system as the label defines the patient. Once a patient receives a diagnosis, it’s easy to look for symptoms rather than look into the context of the issue. Patients with mental illnesses are already vulnerable; such lack of care is dangerous and puts patients’ mental health at risk for deterioration, or even death.
I often complained to the team assigned to me about my psychia-
trist. I was told that I wasn’t the only patient who was dealing with her unacceptable approach. I wasn’t the first patient to be treated this way, and I certainly wasn’t the last to express it. Not only was my psychiatrist’s approach problematic, there have been other doctors who’ve also abused their power. Although the public doesn’t hear about it all the time, these cases are more common than what is acknowledged. Psychiatric maltreatment is a real problem. Doctors should be legitimately helping their patients recover rather than making them more sick. Medical maltreatment is a systemic issue. Many individuals are struggling with mental illnesses and most cannot seek care right away. There is a long waitlist and access to healthcare can take years. Even once a patient is assigned to a doctor, there’s no guarantee that it’s the right professional for them. This is even worse for people of colour. Medical professionals don’t always recognize the reality of their patients’ intersections, especially when focusing purely on the symptoms. This makes treating people of colour more difficult. The lack of culturally-informed care leads to misdiagnoses and maltreatment. It’s worse for us because we are already disenfranchised and made more vulnerable by our compounding oppressions.
Stigma around mental illness is real. Even health professionals are prone to prejudice. It's a scary reality endured by many individuals suffering from mental illnesses.
Every individual is supposed to have the right to accept or refuse treatment, even when struggling with mental illness. As long as I’m not a danger to myself or to anyone else, I should have the right to choose whether or not to consent. Despite being in a well enough state to make my own decisions, I was robbed of that right anyway. I was told by my case manager that my psychiatrist was the only doctor I could see and that this was the only hospital that could treat me. I told both my psychiatrists and the nurse that I didn’t want to be their patient. So, my psychiatrist gave me an ultimatum: either I go to the appointments and take my medication willingly or she’d get a court order for me to do so. She said that it was my choice, but that never felt like a choice to me.
I always opened up about my experience with this doctor to anyone who would listen. Every person I told informed me that she had no right to treat me this way. They all told me to switch doctors and I definitely tried. But I was always stopped. My psychiatric nurse at the time would interfere and make sure that I was under
her friend’s care. She asked me for the name of the person who wanted to help me find a new doctor. If it was a faculty member at the college I attended, she’d call them and leave them with what I was told were hostile voicemail messages. There was always some obstacle in the way of me getting the proper care, including my race being used against me and my family. I lost faith in the healthcare system. These experiences made it more difficult for me to want to seek help in the future. I started to worry that other health professionals could treat us this way.
The stigma around mental illness didn’t help my situation either. So, I unnecessarily suffered under both this psychiatrist and the psychiatric nurse’s care for years. To this day, it has negatively impacted the way I approach healthcare, and the way I look at people and life.
It is safe to say that my psychiatric experiences have traumatized me. I’m with a different psychiatrist now, but I still carry the trauma of my past experiences. No one should have to go through what I’ve been through. I suffer from mental illness and I should still be treated like a human being. I’m still a person who deserves to be treated fairly, especially because I am much more than my illness.
Kaitlin Gong
GRAPHIC NADINE ABDELLATIF
What is a cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency, or crypto, is a form of currency that only exists digitally, that usually has no central issuing or regulating authority but instead uses a decentralized system to record transactions and manage the issuance of new units. Such currency is the opposite to one that is regulated by a central authority, such as a government or a bank, also referred to as “fiat money.” This is a technical definition that is as precise as it is useless.
So let’s try to define it in a sense we care about right now, in terms of solutions—cryptocurrency is a solution which we try to push onto problems which already have better ways of solving them.
The technology behind cryptocurrency and cryptography, is incredibly complex and useful. Cryptography is the basis of the safe internet as we know it. Every time we open a new web page, every time our bank sends a transaction, every time we send a message to someone—cryptography is used to ensure that firstly, what we are saying can only be read by the recipient, and that secondly, we are indeed talking to whom we mean. The little lock on the left of the website address for example— means that the cryptographic certificate of this website is valid, and it's indeed who it says it is.
However, applied in the way that we see it being used today, cryptocurrency is worse than almost all other technologically, economically, environmentally, and ethically possible solutions.
Now, what is neocolonialism?
It’s economic and political policies by which a great power indirectly maintains or extends its influence over other areas or people. While classical mercantilism has almost disappeared, colonialism is still present in large areas of the developing world, including many countries in Africa.
And how are they related?
Neocolonialism is viewed negatively by the masses because it is seen as a continuation of European colonialism; great powers, and now international companies like Nestle, using their power to achieve political goals in the region or gain profit. We from the outside see what it is, and why it is done.
However, in contrast to neocolonialism, cryptocurrency investment and fin-tech slip past these preconceptions. They establish themselves as the futuristic solutions that can solve third world problems with the technology of
tomorrow. And so are now not viewed by us as financial imperialism; they are no different—at least as the end outcome, in which whole infrastructures of a developing country depend on either a single company or organization. And so, the fate of this country is now not only affected by the interest of those entities, but by the smallest fluctuations of the market.
Let's address the biggest problem crypto is trying to solve: banking. Around 60 per cent of people in Africa do not have banking accounts. There exists a list of reasons as to why, which include low urbanization and political instability, but what is important for the sake of this article is that according to cryptocurrency promoters, it is meant to “solve it”.
Already 40 per cent of banking customers in Africa prefer a digital channel for money transfers, as per BPC’s report, so a completely bankless online solution seems perfect. However, crypto startups wouldn’t be the first or even the largest companies trying to do so already. Since 2007, mobile banking company M-Pesa, which utilized SMS messages, has been operating in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, and South Africa. It has given millions of people access to a financial system. However, it has also been criticized for its centralized structure, monopoly in the business and high transfer fees.
Let’s see how it compares to usage of cryptocurrency as the main tender. It is often erroneously quoted that bitcoin is resistant to the inflation that fiat experiences, and so your value will always be the same in it. Something similar was said by our favorite right-wing pundit Pierre Poilliviere on April 1 2022.
Since then, bitcoin price dropped from almost 58,000 CAD CAD to 33,500 CAD, while going as low as nearly 21,000 CAD— that’s almost 40 per cent of the original value, only further illustrating the potential instability of crypto.
On the subject of transaction fees, it's not that bad, depending on how you are owning the currency. If it’s on an exchange, like Binance, the largest exchange by volume in the world, then transfer fees could be zero per cent; if you are transferring to another Binance address as an internal transfer, you pay nothing at all. However, we get here the same problem as before: centralization. Nigeria has banned its banks from trading with cryp-
tocurrencies, and the entire exchange is no longer accessible to anyone in the country.
Because of it, many have been pushed to exchange Bitcoin Peerto-Peer the original way, but with it come many problems that even the first world faces, such as fees. Fees aren’t a percentage of the amount sent. Instead, they are dependent on the activity of the network and therefore fluctuate wildly. For instance, the current average is 1.5 USD, but within this year, it has been as low as 0.5 USD and up to 4.47 USD. This has made bitcoin transaction fees similar (if not higher) to what M-Pesa’s fees are, but without one very important aspect that official currency has: legal protection. It is not an issue of the global south, even developed countries don’t know how to deal with the issue of legal regulation. This has been proven by the recent FTX scandal, or recently Binance, another crypto-exchange, using customer’s funds for self enrichment.
Banks, while operating with legal tender, are protected in many ways—transfers are reversible, your money is insured. As many problems as there are with centralized government control over fiat currencies, they enjoy legal protections that crypto simply doesn't have. For all legal intents and purposes, it has often been described as a speculative asset, and for a reason. Scams and pyramid schemes are rampant in the cryptocurrency environment, and there is nothing that can be done from the point of view of the law, or return of your assets— once they are gone, they are gone. Even the members of the African cryptocurrency community—such
as Buchi Okoro, the CEO of Nigerian crypto startup Quidax—are begging the government for regulations to protect people’s assets. But as recent FTX collapse shows, no amount of legal protection will save them if the institution they are trading on is unaccountable fiscally to anyone except its shareholders.
Let’s take an example of another essential infrastructure project attempting to reinvent itself with crypto in Africa: internet access. The largest two projects now are 3air and World mobile, both promising to bring internet access to the masses, where traditional mobile networks have failed. One small problem: infrastructure for these networks is still needed. World Mobile has to launch and maintain its aerostats—low altitude ballon that acts as a telecom tower. And 3air must construct and maintain its base stations that use proprietary technology, not known to the public, and not accessible to those who want to create alternatives. Both operate and use their own crypto currency for payments.
Giving internet access to billions of people in the global south is objectively good, as it gives access to education and opportunities.
However, doing so, while giving the control of the underlying infrastructure to a single company, like 3air, is not a good way to establish long term self-sufficiency and self-reliant infrastructure.
Especially if these companies are operating proprietary hardware, while even more fundamental currency used by them is controlled by a third party, like another organization or another cryptocurrency exchange.
Let's also take into account that none of these multiple entities are transparent fiscally, nor are they accountable to anyone except their shareholders or board of directors. In addition, very few are based or were started in Africa. All of this shows a pattern, usually attributed to neocolonial ventures.
Their goals are not wrong— there absolutely should be investment development of infrastructure in remote regions - one that indeed, generally monopoly owning corporations or governments ignore for the lack of funding, interest or population density. However, it shouldn't be done by chaining the entire internet access of a continent to the fate of two American companies. Because by seeing what is happening to such companies, they may not even exist in three years, as result of new laws, market fluctuations or, most likely, mismanagement of funds by their board of directors.
What can we do? Not too much as individuals except to not invest in crypto. Monetary support is already done on massive scales by entities such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and individual countries. The current efforts, such as, for example, IMF cooperation with China on the Belt and Road Initiative, have been shown to be not transparent, and give countries that these grants are given to very little independence, with a lot of oversight by the entity giving the funds. But such help should be given without strings attached. Our job would be to not apply false solutions to the global south, but to offer proper ones.
Every morning, I wake up, procrastinate, get out of bed, and slip into the clothes of the girl that is supposed to be me.
My monotonous morning routine unfolds with my eyes barely opened. There’s no time to live in the moment, I might miss my eight o’clock bus.
Whether the destination is school or work, an overwhelming sensation of pseudo-existence takes control and shifts my feet one at a time. I know where I’m going, but I’m not convinced I deserve to be there.
I navigate the world in a zombie-like state, afraid other people will notice me for all the wrong reasons. Since I stick out like a sore thumb, the only thing I do feel is completely unqualified and out of place. This feeling, of being an outsider in the very room you worked hard to get into, is Imposter Syndrome.
Merriam-Webster defines Imposter Syndrome as the “persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success.”
Growing up, I’d always been one of the only Black girls in my schools. I remember hearing the term ‘angry Black girl’ for the first time and developing this fear of people having a reason to say something bad about me. I had set this unattainable standard of perfection and composure, to the point that I transformed into my own biggest critic.
Every moment of success was plagued by the feeling of inadequacy, and I was never able to accept that I could belong anywhere except at the bottom of the social hierarchy. That was when I understood that I was expected to fit a certain mold, despite how inauthentic and ill-fitting it would be.
Society has always had a negative view of Black women. It made me question whether or not I truly deserved all the good things that came my way. Whenever I was prompted to be my own best advocate, a wave of distrust would sweep below me and linger just long enough to induce panic. I carried this mentality with me throughout my entire life. I made sure to downsize every aspect of my personality just so that I could avoid any unwanted attention. But, as I avoided attention, I also fell into the habit of self-doubt.
pandemic was at best a jarring experience. All of a sudden, you’re meant to believe in yourself enough to set the path of the course of the rest of your life. Meanwhile, the last three years were nothing more than a blur and the concept of time has already caught up to you.
Time reminds us that it waits for no one, and before we even realize it, the defense of being young is no longer an excuse for our failures. It reminds us that we are now supposedly adults, with supposedly legitimate experiences, that are meant
tion, reality sets in. All of a sudden, every decision matters and every mistake matters even more. A few months ago, I took my first leap into ‘the real world.’ I got hired for my first full-time job and the only thing I felt was sick to my stomach. I was the youngest person there with no children to feed and no mortgage to pay. Because I had gotten so used to looking down on myself, I couldn’t help but question whether or not I deserved such an opportunity. While I battled this constant negative in-
As every minute passes, we always fear that we will soon be kicked to the curb, onto the sidewalk of the undeserving. The sidewalk where society tricks us into thinking we belong.
But instead of falling for that trick, try to view the discomfort as a sign of progress. Every new chapter in your life comes to you for a reason, and despite how daunting it can be, choosing to put your best foot forward can make all the difference. Imagine what would’ve happened if you had never taken that first breath the day you were born. If, at that life-changing moment, you had focused on the familiarity of the past, you would never have grown into the person you are today.
Here’s what I tell myself whenever I fall back into old habits of self-doubt: don’t be the one to limit your own potential. Once you realize that you are the only one holding yourself back, you’ll notice that choosing to take that leap while afraid is always a better alternative to regretting your own inaction.
A 2019 study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health, a US government-funded biomedical and health research agency, found that 20 per cent of college students experience a sensation of significant doubt regarding their capabilities.
Many of us are all too familiar with this sense of doubt. We often find it nearly impossible to trust our own abilities, and fall into the comforting habit of biting our tongues out of fear of overstepping. Growing into your 20s during the
to serve us in our supposedly legitimate jobs. Unfortunately—whether we like it or not—Imposter Syndrome causes us to question our own qualifications, leaving us to be swallowed by feelings of anxiety. Because of the pandemic, I never really got to experience the transition period reminding me that I’m not a kid anymore. I feel as though I never got the chance to acclimate to my new status as an adult in society. While I battle this internal exaggeration of every decision into a life-or-death situa-
ner monologue—society’s prejudice against people of colour—I wondered how long I would be stuck in this cycle of anxiety.
Many people say that Imposter Syndrome never really goes away. Actor Lupita Nyong’o explained that despite her many bookings, the more she progresses in her career, the more she is filled with doubt. “I go through [Imposter Syndrome] with every role,” Nyong’o said. “I think winning an Oscar may in fact have made it worse,” she concluded.
With lots of reflection, patience and resilience, I learned to appreciate my place in society as a Black woman. Despite the prejudice surrounding my people, I realized there was no need to fight so hard to prove people wrong. Living authentically—instead of striving for the unattainable—allowed me to develop a more trusting relationship with myself. I may not be perfect, but that’s completely okay.
If Imposter Syndrome’s grasp has ever held you back from believing in your own worth, and if you relate at all to the experiences I mentioned, make it your goal to combat these feelings of inadequacy head-on. Why let your insecurities decide your future? Do yourself a favour and let your potential and knowledge speak for themselves.
Mohammad Khan
Grandmothers mercury
Coursed through arteries
Through father's blood and tongues of brothers
Love stood still at border fires
Each one raging with toxic fumes
Fueled by chaos of traumatized eyes
Coal smoke lapping at the face of children
Who breathed in fire as their fathers once did
Toxicity was God's drop of madness
Ill and deranged in their composure
Standing in prayer–longing for relief
Side to side in struggle
Side to side in insanity.
Grandmother's mercury
From fingertips to black tea sips
As poison poured down from humble cups to hungry stomachs
Their heads weighed down through shame
To question the venom was to war with each other
To accept their condition was divine order
Like grandmother's spiked chalice on lips
To develop in malice was their only gift
Like love–the harm was unconditional
From father's breast feeding to grandfather's beatings
They grew up like grape vines, tied to their fixture
Around poles and pipes, beaten through scripture
Rods of fear ripped through their chests
Stakes in the ground left holes in which they rest.
Their leaves were hard, rough and torn
Their stems were firm and supple in turn
But ever so often
When strangers sought impression
Fruits of a broken family tree would offer its blessings
The taste would be savorous, overwhelmingly saccharine
Could bring one tears in its candied fragrance
It invited guests from far and wide
Left smiles, laughs, sobs—goodbyes
But to eat very much was to feel flavours foul
Couple with hate, guilt, shame to devour
From the blood of their father came a taste bittersweet
That taste was the taste of grandmother's mercury.
brown is the shade of the soil, on which we step. where life blossoms, in which worms and microorganisms reside.
brown is the shade of her eyes reflected by the rays of the sun; daughter of the land, she is the pollen of love.
I love the earth she lays upon.
brown is the shade she was ashamed of words like bigotry were planted in her at an age so young. sedated by fiends she dug a pit into the soil of the earth, she built a home upon an alternate version of herself. she heals from broken promises imprinted by the past. she soon grows and fosters into the true version of herself. brown is the shade of a true love of mine, she is I, and I love her so deeply.
Tshimang
Good times in hard times
Hard times in good times
Lately, the guilt has been especially heavy
In being absent in some places
And too present in others
The overwhelming feeling to give my everything
This duty and sense of urgency built into me
Ingrained as deeply as I feel
I feel heavy.
I feel the regret
I feel the loneliness
I feel the sadness
That of myself and of those I love.
I feel my mother’s worry, In the pit of my stomach
I scoop it out like sand.
Slipping through my fingers and lingering for days in My heart, I feel my brother’s anger.
Burning with tenacity, it is hard to put out.
Spreading just as quickly as it is lit, Only receding in the wake of its destruction on My chest, I feel my father’s disappointment
The weight of it slows me down
Like jagged rocks, I chip them off my shoulders, In pieces big or small
They crumble and they fall,
The sharp edges bruising my feet, in My throat,
I feel the shame.
Viscous and wet, whenever it bubbles it chokes me
My words drowning in between gurgles.
My spine stiff and my mind frozen, I can only gasp for air.
My limbs are numb, my knees collapse
My chest ablaze, I can only gasp for air.
My vision blurs, my cheeks are wet, My stomach heaves, I can only gasp for air.
So, I gasp, and I grasp, I breathe. I can breathe.
Index…Middle…Ring…Pinky. You’re pinching the tips of your fingers. It’s like a subconscious trigger warning. You feel your fight or flight response creeping in—your cue to prepare yourself for the moment when it’s only you and them.
You pick a seat in the middle of the class so you have a good view of what is going on around you. You’re regretting it. You have no fucking way out, no escape route. No way of making a quick exit. You’re trapped. The pit of your stomach is swelling with anxiety.
Pinky…Ring…Middle…Index. You’re pinching your fingertips harder now. The door opens and you look up with hope. You see straight light brown hair. Your brown eyes lock with their hazel ones. You look down as your hope fades…because it’s still only you You mindlessly look at your phone to distract yourself. It doesn’t work.
Index…Index…Thumb… Thumb…Thumb. You start remembering how you spent so much time worrying about the professor and
forgot all about the students. You researched your classes and who was teaching them because you refused to sit in another class where the professor gets away with spewing out the n-word like it’s a free gift for everyone. Then trying to justify it for the sake of the author’s intention. Or whatever other excuse they use. Despite the fact we all know what the fuck the author intended. Why didn’t you think about this before? Why didn’t you mentally prepare to be the only one here?
The door opens…shuts, still only you. You really think you’re safe in a sea of faces that look nothing like yours?
Middle……Middle……
Middle……door opens…You’re pinching slowly now. You look up quickly…nope…shut. You make eye contact with someone across the room and wonder if they’re thinking the same thing as you. You wonder if they see that one of these things—you—is not like the others—them.
The door opens again…and shuts…nope…Ring…Pinky… Ring…Pinky. The tickle in your throat turns into a lump. It’s still only you. This is when the anger sets in. The disbelief that it can’t just be you…right?
You tried to find safety only to end up alone. Only to still feel unsafe. Open…Open…Open… shut…still only you. The tips of your fingers are sore now. The seats fill, but the emptiness of the room weighs heavy on your mind. Open……shut. Something pulls you to look up one last time. Thumb…Thumb…Thumb. And fin-a-fucking-lly!!! Someone walks in, and you lock eyes. This time you’re holding each other's gaze. Your throat starts to clear as your environment slowly begins to feel safer. You’ve become part of a pair even if you are strangers. Relief washes over you as they sit one chair away. The relief you feel is small, because you’re still outnumbered. You’re still the minority. It’s only you two.
Aude Simon and Sandra Mouafo
BIPOC media is often filled with trauma porn and focuses on colonial messaging through a white-centric gaze. Instead, we compiled a list of BIPOC media that decentres whiteness and promotes racialized perspectives, laughter, history, love and joy.
Encanto
In this Disney musical, the Madrigals are an extraordinary family who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a charmed place called the Encanto.
Entergalactic
In this animated film, artist Jabari finds both himself and love. This beautiful movie centres Black love, Black art and identity.
Everything Everywhere all at Once
In this multi-award winning movie, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes.
Extraordinary Attorney Woo
In this Korean drama tv series, Woo Young Woo, first of her class, starts a new job at a prestigious law firm. However, she is met with doubt about her skills when her coworkers learn she is on the autism spectrum.
Hair Love
In this short animated film, a dad learns to do and care for his Black daughter's natural hair for the first time.
Kim's Convenience
Kim's Convenience is a sitcom following the everyday life of a Korean-Canadian family who own a convenience store in Toronto.
La Negrada
This acclaimed Mexican drama is the first with an all Afro-Mexican cast in Mexico. It tells the story of the lives of Juana and Magdalena.
Mismatched
In this Indian series, two teenagers strike up a tentative friendship at their summer tech program, while also searching for love. Will the feelings be mutual?
My Dad the Bounty Hunter
In this comedic animated series, a Black father accidentally takes both his children into space. Chaos ensues.
Reservation Dogs
This TV series follows the lives of four Indigenous teenagers living on a reservation in Oklahoma who want to get to California.
Smoke Signals
Judynn ValcinPleasure activism, a term coined by Adrienne Maree Brown in 2019, describes the radical act of reclaiming one’s pleasure in the face of oppression, thus turning it into an effective tool of political resistance. This concept validates the fact that people of colour making time and space for joy in their lives is not a frivolous act, but an inherent act of rebellion against those who are trying to deprive them of joy. The following playlist is filled with songs by artists—trailblazers and rising stars alike—who have inspired their kinfolk to rejoice in spite of the exhausting circumstances of living a marginalized existence.
Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba
Bam Bam by Sister Nancy
Bloody Samaritan by Arya Starr
Culture by KAYTRANADA feat. Teedra Moses
Shook by Tkay Maidza
Tití Me Preguntó by Bad Bunny
El Nuevo Barretto by Ray Baretto
Freedom is Free by Chicano Batman
Yay Yay Ya Nassini by Georgette Sayegh
Chismiten by Mdou Moctar
Point and Kill by Little Simz
Water No Get Enemy by Fela Kuti
Smoke Signals tells the story of two young Indigenous rivals and friends taking a road trip to go retrieve one of their parent's ashes.
Zach's Ceremony
Zach's Ceremony is an Australian Indigenous coming of age documentary in which Zach transitions into adulthood. Torn between the pressure he faces and his desires, Zach must learn the traditions and knowledge of his ancestors.
Far from Home
In this Nigerian Netflix series, a troubled teenager finds himself in the world of luxury after winning a prestigious scholarship to an exclusive school.
3 Idiots
In this Indian coming of age comedy, Farhan and Raju look for their long-lost friend whose existence seems rather elusive. Is all really well?
Rahimou
In this Moroccan comedy, a girl named Rahimou finds out her estranged father left her a large inheritance. Before she can receive it, her newly found half-brother and his sister-inlaw travel to Morocco to try and get the inheritance money for themselves.
Coco
Coco tells the story of a young Mexican boy named Miguel whose dream to become a musician has to be hidden due to his family's ban on music. Miguel soon embarks on a journey to discover the truth about his ancestors and family history.
The Knight and the Princess
In this first ever Egyptian animated feature film, young adventurer Mohammed Bin Alkassim's plans to rescue the young wives and children of deceased sea merchants get interrupted by love.
Mo
In this comedy series, Palestinian Mo Najjar loses his job at a mobile store and looks for a new gig as his family waits on their pending asylum request.
Dangal
In this Bollywood film, former wrestler and father Mahavir Phogat vows to realize his failed dreams of winning a gold medal for India by training his unborn son. He never has a son but is blessed with daughters instead, who wrestle with social norms, break boundaries and carry on his legacy. The film is inspired by true events.
They are We
This documentary tells the story of how a family separated by the transatlantic slave trade for 170 years sings and dances their way back together.
Lory Saint-Fleur
My hair has always been my most valued asset.
I was praised as a child for having long and “manageable” hair. As I grew up, my hair texture slowly changed, it became kinkier and that was harder for my mom to manage. Like many other black girls, I wanted to wear my hair straight. So at the age of 12, Soft & Beautiful Just For Me relaxers became my way of managing my hair again.
The years that followed were a cycle of hatred and love towards a characteristic that my ancestors deeply cherished. Black hair used to be a direct representation of a person’s identity in African societies before colonialism. A person’s class, family, age and marital status could be known by simply looking at their hair. Hair was seen as sacred, it gave people a sense of pride. In the book Hair Story, Lori Tharps explained that natural hair had to always be styled a certain way or else it would be seen as untamed.I believe that this mindset has been passed down for generations.
Early in my natural hair journey, my opinion was similar. I was unable to go out if my hair was not styled, and having relaxed hair helped. The use of relaxers by Black women started from the influence of Eurocentric beauty standards. Straight hair was more palatable to their white counterpart and helped them to navigate a little easier in a harsh daily reality. After using relaxers for a year, my hair was damaged. Despite this fact, my attachment to length instead of health was so incredibly strong that I did not cut it and decided to grow my hair under a rotation of protective styles.
When not in a protective style, my hair was in a tight puff made out of a shoelace. I didn’t wear my afro often at school because I couldn’t blend in as easily as I did in any other hairstyle; I didn’t want to look untame and felt that an
afro wasn’t as manageable as other hairstyles were. Anything from wind to the simple passing of time could alter my perfectly shaped afro and I hated that. I felt like I looked crazy when my hair was in its natural state. Somehow, this feeling became a normal occurrence. The thing with natural hair is that it is tiring and time-consuming. I never had the liberty to just wake up and go about my day.
When I decided to let my hair “just do its thing” and go through the locking process, I had no control over what it was doing. My hair was often frizzy and looked thin and was going through all sorts of changes. Like many Black women, I put a lot of my value and confidence in my hair. So whenever it did not automatically look like how I wanted it to, it was hard for me.
Ultimately, time and experience was the only thing that made me fall deeply in love with my hair.
After years of experimenting with styles and colors, I wanted to make a drastic change. When it came down to choosing between shaving my head and going blonde or getting locs, I chose locs. Undoubtedly, I did not anticipate the journey that would follow. Locs became my way to freedom.
Locs gave me a new lifestyle and healthier relationship with my hair. While maintenance like retwist or hydration is still needed, it is half the work it used to be. That doesn’t mean that the journey has been without obstacles.
As my one-year loc anniversary approaches, I am still learning new ways of taking care of my hair. I am still learning how to style it in new ways. I am still learning to love it. My hair has less control over my confidence. Locs have given me a self acceptance that now feels natural. Locs have given me a self-acceptance that now feels natural. Self-acceptance is now evidence.
INTERIOR—Top bathroom of a suburban house, facing the mirror. (2016)
I am fed up with how my scalp is irritated. I don’t know what to do about my hair being two textures, but I know that I hate it. I decide to cut it, in a frantic moment of mixed feelings of fear, excitement and anxiety to walk outside with a look that I never envisioned on myself before, nor on anyone I know. I’m used to hiding my damaged relaxed hair with braids. I don’t know how to care for this new coily hair. I still wish my hair was straight, but I just can’t take the relaxers anymore. It’s too late anyways because I already cut it. I have to get out of the bathroom. What did I get myself into?
EXTERIOR—main street downtown, stopping in front of a fashion ad with two Black models in long straight wigs (2019)
How can I be pro-Black and wear straight wigs and relax my hair? Be serious, it doesn’t add up! How can I talk about self-acceptance with bone straight hair? I keep asking myself that, because I have to admit, I think about going back sometimes. I do miss a good sleek ponytail, sometimes, or often actually. I get why some
Hilary Etomo Mba
still relax their hair, but I need a rational explanation to ease my hair anxiety. I feel like I need to pick a side. I know, my hair doesn’t define me, but the way I present myself matters…right?
EXTERIOR—subway station, in line waiting for the next one to come, locking eyes with noisy strangers (2023)
Why do I keep getting stared at? Have you never seen kinky roots before? Maybe I do need a retwist, my hair might be getting a little crazy, but so what if I don’t do it?
I still wonder why I started my loc journey sometimes. But do I even need a reason? It feels like no matter what I choose to do with my hair, it always needs an explanation. Perhaps, it doesn’t and not forcing myself to live up to the and the world’s expectation to not expect a polished look on my kinks is as good a reason as any.
“Why did you cut your hair?” “Why wear the afro?”, “Why wear braids?” “Why did you start locs?” I don’t know people, I just did it! Plus, it looks good. My hair doesn’t have to always be political. It just happens to grow out of my scalp that way, and that doesn’t need an explanation.
Content Warning: This piece contains mentions of slurs used against Indigenous people.
Nicknamed “The Bulldog of Brittania,” Tom Longboat’s incredible story of beating the odds and silencing critics has made him unforgettable in Indigenous history.
Named Cogwagee at birth, Tom Longboat was an Indigenous Olympic athlete and later became a Canadian Expeditionary Force soldier whose achievements will have him forever remembered as a pioneer for his community.
Born in 1886 to an Iroquois family in Ontario, he was raised on a farm with his brother and sister before being forced, like many other Indigenous children at the time, into the residential school system.
The residential school Longboat was sent to in Brantford used military-style training, such as running to discipline their students. He was already familiar with long-distance running thanks to the traditional Haudenosaunee runners of the Iroquois nation. These runners were used between nations to gather information,
communicate and alert them of any oncoming danger.
In a time when long-distance runners drew in massive crowds, Longboat took the long-distance running scene by storm. It took the Iroquois athlete only two years after his first official race, the Victoria Day five-mile race in Caledonia in 1905, to reach the pinnacle of the sport. He went on to win the Boston Marathon in 1907, breaking the two-hour 29-minute record set six years prior. However, his success was always overshadowed by his status as an Indigenous person.
Longboat could never seem to get rid of the racist denominations that were imputed to him. Following his triumph in Boston, one newspaper complimented Longboat’s trainers by calling the athlete “a docile pupil.” Even several years after his career and despite Longboat’s many achievements, the media would still qualify him with unflattering names like “the original dummy” or “a once-talented Redskin.”
Despite the discrimination, Longboat never gave up on being great. He was chosen to represent Canada at the 1908 Olympic games in London, competing as a marathon runner. He never finished the race; many at the time believed he and another runner had been drugged before the event in an attempt to weaken their chances at an Olympic title. Longboat had never been known to deliver such a poor performance before.
After turning professional in 1909 and participating in multiple competitions including the World Professional Marathon Championship, Longboat started to experience issues in his knees and back. Despite such health concerns being a common occurrence for long-distance runners, the sports press at the time found a way to blame it on Longboat’s ethnic origin, doubling down on calling him lazy and incompetent.
The idea of Longboat being work-shy came partly due to how Longboat followed uncon-
ventional training methods. He alternated between heavy training and restful recovery periods, which was different from the persistent intensity most marathoners would train with at the time. Nowadays, professional runners train like Longboat used to, a testimony to how his previously unseen methods were ahead of their time. This, however, didn’t stop Longboat from being called a “lazy Indian” while also constantly being slandered by journalists and former managers alike.
At age 29, Longboat decided to finally call it a career and shortly thereafter, joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force as a dispatch carrier during the First World War. He was trusted with carrying messages along units on the Western Front in France and Belgium.
Throughout his time in the army, Longboat made a name for himself, albeit not for military prowess or combat aptitude. His reputation as a legendary long-distance runner preceded
him in the trenches and some joked about him being able to outrun German bullets.
A famous story says that an officer he once escorted to an outpost was having trouble keeping up with Longboat’s fast pace. Complaining, the officer asked Longboat “Who do you think I am? Tom Longboat?” to which Longboat replied “No, Sir. I am.”
Surviving the war, Longboat returned to Canada and worked there until retiring in 1944. He died of pneumonia in 1949 at the age of 62, leaving behind his wife Martha Silversmith and his four children.
After he died, Alfie Shrubb, one of Longboat’s greatest rivals, stated that Longboat was “one of the greatest, if not the greatest marathoner of all time.” Posthumously, he was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1955 and the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1996, also being named a National Historic Person by the Canadian government.
Sandra Mouafo
This is a satire piece.
In 2019, Chad Johnson confirmed what we all suspected: Tom Brady is undoubtedly a Black man.
On Feb. 1st 2022, the NFL quarterback announced his retirement, shaking the world and sports media. Six weeks later, the seven-time Super Bowl champion would reverse his decision (this was mainly due to the fact that he was flat broke) and return.
After a disappointing season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Brady retired on Feb. 1 2023, exactly one year after his first retirement.
One might say that it is a simple coincidence that Brady retired on the same day as last year. But I ought to stop you and ask: why do it on the first day of Black History Month? The answer is simple: activism.
Brady clearly meant to denounce the harmful practices of the NFL, by reminding us of all of the racial inequality that has yet to be addressed by the predominantly white body that makes up the league’s office. But because he is a Black man, his plea for chance
fell on deaf ears, not dissimilar to Colin Kaepernick's.
Another example of Brady’s activism is his statement on Janet Jackson. Here is yet another Black man whose words are being taken out of context. He clearly meant to say that Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction was another opportunity to denounce the shortcomings of the NFL. He merely used the spotlight of Black History Month to highlight a fellow sista’s heroism; yet another example of his own. He has not done this once, but TWICE, making him a hero of the people.
Is Mr. Brady, the greatest Black quarterback to ever sling pig-skin? Arguably. A white man certainly would never choose winning seven Super Bowls over his family. What more proof do you need?
We know that race is a construct anyway but let’s be real, no white man would be able to holler at Chris Tucker, or tell Charles Barkley to “take a suck on that” the way Brady has. I say Tom Brady is a Black man, fight me.
GRAPHIC MYRIAM OUAZZANI
Volume 43, Issue 13
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Concordia University
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The Link is published fifteen times during the academic year by The Link Publication Society Inc. Content is independent of the university and student associations (ECA, CASA, ASFA, FASA, CSU). Editorial policy is set by an elected board as provided for in The Link ’s constitution. Any student is welcome to work on The Link and become a voting staff member.
Material appearing in The Link may not be reproduced without prior written permission from The Link
Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters 400 words or less will be printed, space permitting. The letters deadline is Friday at 4:00 p.m. The Link reserves the right to edit letters for clarity and length and refuse those deemed racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, libellous, or otherwise contrary to The Link ’s statement of principles.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
2022-2023: Voting Members: Kaity Brady, Caroline Marsh, Diane Yeung | Non-Voting Members: Rachel Boucher, Adam Gibbard, Colin Harris, Michelle Pucci | Advisor: Laura Beeston
TYPESETTING by The Link PRINTING by Hebdo-Litho.
CONTRIBUTORS: Nadine Abdellatif, Christina Avril-Dieudonne, Liam Christin, Sonia Ekiyor-Katimi, Duha El-Mardi, Kaitlin Gong, Kenny Gourdet, Maya Gürler, Nadia Liboneye, Cameron Lightly, Christian Lominy-Assad, Fanny Lord-Bourcier, Bev Luboya, Meredith Marty-Dugas, Panos Michalakopoulos, Sidra Mughal, Dmytro Perkov, Marie-Pier Proulx, Chesline Pierre-Paul, Lory SaintFleur, Tshimang, Alexa Toguri-Laurin, Judynn Valcin, Defne Veral, Shakiya Williams.
House Ads: Adam Gibbard
Cover: Sonia Ekiyor-Katimi, Bev Luboya, Myriam Ouazzani. Poster: Myriam Ouazzani.
