Black Studies

In post-World War II Canada, black women's positions within the teaching profession served as sites of struggle and conflict as the nation worked to address the needs of its diversifying population. From their entry into teachers' college through their careers in the classroom and administration, black women educators encountered systemic racism and gender barriers at every step - and so they worked to change the system. Using oral narratives to tell the story of black access and education in Ontario between the 1940s and the 1980s, Schooling the System provides textured insight into how issues of race, gender, class, geographic origin, and training shaped women's distinct experiences within the profession. By valuing women's voices and lived experiences, Funké Aladejebi illustrates that black women, as a diverse group, made vital contributions to the creation and development of anti-racist education in Canada.

This book explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery. Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond. The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history -- the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.

Deliciously political and radically erotic, this is an anthology of writing by women and men who live with many shifting identities -- social, cultural and sexual.The collection includes prose, poetry, essays and personal testimonies. The contributors, from the United States, Canada, Britain, Europe and Africa range in age from twenty-something to fifty-something, and are just as varied in their class backgrounds and places of birth.These outspoken and courageous men and women write from outside the mainstream, but they're not outsiders, they're our friends, lovers, brothers, sisters, parents -- people we know and love.

Moving Beyond Borders is the first book-length history of Black health care workers in Canada, delving into the experiences of thirty-five postwar-era nurses who were born in Canada or who immigrated from the Caribbean either through Britain or directly to Canada. Karen Flynn examines the shaping of these women's stories from their childhoods through to their roles as professionals and community activists. Flynn interweaves oral histories with archival sources to show how these women's lives were shaped by their experiences of migration, professional training, and family life. Theoretical analyses from postcolonial, gender, and diasporic Black Studies serve to highlight the multiple subjectivities operating within these women's lives.

Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada's black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger--yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian. Subjected to grueling shifts and unreasonable standards--a passenger missing his stop was a dismissible offense--the so-called Pullmen of the country's rail lines were denied secure positions and prohibited from bringing their families to Canada, and it was their struggle against the racist Dominion that laid the groundwork for the multicultural nation we know today. Drawing on the experiences of these influential black Canadians, Cecil Foster's They Call Me George demonstrates the power of individuals and minority groups in the fight for social justice and shows how a country can change for the better.

It is a persistent image in Caribbean literature. But for Caribbean women especially, salt--particularly the image of sucking salt--has long signified how they have endured hardship and found ways to transcend it. This book examines the literature of black Caribbean emigrant and island women including Dorothea Smartt, Edwidge Danticat, Paule Marshall, and others, who use the terminology and imagery of "sucking salt" as an articulation of a New World voice connoting adaptation, improvisation, and creativity, offering a new understanding of diaspora, literature, and feminism

Across public discourse, in the media, politics, many branches of academic inquiry, and ordinary daily interactions, we spend a lot time talking about race: race relations, racial violence, discrimination based on race, racial integration, racial progress. It is fair to say that questionsabout race have vexed our social life. But for all we speak about race, do we know what race is? Is it a social construct or a biological object? Is it a bankrupt holdover from a time before sophisticated scientific understanding and genetics, or can it still hold up in biological, genetic, andother types of research? Most fundamentally, is race real?In this book, four prominent philosophers and race theorists debate how best to answer these difficult questions, applying philosophical tools and the principles of social justice to cutting-edge findings from the biological and social sciences.

Black hockey players from Grant Fuhr to Jarome Iginla speak candidly for the first time about their experiences in the NHL. Since 1958, thirty-seven black men have played in the National Hockey League. Out of the 600 players active today, fourteen are black. Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey is the first book to tell the unique stories of black hockey players -- how they overcame or succumbed to racial and cultural prejudices.

Through in-depth qualitative research with African Canadians in three Canadian cities--Calgary, Toronto, and Halifax--this study explores how experiences of racism, when combined with other social and economic factors, affect the health and well-being of this segment of the country`s population. With a special interest in how racial stereotyping impacts black men and boys, the book presents stories of racism and violence and describes how reactions to racism differ across a range of social and economic variables. In addition, the discussion rejects the notion that black communities are homogeneous and provides a detailed examination of three distinct communities: Caribbean, immigrant African, and Canadian black.

Delving behind Canada's veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state's role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.

Black Geographiesis an interdisciplinary collection of essays in black geographic theory. Fourteen authors address specific geographic sites and develop their geopolitical relevance with regards to race, uneven geographies, and resistance. Multi-faceted and erudite, Black Geographiesbrings into focus the politics of place that black subjects, communities, and philosophers inhabit. Highlights include essays on the African diaspora and its interaction with citizenship and nationalism, critical readings of the blues and hip-hop, and thorough deconstructions of Nova Scotian and British Columbian black topography. Drawing on historical, contemporary, and theoretical black geographies from the USA, the Caribbean, and Canada, these essays provide an exploration of past and present black spatial theories and experiences.

What does it mean to be African-Canadian? The African Diaspora in Canada addresses the conceptual difficulties and political contestations surrounding the term "African-Canadian." In the midst of this fraught terrain, it focuses on first-generation, black continental Africans who have immigrated in the past four decades. In highlighting their experiences, this book addresses the empirical, conceptual, and methodological gaps that homogenize all black people and their experiences. Rooted in specific experiences, this book examines the social constructions of African-Canadians, their experiences within the political and education systems, and with the labour market.

Women in the "Promised Land" places African Canadian women's lived experiences, identities, and histories at the centre of Canada's past. This collection of original research edited by leading scholars in the field encourages readers to interrogate the idea of Canada as a "Promised Land" by examining the rich and varied history of African Canadian women. The nine chapters span the period from slavery and abolition through to late 20th-century activism. This interdisciplinary collection draws on existing research from cultural studies, literary studies, communications, and visual culture to reframe familiar figures in African Canadian women's history, such as feminist Mary Ann Shadd and civil rights activist Viola Desmond, in the wider African diaspora.

"The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooperand Karolyn Smardz Frostoffer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this neglected aspect of our own past."- Lawrence Hill, Writer The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!, a richly illustrated book, examines the urban connection of the clandestine system of secret routes, safe houses and "conductors." Not only does it trace the story of the Underground Railroad itself and how people courageously made the trip north to Canada and freedom, but it also explores what happened to them after they arrived.

One of the first transnational, feminist studies of Canada's black beauty culture and the role that media, retail, and consumers have played in its development, Beauty in a Box widens our understanding of the politics of black hair. The book analyzes advertisements and articles from media--newspapers, advertisements, television, and other sources--that focus on black communities in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary. The author explains the role local black community media has played in the promotion of African American-owned beauty products; how the segmentation of beauty culture (i.e., the sale of black beauty products on store shelves labelled "ethnic hair care") occurred in Canada; and how black beauty culture, which was generally seen as a small niche market before the 1970s, entered Canada's mainstream by way of department stores, drugstores, and big-box retailers.