The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' |
Welcome to our blog!This is a co-creative space where we invite you to share thoughts, links, essays, poems and more about creating an ethos of anti-racism in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts. We take our title from a powerful op ed written by Toronto’s former Poet Laureate, the inestimable Dionne Brand. In her provocation she reminds us that BIPOC folks have been living in a pandemic of anti-blackness for generations: “it is structural rather than viral; it is the global state of emergency of antiblackness.” She sees the brilliance and courage of Black Lives Matter and rejoices in the efflorescence of new ideas that could move us beyond a return to ‘normal’ but she worries that “all the rich imaginings of activists and thinkers who urge us to live otherwise may be disappeared, modified into reform and inclusion, equity, diversity and palliation.”
What is required, she urges is a reckoning, not palliation, real and ongoing structural change, not simply rhetoric. Over the last month, our department responded to a challenge made by a former graduate student to address anti-black racism. Like so many institutions worldwide, including sister departments at York and throughout the international academic community, we recognized that we are at a historic turning point and that the social and political momentum initiated and led by BLM demands much of us, including those who have enjoyed privileges that have possibly inured us to the existence of systemic racism within our own working environments. We responded to our student’s challenge with profound seriousness and with a deep sense of responsibility. The Department unanimously adopted an Action Plan with 16 recommendations. The Action Plan is organic, dynamic and in process. We hope it will serve as a catalyst for many necessary conversations and we invite your ongoing thoughts, responses, suggestions, and critiques. |
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The Reckoning is maintained by the Open Forum on the Anti-Racist Action Plan in the Department of Cinema & Media Arts, York University, which, we acknowledge, is on the traditional territory of Indigenous Nations including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and Anishinaabek. This territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Covenant and Wampum between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Three Fires Confederacy (the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi), and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources in and around the Great Lakes. The Three Fire Confederacy includes the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, who settled in what is now the City of Toronto. In 1805, the Mississaugas agreed to the sale of tracts of land known as Crown Treaty No. 13 (also referred to as the Toronto Purchase), although the payment for the land was not concluded until 2010. As a result of the Toronto Purchase, the protection and management of the land is now shared with the present generation of inhabitants of Toronto and, as Métis Elder Duke Redbird reminds us, “remembering always that we never own the land but rather borrow its use from our children.” In acknowledging that York University occupies colonized Indigenous territories, and out of respect for the rights of Indigenous people, we accept our collective responsibility to recognize our colonial histories as well as their present-day manifestations and to honour, protect, and sustain this land. It is with this in mind that we move forward with commitment to decolonizing our spaces, curriculum, and ways of creating, producing and sharing knowledge.