http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/live/article/484712--report-says-universities-colleges-need-to-address-racism-on-campus
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Increased Awareness
In today’s Metro there is an article about the prevalence of racism on university campuses across the country. The lack of anti-oppression training for faculty is acknowledged as one major way that universities are failing to reduce instances of racism. Following the blackface incident at the University of Toronto it became clear that there were no faculty members or counselors to help the BSA or any student’s who were offended by the actions of the SMCSU. In an attempt to fill this position the university re-located the sexual assault counselor instead of recruiting someone who was trained in anti-oppression work or critical race studies. The human rights offices on campus may be there to support students with complaints however what good are they if the universities continue to disregard the complaints issued. No changes will be made unless the universities address their participation in the continuous oppression of racialized students.
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The cited incident of racism in that article is the stupidest thing I have ever read. Isn't it possible that the professor has taught the class in the past and that he DID in fact have ESL students present? Note that the professor didn't say that "MOST" would be ESL, but "many". In a class of 100, even 10 ESL students is quite a lot from the perspective of the person marking papers with faulty English.
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ReplyDeleteThe issue is the professor's assumption that racialized bodies are from somewhere else. It creates feelings of belonging (read white) and unbelonging (read other) in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to remove all dissenting comments?
ReplyDeleteHuman beings are creatures of habit. We're always going to make assumptions based on patterns; it's a function of evolutionary biology. This does not excuse discriminatory behavior, but we're never going to reach a level in society in which a professor who has a past of dealing with ESL students, who is aware that the university hosts many international students of a certain background that tend to enroll in his course, doesn't make the assumption that a few people of said background in his class may need extra help.
Please offer your response without deleting my comment this time.
there seems to be a conscious denial of the cultural biases that contribute to the epistemology that is science. Science is incapable of being fully objective since it is interpreted and practiced by very subjective entities: human beings. Which is to say...we often may project inaccurate and stigmatizing assumptions onto patterns we may find.
ReplyDeleteAt some point eugenics was considered a legitimate branch of scientific study...racial categories were considered static and biologically predetermined...only through activism and questioning of legitimization were these "truths" repealed...
question becomes,was his statement made because of past patterns solely, or was it due to the visibility of "othered" bodies and the meaning projected onto their bodies.
and that is my two cents...
The only blog deleted was ours which was accidentally posted under "anonymous".
ReplyDeleteYour dissenting comment is still up and is the first comment on here. You can see the time stamps for our mishap. It was clearly our comment deleted and we do not edit comments.
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