U of T holds an entrustment ceremony to mark the official handover of the Anti-Black Racism Task Force’s final report
U of T held a virtual entrustment ceremony on May 5 to hand over the Anti-Black Racism Task Force’s final report. All 56 recommendations contained in the report have been accepted by the university administration.
> Click here to read the full report
FIFSW Dean Dexter Voisin was co-chair of the Task Force. As part of the May 5 event, her led a discussion on anti-Black racism with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University.
The discussion highlighted the systemic nature of racism in societies.
“Racism should be viewed as a collective set of practices,” Bonilla-Silva said. “Most people participate in it whether they like it or not. Most whites participate not by being bad actors, but just by following the dominant racial state. You don’t have to be a bad person to do things that reproduce white privilege.”
Likewise, Voisin pointed out: “We all participate in racism if we maintain the status quo.”
Bonilla-Silva questioned the problematic notion of “colour-blindness” and how it can manifest in denial in places like Canada, where he said fewer empirical studies have been done on systemic discrimination compared to the United States
> Click here to read the full article on the entrustment ceremony via U of T News