While this sounds like a simple thing to say, I do believe this is the bare minimum that we should do, in order to keep empowering those black youth who are seeking services and encourage those who want to but haven’t yet.

I very much agree that while a lot of us are challenging and making attempts at dismantling ABR on an individual, and/or at best organizational level, the mission of achieving a true racism-free service sector would not be complete without the cooperation of fighting this battle on an institutional and systemic level.

I’m definitely picking up on the theme from multiple responses here about including the frontline workers and youth in creating a true inclusion. This echoes really well with many ideas presented in this module, particularly “listening”, “empowerment” and “advocacy”. While everyone, black or not, can bring something to the table, it can…

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It’s such a sad truth that a lot of us have observed similar things. Often people/systems/institutions who NEED to take trainings like this one are not the ones who are actually doing them. I think in general how we use research findings to change the impacts of racism takes two routes – “bottom-up” and “top-down”. Trainings like this one help…

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I’m also a big believer in the importance and power of the education system. Considering how a big part of the anti-black racism is multigenerational, meaning the discrimination and the damages are passed on from one generation to the next, it is almost a “no-brainer” to me that we stop racism at the youngest generation possible. It is great…

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After learning from the lectures, what I find scary is that often we conceptualize racism as an individual act and fail to recognize how deeply rooted it has been not only on an individual level, but also historically, institutionally, educationally and systemically. It’s difficult to change what we don’t recognize.

I think the cognitive dissonance that is mentioned in one of the lectures plays a big role here in Ontario/Canada, in that, because we are “nice” and multicultural as Canadians, we “cannot” be racists. Yet, we fail to acknowledge how racism can be manifested and represented in ways beyond what most recognize.

Unfortunately I have to agree that to a great degree our own racism in Ontario/Canada has been overshadowed, in a negative way, by the same among our neighbours to the south. Statements like “it’s not as bad here” get translated into “it doesn’t exist here”.