Themes Identified Last Class
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Relationship/Shared Experiences
Apologies (Truth & Reconciliation)
Trust
Progress
Sustaining/Growing
Ghetto’zn/Belonging
Cognitive Myopia
Marking Space/Segregation
Economics
• Information from Statistics Canada shows that violent
hate crimes are most often directed at people because
of their sexual orientation.
• It's a factor more often than race or religion.
Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg)
• The Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg) is a
census- and geographically-based index that can be
used for planning and needs assessment, resource
allocation, monitoring of inequities and research.
• CAN-Marg seeks to:
• show differences in marginalization between areas; and
• understand inequalities in various measures of health and social
well-being, either between population groups or between
geographical areas.
“Who are we in the university…?
What do we represent?
Whom do we represent? Are we responsible?
For what and to whom?
If there is a university responsibility, it at least
begins with the moment when a need to hear
these questions, to take them upon oneself
and respond, is imposed. This imperative of
the response is the initial form and minimal
requirement of responsibility”
Jacques Derrida
Source: http://www.ideas-idees.ca/blog/anti-racism-there-university-responsibilityx
Re: Higher Education...
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•
•
•
Frances Henry, Carol Tator, Carl James, and Ena Dua gathered to present their research
and findings on the marginalization of racialized faculty in Canadian universities.
Research was conducted using personal interviews, surveys, and site visits and the
results were not surprising.
As Tator explained, universities have been very slow to make positive changes to make
their universities a more equitable environment for racialized faculty members.
What often occurs is that administrations will pay lip service to equity issues for faculty
but no real changes will take place.
The majority of faculty surveyed who identified as a visible minority were professors in
the fields of engineering and business.
– even less common to see racialized faculty members teaching
in the humanities and especially in the social sciences.
Interesting, considering that these fields of study are those
which inform the research on the discourse of race and gender.
•
According to James, racialized faculty have to work twice as hard as their colleagues to
obtain the same recognition for their efforts and contributions to academia.
• The systemic challenges faced by these faculty members are issues that never affect
non-racialized colleagues.
URL: http://www.ideas-idees.ca/blog/crossroads-race-and-gender-canadian-academy-searching-equity
Thinking outside the box?
• So if women on college campuses get “Women’s
Centres” and LGBT students get “Pride Centres”, and
there are clubs and groups for students of various
ethnicities, where are the men students supposed to
go to talk about their problems and find common
ground?
• Simon Fraser University Student Union thinks it has the
solution, and it’s a controversial one... the student
society at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia,
Canada, approved $30,000 to establish a men’s center.
Source: http://www.gender-focus.com/2012/06/17/gender-focus-panel-sfu-mens-centre/
Though the SFU Women’s Centre initially reacted with a bit of
surprise, declaring “the Men’s Centre is everywhere else”,
they have now posted this response on their website,
saying their support will be contingent on the new centre’s
mandate (no pun intended):
Our support would be contingent on that centre’s mission
statement, vision, and mandate. If the centre were about
challenging popular conceptions about masculinity,
confronting homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, and
ability issues then we would definitely be the first to
promote and fundraise for such a group. On the other hand
we would not be cool with a men’s centre focussed on
maintaining the old boys club. We are not interested in
seeing a group or centre develop that promotes the status
quo, encourages sexual assault, or fosters an atmosphere of
competition and violence.
U Victoria
Canada’s Best Diversity Employers ranked UVic among its top 50 of 2012, but
student groups are skeptical:
– many feel UVic has a ways to go before it can be considered truly inclusive
It boasts a Diversity and Equity Steering Committee complete with budget, a
Mental Health Task Force, Faculty Disability Caucus and the Positive Space
Network (PSN) for LGBT issues.
– All of these initiatives represent steps toward improving diversity on campus, and
are cited by Mediacorp editors as reasons UVic made the top 50 list.
• UVSS advocacy groups see definite room for improvement.
• “They should have investigated further before giving this recognition,” says
Michael Allen-Newman, President of the Society for Students with a
Disability (SSD). “They didn’t consult student groups.”
• While Pride Co-or- dinator Ilaina Decter says Pride has received reports that
indicate many UVic community members could benefit from an education in
inclusiveness and equity, training is entirely voluntary.
– “It’s incredibly stressful to deal with professors who are ignorant or oppressive,”
says Decter.
• Jessica Humphries of the Students of Colour Collective says, “UVic has made
effort to better create a diverse community on campus, but has often lacked
in areas around fostering and maintaining a safe community.” She’s observed
a positive shift in employment practices and hiring, but also cuts to events,
insensitivity and lack of accountability.
She’d like to see a campus where there’s space for members
of marginalized groups to safely exist in the first place, and
avenues for individuals to participate within an institution
that she finds by its very nature privileging to certain
identities over others.
“There’s a lot of room for improvement in the diversity
conference on campus. They could include a lot more
student groups in the process of organizing it, because it
doesn’t necessarily appeal to students unless they’re already
involved,” says Humphries. “There’s a huge lack of student
involvement” [Jessica Humphries of the Students of Colour
Collective ]
The ranking
UVic scored 2.17 out of 5 on The Equity Continuum sliding scale of
diversity.
Organizations that score 0 are in denial about their inequity, believing
they’re equitable when they’re at or below base human rights.
Scores of 1 and 2 mean an organization is driven by or in process of
moving beyond compliance to legislation and avoidance of legal
action.
Organizations that score 3 realize that diversity and inclusion lead to
stronger performance from successful and engaged employees and
delivery of relevant products: a stronger business model.
Any score below 4 or 5, (practised, integrated diversity and truly inclusive
and equitable organizations) undermines efforts to improve diversity.
While equality is treating everyone the same, equity means recognizing
differences. Moving along the continuum is a journey from human
rights through social responsibility, diversity and inclusion, to
complete human equity.
The other post-secondary institutions recognized:
UBC, U of T and the Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology,
scored 2.7, 2.97 and 2.67 re- spectively.
“desegregation”
Abstract of an MA thesis, Lessons From our Past, by CANDACE PADMORE
• Lessons From our Past considers the issue of inclusive education from the
unique perceptive of narratives from students with disabilities, as well as
Black students who experienced desegregation in the United States.
• The research suggests that there exists a parallel between the experiences
of the desegregation of Black students and students with disabilities in
mainstream schools with respect to peer harassment, the degree of
inclusion in the classroom and extra-curricular activities, as well as student
friendships. Both populations experienced similar barriers to inclusion as a
consequence of the fears and prejudicial attitudes of fellow students and
teachers.
• The research is unique because it endeavours to include the voices of
students with disabilities to the fullest extent possible. Many other studies
tend to marginalize the voices of the participants. What emerges is a
perspective on inclusive education which extends beyond previous studies
in that it merges Black history with the relatively new scholarship of
Disability Studies.
• www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/.../mrp2.pdf
Including the Excluded:
De-Marginalizing Immigrant/Refugee
and Racialized Students
March 2013 issue of Canada Education
Marginalization is a process, not a label –
a process of social de-valuation
that serves to justify
disproportional access to scarce societal resources.
As social actors, we do this to others.”
“
URL: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/including-excluded-de-marginalizing-immigrantrefugee-and-racialized-student
A marginalized child is a child
•whose social location is not understood and
whose identities are contested or denied;
•whose life circumstances are not known and
not considered;
•whose voice is not heard or has been
silenced;
•whose needs have been left unfulfilled;
•whose promise is not recognized and whose
protest is ignored.
Canadian Society
• One in five of all Canadian children under the age of 15 is a
new immigrant or a refugee.
• An increasingly significant youth sub-population in Canada,
immigrant and refugee youth are culturally diverse, with
backgrounds reflecting any of 247 diverse ethno-cultural
origins[3] as well as various world regions in Asia, the
Caribbean, South and Central America, the Middle East,
and Africa.
• Almost three quarters (73 percent) of immigrants who
arrived between 2001 and 2006 are members of diverse
visible minority populations.
• It is estimated that by 2016 Canada’s visible minority
population will account for one fifth of the total population
– and one quarter of all of Canada's children
O is for Othering
How can we become
Otherwise?
We are what we know.
We are, however, also what we do not know.
If what we know about ourselves—our
history, our culture, our national identity—
is deformed by absences, denials, and
incompleteness,
then our identity . . . is fragmented.
. . . Such a self lacks access both to itself and
to the world. . . . Its sense of history,
gender and politics is incomplete and
distorted. (Pinar, 1993, p. 61)
The presence of only dominant ways of knowing
and only dominant narratives
produces students who are less able to think
about the complexities of the world they
inhabit,
less able to integrate those experiences into a
growing “making sense” of that world.
“We could take another trip down
Highway 10 from Regina to Yorkton.
The beautiful drive, augmented by the signs that
shape our collective vision of Saskatchewan has
been interrupted. Where once we were able to
ignore the discrepancy represented by the signs
because they confirmed/ represented/reproduced
the dominant vision of the Province vis-à-vis the
lens of pioneer, it is not so easy to drive as if our
sight and internal sense of place matched perfectly.
It is clear that the world is not exactly as seen, the
story not so smooth as once imagined.”
Tupper & Cappello, 2008
Understand the signs that are present,
the signs that are absent and the stories that connect them
Unmaking provides an opportunity
for remaking.
Identity
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•
•
•
•
•
•
In group or out group
Defines ‘me’ versus ‘them’
‘Us’ versus ‘them;
What is the same: sameness, oneness
What is different: ‘othering’
Favouritism of one’s own group: ethnocentrism
Prejudice against other groups: racism
Layers of Identity
Self Identity
Social Identity
Political Identity
Dimensions of Cohesive Identity
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•
•
•
•
Sense of belongingness-isolation
Inclusiveness-exclusiveness
Participation-non-participation
Recognition-rejection
Legitimacy-illegitimacy
Social exclusion is a process
It can involve the systematic denial of entitlements
to resources and services, and the denial of the right
to participate on equal terms in social relationships
in economic, social, cultural or political arenas.
Exclusionary processes are not confined to the lower
levels of a social hierarchy and can occur at various
social levels.
Marginalisation, disadvantage and discrimination can
be experienced irrespective of poverty
The notion of Othering draws on several
philosophical and theoretical traditions
• draws on an understanding of self which is a generalization of Hegel’s
master-slave dialectic
– read as a theory of self and Other in which the juxtaposition towards
the other constitutes the self
• prevalent in de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1997):
– describes how men are regarded as the norm and women as the Other
• early postcolonial writing is another theoretical reference point
– Said writes of an imagined geography, which constructs the Orient as other
in a reductionist, distancing and pathologizing way.
– At the same time as being exotizised, the Orient is incorporated and fixed,
as the function of orientalism is ‘at one and the same time to characterize
the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage
whose audience, managers and actors are for Europe, and only for Europe’
• the ideas of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
– language plays a central role in constituting identity
– stresses that identity is fundamentally gained in the gaze of the powerful
In his influential book Orientalism, (1995: 332)
Said wrote:
‘The development and maintenance of every
culture requires the existence of another
different and competing alter ego.
The construction of identity… whether Orient or
Occident, France or Britain…
....involves establishing opposites and
otherness whose actuality is always subject to
the continuous interpretation and
reinterpretation of their differences from us‘.
The theory of identity formation
inherent in the concept of Othering
assumes that
subordinate people are offered,
and at the same time relegated to,
subject positions as Others
in discourse
It is the centre that has the power to
describe, and the other is
constructed as inferior.
contemporary uses of the concept
• process of differentiation and demarcation, by
which the line is drawn between ’us’ and ’them’
– between the more and the less powerful –
and through which social distance is
established and maintained
• the defining into existence of a group of people
who are identifiable, from the standpoint of a
group with the capacity to dominate, as inferior
• the process whereby a dominant group defines
into existence an inferior group
• The others’ are reduced to stereotypical
characters and are ultimately dehumanized
reproduction
It is significant . . . that such challenges to the
dominant nationalist histories are
being introduced on the fringes of the
educational system:
in a supplementary curriculum rather than in
official textbooks and in elective courses
rather than in
required courses.
Curriculum development
• Curriculum development is connected to the ways in
which dominant groups think about and value
knowledge, and what knowledge these groups value
• Durkheim (1965): the veracity of knowledge is not
enough
– If ideas do not reflect the “mass of other collective
representations (the concepts taken for granted by most
people in a given time and place) they will be denied”
• notion of hegemony as “deeply saturating the
consciousness of a society”
• The challenge of curriculum, suggests Minnich (1990),
is understanding what it is we wish to change “in more
than a narrow, superficial way”
• scholars have described the role of education systems,
and curriculum specifically, as playing a large role in
reproduction: of economic strata; of particular social and cultural capital
of dominant ideology or hegemony
• Not in crude or deterministic ways (mechanically
teaching point by point) but in complex ways, curriculum
and the ways in which educators enact curricular
documents are implicated in the tacit and overt
reproduction of dominant cultural norms:
–
–
–
–
attitudes are shaped,
knowledge is sanctioned or castigated,
relationships to knowledge are formed or deformed,
access to cultural capital is given or denied (or both) across the
boundaries and intersection of the multiple identities in which
students are located.
Dismantling dominant narratives
...to interrupt the commonsense stories that reify power
and dominance...
Stories and counterstories can serve an equally important
destructive function.
They can show that what we believe is ridiculous, selfserving, or cruel.
They can show us the way out of the trap of unjustified
exclusion.
They can help us understand when it is time to reallocate
power.
They are the other half—the destructive half—of the
creative dialectic. (Delgado, p. 2415)
...to understand
&
have places from which to stand...