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Exploring Histories Confronting White Supremacy: Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean

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This is the first post in a new series from the course “Topics in the History of Education: Histories Confronting White Supremacy,” led by Professor Mona Gleason.

This course delves into colonialization, racism, and systemic oppression, exploring how historical understanding shapes our world today. In this series, students collaborated to craft blog posts where they explore themes related to course topics and share their insights with the larger EDST audience.

Keep an eye out for more posts in this series!

Co-authored by Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean, this blog post discusses the complexities of historical narratives surrounding education and white supremacy. Drawing insights from the work of Michael Marker and other course readings, the authors reflect on topics like colonial borders, Indigenous experiences, and educational structures.

In this post, we centered our discussion on the work of Michael Marker, an Arapaho scholar, whose invaluable contributions have not only left an enduring impact on the EDST community but have also significantly influenced scholarship in higher education (Gill et al., 2023).

Within our conversations we weave together our understandings of his work with other readings that we have been offered throughout our course to answer the question:

“What have you learned about the past in relation to education and white supremacy that you didn’t know before?”

ANEET: In other classes, we’ve talked about how borders are arbitrary concepts, but Michael Marker’s (2015) article, “Borders and Borderless Coast Salish: Decolonizing Historiographies of Indigenous Schooling,” made me think about this idea within the context of B.C.

India Pakistan border

It’s new for me to think about how Canadian residential schools and American boarding schools affected a single community differently depending on what side of the border they were on. It reminded me about the partition of India and Pakistan, where connected communities were forced to migrate to a specific side of a border randomly drawn up by a white man. I also think about my research because focusing on B.C. educational policies is a constraint that’s inherently colonizing. Indigenous communities don’t end at the border just because my analysis does.

MARK: I’m thinking about how many times Marker walks up to an idea and then shows that it’s too complex to follow in a short article, and instead notes another author in that space. These threads are worth pulling, and need to be pulled, and that makes the idea more complex.

ANEET: It’s been helpful to complicate ideas in this class!

MARK: When I read Marker’s work, I connected it back to a chapter of Thomas King’s (2012) book The Inconvenient Indian that we read; they both serve as a call to complicate things and acknowledge their complexity. As opposed to a flattened perspective, just on one side of the border. There is a quote in King’s work that says, “North America hates the Legal Indian. Savagely. The Legal Indian was one of those errors in judgment that North America made and has been trying to correct for the past 150 years” (King, 2012, p. 69). Each country wants to have a story to tell about what is going on with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous existence, and epistemologies, but all ignore complexity. In the U.S. it was public schools where Indigenous students experienced more racism, whereas Marker suggests that boarding schools were places where Indigenous students could also connect and define their own identity. This made me think about identity and what King (2012) called the “Dead Indian,” because as a nation, we’re not seeking out these complexities.

ERIN: Having done my undergraduate work at a U.S. institution, I guess I’ve never tried to fully articulate the experience of studying structural racism of public schools and educational inequality in an American context to learning about movements of indigenizing or decolonizing public schools in British Columbia. Because of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, I think many people are so focused on the historical aspect of residential schools, and not as much on the broader racist and colonial structures of modern public schooling systems. This is a complete flip in perspective for me; something that I’m processing as I talk through it now.

MARK: Yeah! Both articles speak to the idea of treating residential schools like they only existed in the past. And Canadians love a chance to forgive ourselves. We’re less concerned with the transition out of residential school systems, and how much racism and damage happened in that situation. Everything didn’t just end when the last residential school closed. Again, it’s just flattening a narrative.

CBC Article: Vehicle torched, lobster pounds storing Mi'kmaw catches trashed during night of unrest in N.S.

When we talked about the Boldt Decision and how the judge decided on fishing rights for Indigenous peoples in America, it reminded me of the CBC article talking about the Mi’kmaq lobster disputes in Nova Scotia. Canadian media didn’t know how to approach what was basically terrorism by white fisherman. So much of this results from an educational system where we’ve been taught this flat story, flat story, flat story. How different would it be if there was an understanding of the complexity of all this, for the Mi’kmaq and for our case, the Coast Salish?

Exploring histories of white supremacy

ERIN: I want to shout out a different article from one of Mona’s classes. It’s “‘The children show unmistakable signs of Indian blood’: Indigenous children attending public schools in British Columbia, 1872-1925” by Sean Carleton (2021). He writes about the history of Indigenous children that attended public schools in British Columbia. It was an interesting read for me not having known a lot about how public schools were established here. The stories of those children and the adults (Indigenous and settler) that facilitated their enrollment in those public schools added another dimension to that normally flat story you’re talking about, Mark. The histories of white supremacy and those fighting against it in the world of education don’t all follow the singular residential school narrative that gets told.

ANEET: Mark, you’ve made a good point! What we learn about through Canadian education systems must fit within the constraints of what Eurocentric values want us to learn. For example, social studies curriculum teaches “Canadian” or “B.C.’s” history. A bordered history. These constraints act as a mechanism of validating those imaginary borders.

MARK: Yeah! I keep thinking, Aneet, about your comment about the border in Punjab, and how people had to swap back and forth across the border. I just googled the Salish Sea because I never think about it as a unit in the same way that we think about the Mediterranean as a unit. It’s so hard to untangle… yeah, it’s just really hard to not see borders.

ERIN: And all our other units of geographical organization. Water borders have always been especially bizarre to me. Because water is water! You just can’t draw a border in water! And that really emphasizes another idea that I think Marker brings us face to face with within this article: about  how settlers conceptualize not only land, but place.

Place-based education is big, especially in early childhood right now, with things like forest schools, but we need to be careful about what type of teaching is still reinscribing very particular understandings of place that don’t align with the original stewards of this land. I don’t know if it’s possible to reach the same understanding. But if we’re taking children out for nature walks and talking about street names and showing them “borders” of parks and such, it’s almost like, what’s the point?

MARK: Totally! This connects well to “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang:

“These fantasies can mean the adoption of Indigenous practices and knowledge, but more, refer to those narratives in the settler colonial imagination in which the Native (understanding that he is becoming extinct) hands over his land, his claim to the land, his very Indian-ness to the settler for safe-keeping. This is a fantasy that is invested in a settler futurity and dependent on the foreclosure of an Indigenous futurity.”

Essentially, when settlers adopt watered-down practices of place-based learning, its main purpose is to reinforce a safe settler future.

We went for a walk in Musqueam territory for Pro-D day and they pointed out Iona Beach Regional Park across the river and showed us that it didn’t count as their territory. Musqueam has fishing rights, but they’re hampered by the actions of the logging industry across the river. I imagined these lines across the water and it’s an absurd, imposing, and abstract idea. It’s just a river.

musqueam teaching kit map

I wanted to share this map with you. Musqueam collaborates with the Museum of Anthropology, and they have a map that shows how the delta formed over 10,000 years ago. It made me think… MAN! Richmond didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Indigenous peoples were here before Richmond existed as a physical land. Not only are these lines arbitrary, they’re also shifting!

References:

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Reflections on UBC’s Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education

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Samantha Robinson
As I approach graduation from the Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education program at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I find myself in a moment of pause as I intentionally take time for reflection. What have I learned over the last two years in this program? What made sense and was anything surprising or unexpected? Are there things that I still want to learn or areas of adult education that I want to explore in a more fulsome way outside of my degree? Was there something missing from my experience that I think would have been beneficial to learn more about? All of these questions are worth exploring in the months leading up to graduation, especially as I think about how I would like to continue on my own personal journey of lifelong learning. More practically, however, I believe it is imperative that I take this time for reflection as a professional staff member at UBC, where I am responsible for supporting current undergraduate students with their own experiential and lifelong learning outside of the formal classroom setting. Through this period of reflection, I have determined several key lessons that I am taking away from this program and one critique that I hope to name and continue expanding upon as my journey of adult education continues post-graduation.
The most prominent lesson that I am taking away from this program occurred during my first class ever in September 2019, which was in EDST 503. This lesson pertains to the fact that learning is a lifelong process and occurs in much of our day-to-day lives as adults. One of the first readings that I completed in this program was Rubenson’s “Adult Education Overview” (2010) where they provide various definitions of adult education and learning, including the definition of lifelong learning provided by UNESCO (United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization). In addition to defining lifelong learning, Rubenson (2010) shares the three fundamental attributes of the term, which include:
  • “It is lifelong and therefore concerns everything from cradle to grave;
  • It is lifewide recognizing that learning occurs in many different settings; and
  • It focuses on learning rather than limit itself to education” (Rubenson, 2010, p. 5).
Prior to considering the concept of lifelong learning, I believe I had a fairly limited mindset on what could be considered ‘education’. In reading Rubenson (2010), my eyes were opened to the fact that almost anything one does as an adult can contribute to their learning and overall development. This lesson was even more solidified when completing additional readings throughout the MEd program which highlighted learning opportunities in many different contexts, including participating in community organizations, organized sports, and engaging in movements toward social justice. While I hope to remember this lesson as I continue on my own journey of lifelong learning, I also recognize that it should be at the forefront of my mind when supporting student leaders at UBC in my staff role. When connecting with student leaders supporting UBC’s orientations programming, I hope to highlight the many ways that their daily activities, including volunteering, holding club executive positions, and even the conversations that they have with their peers, are all contributing to their own learning and development. These moments of learning can sometimes go unnoticed and holding space with student leaders to reflect on those experiences and the growth they have experienced is something that I am looking forward to continuing in the future.
This brings me to the second lesson that I am taking away from this program, which is in regards to how our experiences with social justice and global movements can contribute to the process of lifelong learning and the role that university institutions can play in educating students on the problems being faced by society today. Similar to the above lesson, which highlights the fact that learning is a lifelong and lifewide process, I had not previously considered all of the ways that individuals can learn and develop through participating in social movements or in moments of activism, or the responsibility that post-secondary institutions have when it comes to tackling society’s greatest challenges.
In terms of the forms of learning that can occur through participation in social movements, including attending rallies or protests, participating in community-based programs directed toward helping those in need, and even coordinating local cleanup crews within one’s neighbourhood, it is clear to me now that the opportunities for learning are endless. Scandrett (2012) discusses the different forms of learning that can evolve out of participation in a social movement. From “the structured educational processes which are sometimes employed within social movements… [and] the informal and incidental learning and knowledge generation within social movements through political practice, repertoires of contestation, and collective reflection” (Scandrett, 2012, p. 42). Hall (2006) also highlights the fact that social movement learning can include “learning by persons who are part of any social movement and… by persons outside of a social movement as a result of the actions taken or simply by the existence of social movements” (p. 6). In reading both Scandrett (2012) and Hall (2006), my eyes were opened to so many forms of learning that can take place through social movements, whether one is a key organizer or simply viewing the movement online as it develops and progresses. I see this lesson coming to life in my own work at UBC through the professional development opportunities that we create for student leaders which include conversations about anti-racism, supporting students in distress, responding to disclosures of sexual violence, active by standing, and so on. While these topics may not all be directly related to social movements specifically, they do create opportunities for current undergraduate students to delve into the material and to learn more about how they want to show up as leaders in the world. My hope is that by engaging student leaders in these conversations, they are able to gain additional insights into some of the wicked problems being faced by the world and the role that they can play in finding solutions, potentially leading them to become more involved with initiatives within the local or global community.
With this hope in mind, the third lesson that I am leaving this program with is the belief that universities themselves have a significant responsibility when it comes to educating students about the challenges being faced by society today and on how they can contribute toward finding potential solutions. Cordero et al. (2008) argue that “higher education… has an important role to play in educating students about climate change, and connecting it to the variety of social dimensions, including access to food, drinkable water, and sustainable energy” (Cordero et al., 2008, p. 870). They go on to state that “action-oriented learning designed around the ecological footprint can improve university students’ understanding of the connection between personal energy use and climate change” (Cordero, Todd, Abellera, 2008, p. 865). While this example focuses exclusively on the current environmental crisis, I believe the key takeaway can be applied to any form of education on social movements and/or challenges being faced by the global community.
This brings me to my primary critique of the MEd ALE program, which is with regards to the required courses. As an uninvited guest learning and working on the land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples in both a student and staff capacity, it is my responsibility each day to consider the role that I have played, and continue to play, in a colonial system and how I can work toward reconciliation. While this is my individual duty and one that I take to heart, we are operating within a colonial system and all institutions and organizations have a responsibility to do the same. The Canadian education system is no exception, as it has been built as part of the colonial system with historical intentions of erasing Indigenous ways of knowing. For instance, Atleo (2009) states that “Canadian education begins where Aboriginal people are not: from a Euro-institutional perspective of pedagogy in the context of formal Western schooling” (Atleo, 2009, p. 454), which highlights the fact that much of the education being taught in this country is with a very specific, colonial perspective.
UBC is a world-renowned institution with a newly introduced Indigenous Strategic Plan (2020) and encourages common practices directed toward reconciliation, such as providing land acknowledgements at events and gatherings. While these are certainly steps in the right direction, I think the university as an institution should be doing more and individual departments and programs can also take action in how they design and offer their programs. One way that the MEd in Adult Learning Education (ALE) graduate program could take further steps toward reconciliation is in reconsidering what courses are required in order to graduate. Currently, the three required courses of this program are EDST 503 (Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Adult Learning and Education), EDST 514 (Adult Education Program Planning Theory), and EDST 518 (Theory and Research on Adult Learning), in addition to one research methods course (ex. EDUC 500). These required courses focus quite a bit on colonial ways of knowing and learning, with readings centered on Indigenous theories being included by the choice of each individual instructor. Notwithstanding, I argue that this is not enough. If the institution wants to continue taking strides toward real and ongoing reconciliation with local communities that are impacted daily by our histories of colonial violence, I believe it should be required for students to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing and how they can inform, enrich and expand our approach to a lifelong and lifewide education. One course that I completed during my time in the ALE program, EDST 546 (Indigenous Epistemology and Methodology), focused on Indigenous ways of knowing, and was taught by Professor Maggie Kovach. I learned the most in this course as it was entirely new material that I had not ever been exposed to in all of my years of education, including the importance of building strong relationships with communities as a starting place for conducting research, and various forms of Indigenous methodologies and frameworks, such as Indigenous Storywork (ISW). This methodology, originally developed by Archibald (2019), emphasizes the importance of intergenerational storytelling as a form of resistance and asks researchers to “pay serious attention to how stories can be used in research and education” (Archibald & Parent, p. 4, 2019). I believe that there are many ways that Indigenous ways of knowing could be included as a core requirement for the MEd ALE program, and including Indigenous methodologies like ISW as one of the research methods taught in required courses could be one way of doing so.
It is such a privilege to be able to further my experiences with formal education through the MEd ALE program at UBC and one that I am truly grateful for. Not only because I have learned so much along the way and connected with so many fantastic folks from around the world, but also because I am wrapping up my time with a keen awareness that the learning will not stop once I cross the stage at graduation. My journey of lifelong learning will continue through informal conversations with peers and colleagues, engaging in important discussions pertaining to some of our society’s greatest challenges, and in all of the moments in between. I am looking forward to continuing my own journey with adult education, expanding my learning edges and embracing other ways of knowing and teaching and hope to do so by taking part in forms of education that I haven’t yet done, including becoming engaged with a community organization and bringing some of my lessons learned into conversations with friends and loved ones. I may be preparing to complete my Masters at UBC, but I believe that I have only just begun this new personal chapter of adult learning and education and am looking forward to seeing what comes next.
References
Archibald, J., Parent, A. (2019). Hands back, hands forward for indigenous storywork as methodology. In S. Windchief, & T. San Pedro (Eds.), Routledge, 3-20.
Atleo, M. (2009). Understanding aboriginal learning ideology: through storywork with elders.
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 55(5), 453-467.
Cordero, E. C., Todd, A. M., & Abellera, D. (2008). Climate change education and the ecological
footprint. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 89(6), 865-872.
Hall, B. (2006). Review of the state of the field in adult learning: Social movement learning Canadian Council on Learning.
Rubenson, Kjell. 2010. “Adult Education Overview” in Penelope Peterson, Eva Baker, Barry
McGaw, eds., International Encyclopedia of Education. Volume 1, pp. 1-11. Oxford: Elsevier.
Scandrett, E. 2012. “Social Learning in Environmental Justice Struggles – Political Ecology of
Knowledge.” In Learning and Education for a Better World: The Role of Social Movements. Vol. 10, International Issues In Adult Education). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
University of British Columbia (2020). Indigenous Strategic Plan. 22 March 2022. Retrieved from
https://indigenous.ubc.ca/indigenous-engagement/indigenous-strategic-plan/.
Villacañas de Castro, L. S. (2015). Critical pedagogy and marx, vygotsky, and freire : Phenomenal
forms and educational action research Palgrave Macmillan.
Author Bio:
Sam Robinson (she/her) is currently preparing to graduate from UBC’s Masters of Education, Adult Learning & Education in May 2022. In addition to attending UBC Vancouver as a student, she is grateful to be a UBC staff member working alongside all of the wonderful folks responsible for planning first-year orientations!
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Remembrance, Solidarity, and Community: Commemorating Professor Michael Marker (1951-2021)

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André Elias Mazawi[*]
“My work in the history of education has been like a Coast Salish canoe journey through time and space.”
Michael Marker
On December 23, 2020, around three weeks before Professor Michael Marker’s untimely passing on January 15, 2021, I emailed him to convey my good sentiments for the winter break and my best wishes for the year 2021. I noted that 2020 was quite difficult and unusual for so many. The pandemic and its predicaments disrupted our work considerably. For Michael, these were not “ordinary” events. In private conversations and department meetings Michael shared his views that we are living through an “epochal closure”, a term apparently inspired by a Kantian metaphysics of presence that considers an epoch as a system of language and structure – a hegemonic political culture, if you will. As I (partially) understand it, as an “epoch” draws to a “close,” it loses its “logic” as a viable explanatory framework of the human world. In the words of Saitya Brata Das, its “hegemony expires when its principle of ground becomes impoverished”. Under such conditions, it is difficult to discern what would eventually emerge, what is yet to be born. As a nod to Michael’s view on the times we were living through, in my email I sought to reassure him that with every closure there is also a beginning, a birth, new potentialities, new futures which may not have been otherwise possible. I wrote so because, in my view, every new creation is imperilled by risks, dangers, vicissitudes, contradictions, and setbacks. Yet, as both Edward Said and Hannah Arendt captured it so differently, every beginning ultimately entails collective struggles that connect “scattered occasions” (Said) into a punctum that takes diverse shapes, forms and, ultimately, meaningful directions. Preserving hope in the face of adversity is crucial for the conduct of one’s struggles. To convey my sense of optimism, I included a verse by German lyric poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) that says, among other, “where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” I interpreted that verse to mean that while difficult and challenging life events expose our vulnerabilities and endanger us, they can also push us to think creatively about new ways of being and living.
My choice of Hölderlin’s verse was not arbitrary. Michael’s work resonates with the risks he took in his scholarly work and life. Consistently, he endeavoured to disrupt hegemonic discourses on history and Indigeneity. I knew and appreciated his scholarship well before we met in person at a conference in April of 2003 in Chicago. I then realized that I had included one of his papers in one of my syllabi as a mandatory reading as early as 2001. In his studies on the colonization of Indigenous communities Michael built a scholarly body of work that uncompromisingly sought to disrupt the hegemonic power of a Eurocentric version of modernity and history, particularly those discourses that are adamantly entrenched in schools and higher education institutions. Referring to the “alluvial zones of paradigm change”, Michael proposed a new language, one of life, dignity, justice, self-determination, and healing.
Michael’s response to my email, on the evening of December 23, 2020, was intriguing. Michael thanked me for my “blessings with gratitude and some joy.” Yet, he emphatically and flatly noted, “I do not share your optimism”:
“Yes, I do appreciate the words of German poets and thank you for sending them. Notwithstanding, I am more compelled by a German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer; a great intellectual cut down in his prime while [Martin] Heidegger found cleverness to defend himself and pretended to not know of good Dietrich’s torture and execution. Bonhoeffer’s words ring true for me: “If you have boarded the wrong train, it does no good to run in the corridor in the opposite direction.” [Hyperlinks added to original text, AEM]
In his stance against Nazism in Germany, Bonhoeffer, a pastor and theologian, “was sharply critical of ethical theory and of academic concerns with ethical systems precisely because of their failure to confront evil directly,” as Douglas Huff points out. The foundation of ethical behaviour, Bonhoeffer believed, lay in reconciling the reality of the world and the metaphysical reality of God, making the latter manifest in and through the former. Ethical behaviour entailed a worldly and fully engaged activism towards the redemption of the human world, in words and actions. For Michael, too, scholarship cannot be reduced to academic concerns. It entails purposeful activism if one is to confront and expose “the varieties of hegemonies that neutralize a legitimate Indigenous voice and which are continuing to dismiss the Indigenous polemical Other as an exoticized outside case scenario.” He asserted that “healing and relationship building can only come of a rigorous decolonizing related to exposing the persistence and pestilence of technocracy and historical amnesia within schools and communities.” For him, decolonizing the ways in which history is studied is akin to “a canoe journey through time and space,” in view of creating a generative discourse and the re-articulation of institutional policies, practices, and cultures.
Michael’s intellectual courage stood out in our (last) exchange, as it did in his engagement with the world’s deep wounds of injustice, and its colonial legacies of oppression, violence, and dispossession. If he disagreed with colleagues, he argued forcefully, yet with courtesy and deference. His burning passion for inquiry, argumentation, and the exploration of ideas was visible to all those for whom the incisiveness of thought is a necessary condition in the fecund pursuit of those ethical values on which we could build our world. Michael was an intense interlocutor. For him, ideas must be pursued with a clear and sharp mind. Ideas command a constant search, a continuous exchange, and unending exploration, if experienced realities are to be captured in meaningful ways. Michael’s contrapuntal reference to Bonhoeffer’s life pushed back on my reference to  Hölderlin’s lyric verse. By doing so, he made me realize that my optimism was underpinned by residues of an a-political Romanticism. His contrasting of Bonhoeffer’s and Heidegger’s radically antithetical destinies compelled me to decolonize myself from entrenched assumptions that have come to inhabit me through my literary education and the conditions under which I was schooled. I never had the chance to thank Michael for this exchange. The conversation was cut short with and by his departure.
One full year has elapsed since Michael’s passing. Remembering Michael – as colleague, scholar, activist, and faculty member – is painful. This text carries a portion of that pain. One colleague commented, “it hurts to remember Michael, but this pain of remembering is also what gives us life, courage and hope” (Pierre Walter). On January 20, 2022, the Department of Educational Studies at UBC commemorated Professor Michael Marker’s passing at the very beginning of its monthly meeting. For me, a department’s capacity to re-member, to re-call, to in-voke the memory of its members – whether those who passed or those who are (still) present, or still, those who moved on in life – is foundational for the maintenance and growth of our common home. A home – basically, a space within which activities take place – is not just physical or material. It is a dwelling that carries a full range of meanings, affects, moods, and memories. These meanings are part and parcel of what a home represents, as both space and experience. Invoking these meanings collectively – as part of an act of co-memoration – represents the most powerful political statement that a human group can utter: we do not forget any member who lived in this dwelling, nor do we leave anyone behind or outside its precinct. Re-membering represents the penultimate act of constructing a solidarity across time, space, and relations; one of several pillars in the process of community-building. Without remembrance I feel we would probably vegetate in a continuously desolate present composed of bricks, mortar, and empty glass corridors. Such a “home” would be daunted by the grinding effects of an alienating bureaucracy, the “iron cage” of surveillance and control, to which (the translated writings of) Max Weber referred. By in-voking the memory of our colleague we ensure and uphold our humanity, trapped – as it is – between its desires for knowledge, truth, and fulfillment and the effective challenges facing the translation of these desires into ethical, equitable, just, and inclusive worlds.
The commemoration of Professor Michael Marker was incidentally followed by a departmental discussion regarding how we could, should, or would be capable of coming together to share the fruits of our work and still feel comfortable with ourselves, in the privacy of our thoughts and concerns. In many ways, for me, co-memorating and sharing represent the two facets of weaving disparate ideas into meaningful horizons of possibility, the creation of a measure of “intellectual intimacy.” Yet, for this “intellectual intimacy” to be effective it must be grounded in a spirit of trust; trust between individuals and trust in that all participants feel engaged and respected in the conversation, while respecting those around them. Building trust represents an arduous and challenging project, no doubt. Without trust, all our endeavours, teachings, and claims to transforming the world would remain vacuous and resoundingly empty. Building relational trust represents an elementary condition in the generation of knowledges that lay legitimate claims to transformative powers within the communities they touch.
May Michael’s memory live among us in the ways we learn to relate to each other, as we strive to build a vibrant, life seeking, and confident Department of Educational Studies. Let the passionate argumentation Michael captured in his way of being in the world increase a thousand fold and let it blossom, among us, like a thousand cherry trees.
Let us commit to remember that.
© André Elias Mazawi, Feb 10, 2022.
[*] An abridged version of this text was released to the Department’s membership (staff, students and faculty) on January 15, 2021, as part of Professor Michael Marker’s commemoration. The present expanded version includes subsequent reflections shared with the Department. I am grateful to Deirdre Kelly, Pierre Walter, Michelle Stack, Hartej Gill, Bathseba Opini, and Amy Parent for sharing their feedback and comments on previous drafts. I am equally grateful to EDST’s GAA Team for their consideration of this text as part of the EDST Blog and for their support in bringing it to publication.
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Laziness, Racism, and Systemic Change

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Laziness, racism, and systemic change

Jude Walker

I’m lazy. In saying this it may seem that I’ve embraced yet another identity marker: woman, white, educated…lazy. I say this not as a point of pride nor of shame but as an offering. I think we’re all lazy when we have the opportunity to be. The history of humans has fundamentally been about responding to this fact—less toil, less trouble, greater efficiency. I tend to think I’m particularly lazy as someone with a lifelong struggle with ADD. Looking back at old school report cards tells it all, culminating with the reference for university I received from my high school dean: “Judith is quite capable when she can be bothered” (Yes, I still harbor resentment towards Ms Greenlees). One of the key diagnostic criteria of ADD is “Often avoids, dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort.” This paper is not about ADD—whether it is “real,” biological, caused by trauma, or that it is just a result of 21st century living given all the technological distractions we’re presented with. Nor is divulging this fact about myself a way for me to prove I have a sufficiently high Suffering Quotient (SQ—yes, I made that up). It’s likely a divergence from the crux of my argument (remember, I am lazy). Actually, when I make an effort to think about it, I am readily aware of the privilege I have: white, rich, university professor in Canada. I get that I won the ovarian lottery. I’m also acutely aware that I say inappropriate things at inappropriate times—perhaps like speaking at all right now as a white woman and about racism at that. But, what the heck; I felt it was worth putting in the minimal effort to write this blog post to talk about “laziness, racism, and systemic change.”
Photo by shutterstock.com
Racism is a story of laziness. The genius idea of 15-16th Century colonizers was to divide everyone into some invented racialized group as they conquered, as it was too cumbersome to put in the sustained mental effort to realise this was total BS. Getting people to do sh*t for you, without being bothered by having to treat them as human beings or pay them, is the epitome of laziness—and, yes, selfishness, and, of course, the ultimate dehumanising I-it relationship. Slavery wasn’t a breakthrough new idea of the second millennia; the elite ancient Greeks, as an example, had figured this out with the minimal effort it required. Nor was racism unique to Europe. However, it seems that anti-black racism and white supremacy got a big boost from the colonizers’ laziness in taking slaves from West Africa rather than elsewhere as it was more convenient, expedient. Inertia then kind of set in—systemic racism pervaded our institutions, mentality, ways of thinking. Racial privilege continued. Inertia, as we know, requires an external force to break; I imagine that even those of my white ancestors who thought this wasn’t the greatest system decided it was too much effort to think about it being different, let alone try to change it.
There have been countless studies now showing that in Canada and elsewhere people with non-English sounding names on their resumes are less likely to be invited to interview for a job. Bayesian statistics—unlike frequentist statistics—argues that we operate from Bayesian priors in determining probability distributions. A “prior”, according to Wikipedia (since I’m too lazy to find a better definition, nor do I really understand Bayesian statistics but I like the metaphor) is “the probability distribution that would express one’s beliefs about this quantity before some evidence is taken into account.” So, if we apply this to assessing resumes and the probability that the person would be a good employee, the “quantity” is the person and our “beliefs” are the prior beliefs we have about people from that group. In other words, a white employer, for example, bases her opinion on the Male, African-American sounding name on the resume on her prior assumptions about African-American men which are largely taken from the media and infused into our stories and socialization across generations; her approach to the Chinese-sounding name may be due to narratives in society and also her one negative experience with a particular Chinese employee which she has then mapped onto her thinking about the potential ‘fit’ of all people with Chinese names. If the white employer was to hire these two fictitious people, it would follow she would engage in a Bayesian updating process “to reflect a more accurate set of assumptions.”  But it’s much less effort to stick with her prior assumptions and continue hiring people with surnames like “Walker.” This, I think, explains implicit bias and why it persists: mental laziness. Good, liberal, privileged white people like me hire people like us because we’re lazy, and to change our institutions is threatening, in part, because of the perceived effort it would take.
Robyn D’Angelo articulated what has become widely seen as a useful concept to capture those behaviours white people engage in that stymie anti-racist efforts: white fragility. As it has been rightly noted, white fragility stems from centuries of white supremacy. D’Angelo explains that at the core of white fragility is defensiveness, appeals to innocence, and white people making it “about them.” These are the paths of least resistance; defensiveness (as an act of desired self-protection) often comes automatically—it’s incredibly hard work to not get defensive, hence the birth and explosion of relationship counselling. It takes a lot of mental effort, practice, and labour to do something different as individuals. Quite rightly, BIPOC people here and in the US are angry at appeals to educate me and other white folk about racism because we’re too lazy to teach ourselves.
Image by someecards
Perhaps it needs to be said that laziness is a privilege—not everyone gets to be lazy. Laziness evokes the image of the idle (white) rich, Marie-Antoinette lavishly eating a piece of cake. The poor cannot afford the luxury of laziness in their very efforts for survival. Racialised minorities have to fight, and put in more effort, to be recognised and to be seen as equal—to get that job despite their surname. We also have the erroneous narratives of the lazy immigrant, the lazy black single mum collecting welfare, the lazy overweight person eating pies, the lazy [insert your favourite ethnic minority here] etc. These (lazy) tropes attempt to justify racism (and sexism, discrimination against those not adhering to Western female beauty norms of slenderness etc.), offered up as a way of explaining away and justifying inequality within a protestant ethic capitalist society. It’s all a ruse, of course. We’re also stuck in a bind in both embracing and rejecting laziness. It all feels so exhausting.
So what is the antidote to laziness? I haven’t put in enough effort to really figure this out and would love to free-ride off your efforts. In seriousness, I do have some ideas about what doesn’t really work (which could be, again, a result of my sloppy thinking and not that well thought out). Systemic change is particularly challenging when conceived at the level of lazy individuals—we tend to need to be nudged into more pro-social behaviours (e.g., give me a separate recycling bin, I’ll use it; ask me to drive to Richmond to drop off my recycling, I’ll feel bad about dumping the plastic in the regular rubbish bin but not enough to make the 30-minute drive). Telling myself to do something, telling other people to change, or thinking constantly about myself hasn’t really helped me to make change. While effort, unfortunately, is required, I think it can be better directed.
Overall, I think we seriously need to question and respond to the hyperindividualism that has so pervaded our societies and institutions—exacerbated by postmodern neoliberalism and competitive capitalism. These trends have *not* led us to put in less overall effort. Ironically, doing and thinking about things by ourselves is often more work (and feels more like work) than thinking and doing together; a social movement is larger than the sum of its parts. Being alone in our laziness, in confronting our laziness, makes us more scared, feel more daunted, and be more likely to spiral into unproductive shame. At least it does for me—I employ the collective ‘we’ in my desperate attempt at belonging and a reflection of my own felt loneliness. I know: it is platitudeness (inherently lazy) to end this paper as a kumbaya call to all be friends, share the load, become our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers. Yet, I made no pretense that I wasn’t lazy (you were warned).
Image by Richard Watson
I think I’ll end with the plot of one of my 4-year old daughter’s favourite books: Clumpety Bump. Clumpety is a horse, a very lazy horse. Instead of galloping, he plods. Instead of helping out his owner, Wally Wobblebottom, so he can go and help his friends, Clumpety resists each time he’s called to do something that takes more effort, like jumping over a creek. He thinks, instead, “I can’t be bothered,” and takes the easiest route out, like stopping to eat the grass or whatever it is. In doing this, he causes Wally to get wet, or he squashes the grapes he was taking to a friend recovering from illness etc. As with all good children’s books, there is a morally preachy change: Clumpety becomes a lively horse who finally attempts to help out his buddy. This happens when Wally comes to him in obvious need as his tractor has failed him and he got all covered in mud. Clumpety stops thinking about himself and, knowing he is needed, gallops with Wally on his back to take some flowers to his friend. Unfortunately, while Clumpety does go quickly and doesn’t stop this time, when he arrives, he gives into his temptation and eats the flowers that were being taken as a gift
All of this is to say that laziness can’t be eradicated or entirely overcome, systems must be changed through collective action, and as those who have benefitted from colonization and white (and laziness) privilege, we’re going to screw it up but we should still try as a society in the knowledge that we are lazy.
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Why I Can’t Hold Space for You Anymore, a Self-Examination Exercise

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Why I Can’t Hold Space for You Anymore, a self-examination exercise

Vanessa Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Elwood Jimmy and the GTDF collective

Photo by: Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti
Systemic violence is complex and multi-layered. One thing that cuts across layers is the disproportionate amount of labour that Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) bear when they are expected to teach other people about systemic colonial and racial violence in equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives.
The exercise “Why I can’t hold space for you anymore” was created by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective, of which we are part. It presents an attempt to pedagogically address unconscious patterns of problematic behavior at work in EDI initiatives that are difficult to name and to interrupt.
The exercise consists of a poem and an invitation for self-examination. The poem lists the reasons why symbolic EDI statements and gestures are often costly for the well-being of BIPOC people.
This exercise was developed as part of an effort to illustrate the emotional and physical costs that manifest when BIPOC people are expected to hold spaces for institutional learning – especially white peoples’ learning – about complicities in historical, systemic and ongoing harm.
Read the poem once and pay attention to the different kinds of responses it evokes in you. After you have read the poem once, read the instructions that follow for the second part of the exercise.
Do You Really Want to Know Why I Can’t Hold Space for You Anymore?
Because
You see my body as an extension of your entitlements
 
Because
I have held space for you before
and every time, the same thing happens
You take up all the space
and expect me to use my time, energy and emotion
in service of fulfilling your desires:
to perform my trauma
to affirm your innocence
to celebrate your self-image
to center your feelings
to absolve you from guilt
to be always generous and generative
to filter what I say in order not to make you feel uncomfortable
to validate you as someone who is good and innocent
to be the appreciative audience for your self-expression
to provide the content of a transformative learning experience
to make you feel loved, important, special and safe
and you don’t even realize you are doing it
and you don’t even realize you are doing it
AND YOU DON’T EVEN REALIZE YOU ARE DOING IT
Because your support is always conditional
On whether it aligns with your agenda
On whether it is requested in a gentle way
On whether I perform a politics that is convenient for you
On whether it fits your personal brand
On whether it contributes to your legacy
On whether you will get rewarded for doing it
On whether it feels good
Or makes you look good
Or gives you the sense that we are “moving forward”
 
Because when you ‘give’ me space to speak
It comes with strings attached about
what I can and cannot say
and about how I can say it
You want an easy way out
A quick checklist or one-day workshop
on how to avoid being criticized
while you carry out business as usual
And even when I say what I want to say anyway
You can’t hear it
Or you listen selectively
And when you think you hear it
You consume it
You look for a way to say ‘that’s not me’
‘I’m one of the good ones’
and use what I say to criticize someone else
Or you nod empathetically and emphatically to my face and then
The next thing you do shows that while you can repeat my words
Your perceived entitlements remain exactly the same
 
And when I put my foot down or show how deeply angry or frustrated I am
You read me as ungrateful, incompetent, unreliable and betraying your confidence
You complain behind my back that I’m creating a hostile environment
You say I’m being unprofessional, emotional, oversensitive
That I need to get over it
That I’m blocking progress
That I shouldn’t be so angry
That my ancestors lost the battle
That not everything is about colonialism or racism or whiteness
That aren’t we all just people, in the end?
That we are all indigenous to some place
That you feel really connected to the earth, too
That you have an BIPOC friend/colleague/girlfriend that really likes you…
You minimize and further invisibilize my pain
Your learning
your self-actualization
your credibility
your security
and your social mobility
always come at my expense.
That is why I can’t hold space for your anymore.
After you have read the poem once, we invite you to read it again (one or more times) as an exercise of observation of your own neurophysiological responses. In this part of the exercise, we use a psychological narrative strategically to focus your attention on the responses of your amygdala, which is the part of the brain that stores information about emotional events and that manages situations of perceived threat.
In modern societies, our brain is trained to minimize threat and maximize reward. If something is perceived as a threat to one’s self-image, status, autonomy or security, the amygdala is triggered, prompting the responses of fight, flight, freeze and/or fawn (i.e. to please).
As you read the poem again, identify the parts of yourself that are engaged in these patterns of response:
fight
(defensiveness)
flight
(avoidance)
freeze
(feeling lost and helpless)
fawn
(trying to please)
 
·         denying
·         arguing
·         explaining
·         dominating discussion
·         delegitimizing/ discrediting
·         claim of being attacked
·         claim of objectivity (only you can see the truth)
·         insistence that it does not apply to you since you have (or have had) multi-ethnic friends or family members that can attest that you are a nice person
·         withdrawing
·         getting distracted
·         focusing on your intentions
·         insistence that you are misunderstood
·         arguing over words meanings or other details
·         offering counter-examples
·         use other forms of oppression (e.g. class, sexism, cis-hetero-normativity) to minimize the importance of race and colonialism
 
·         crying
·         numbing
·         deflecting
·         exiting
·         getting distracted
·         changing the subject
·         distancing
·         detaching
·         divesting
·         despairing
·         disconnecting
 
·         seeking absolution
·         self-flagellation
·         martyrdom
·         over-complimenting BIPOC people
·         seeking proximity
·         seeking praise
·         virtue-signaling
·         demanding attention
·         demanding validation (e.g. “I am one of the good ones”)
·         pretending to go along to get along (or to protect your image/interests)
 
As you identify these responses, document (in writing or drawing) how they manifest. Next, consider the fears, insecurities, and desires that could be behind these responses, and how these fears, insecurities, and desires could be unconsciously driving your actions and relationship building with BIPOC persons and communities.
Pause to consider:
  • the costs of these patterns in the long run both for the well-being of BIPOC people and for the depth and sustainability of the relationships you build;
  • what you would need to unlearn to enable healthier and more generative relationships with people from BIPOC backgrounds;
  • how you might be expecting BIPOC people to hold space for your unlearning and have patience with your inevitable mistakes;
  • how this expectation places a demand on BIPOC people’s time and labour, and requires them to re-live painful and traumatic experiences and frustrations;
  • how the labour that is expected of BIPOC people could be better acknowledged, rewarded, and better yet, (re)distributed in your institutional context.
Finally, consider how the “Fragility Questions” below can help you go deeper, recognizing that this exercise is only a starting point in an ongoing, life-long process of historical and systemic undoing, unlearning, and disinvesting from harmful cognitive, affective, and relational patterns.
 
Fragility Questions:
  • What do you expect, what are you afraid of, what prompts defensiveness? Who is this really about?
  • What underlying attachments may be directing your thinking, actions and relationships?
  • What cultural ignorances do you continue to embody and what social tensions are you failing to recognize?
  • What truths are you not ready, willing, or able to speak or to hear? What fantasies/delusions are you attached to?
  • What fears, perceptions, projections, desires and expectations could be informing (consciously and unconsciously) what you are doing/thinking? How may these things be affecting your relationships in negative ways?
  • Where are you stuck? What is keeping you there? How can you distinguish between escapist distractions and the work that needs to be done?
  • How do we learn to surrender perceived entitlements and underlying desires that become a barrier to our ability to have difficult conversations and go into difficult spaces together, without relationships falling apart?
  • How can being overwhelmed and disillusioned be productive?
  • What do you need to give up or let go of in order to go deeper? What is preventing you from being present and listening deeply without fear and without projections?
More question can be found in the deck of cards: With/Out modernity at https://decolonialfutures.net/withoutmodernitycards/
Further reading: Sara Ahmed’s book “ On Being Included Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life” (2012)  analyzes the ways that many institutions create EDI statements that assert they are committing to address systemic racism and colonialism, and then act as if the statement itself has done the work of change. These statements become symbolic and ‘non-performative’ when they are not accompanied by substantive difficult work on the part of the institution and its white members to interrupt racist and colonial patterns. In turn, BIPOC people often end up shouldering the labour of institutional change – and in many cases, being punished for trying to do it well.
The original version of this exercise was published on the Gesturing Towards Decolonial futures website: https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/why-i-cant-hold-space-for-you-anymore/
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