Posts Categorized: Anti-racism

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Josie Gray: Welcome to the BCcampus Mixtape. This podcast is a remix of previous recordings from BCcampus offerings such as the Lunchable Learning radio show, Open Knowledge Spectrums, and more! My name is Josie Gray. I am on the Open Education team at BCcampus. If you love to learn, you’ve come to the right place…

I am joining you today from Moh’kins’tsis on Treaty 7 lands, which includes the territories of the Blackfoot confederacy (which includes the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai Nations), the Tsuut’ina Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley Nations). This place is also home to Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3.

This episode was originally published as part of my master’s major research project at OCAD University, a podcast titled Open Knowledge Spectrums. The episode was shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 licence, and you can find it at knowledgespectrums.opened.ca.

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Tadashi Dozono. Tadashi Dozono is an assistant professor of history/social science education at California State University Channel Islands. Through cultural studies, ethnic studies, queer theory, and critical theory, Tadashi’s research emphasizes accountability towards the experiences of marginalized students by examining the production of knowledge in high school social studies classrooms. His work draws on his experiences as a queer Japanese American cis-male, his family’s internment during World War II, and over twelve years of teaching in New York City public schools. He received his PhD in social and cultural studies from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, where his dissertation focused on “trouble-maker” students of colour in world history classrooms.

Let’s listen in…

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Josie: So, to start, I was wondering if you could share a bit about your background, as a person, as a teacher, as a researcher?

Dr. Tadashi Dozono: So, I’m Japanese American, grew up in Portland, Oregon, and I identify as queer cis male. And I taught in New Your City from like early 2000s to just like a couple of years ago, until 2019. And I did my PhD work, kind of course work right kind of in the middle of that and finished doing dissertation writing while continuing to teach in New York City. And then now currently, I teach at Cal State University Channel Islands, just about an hour north of LA. Yeah.

And kind of teaching wise, I always taught high school social studies. For most of the time taught ninth grade world history, but also taught nine through twelfth grade U.S. history, civics, economics, and world history.

Josie: Great. And what brought you to work on epistemic injustice in world history curriculum?

Tadashi: I guess a lot of it was through my years of teaching in New York City, teaching world history to ninth graders, and almost all of the students are/were Black and Latino, and just knowing after years of teaching them, just how they ended up like seeing themselves or not seeing themselves in the world history curriculum.

And I think in a lot of ways that reflected my own experiences in K to 12 schools, of not feeling like there was room in history classes for my background in history. Yeah. I mean, a lot of why I ended up going into teaching was because of experiences of racism that I had had growing up. And so, it was kind of— I guess teaching was my way of dealing with racism, as my way to sort of create change around that. And I guess going into doing research on this stuff was my way of kind of further processing that. And figuring out— I guess even though I had been trying to change the narrative of world history to be more inclusive of my students’ backgrounds, they still felt overall excluded from the narrative. And so, as a teacher, that felt frustrating to feel like, I’m trying to make these changes but it’s not really— it’s not doing the sort of change I intended it to. And so, going into researching this stuff was trying to figure out, okay, what else needs to happen? Like besides— you know, I think the content— changing the content is important, but what else is going on here besides just changing, you know, the places that are included in the narrative of world history?

Josie: Yeah. Absolutely. Could you maybe talk about some the research that you have done? Like general overview?

Tadashi: Yeah. I mean I guess my PhD dissertation work was then focused on interviewing high school students of colour—pretty much all like Black and Latinx students—10th graders in world history classrooms. And then trying to really document their experiences and their relationships to world history. And so, it was kind of building off of what I had seen in my students as a teacher, and then going back into classrooms to try to document those experiences of different students in like urban classroom settings. And so, I guess in terms of my research, part of it’s like documenting those experiences that students have and their relationships to make teachers and researchers more aware of that sense of, you know, ways that students can feel like unseen or negated through the curriculum.
And then part of my work is also then looking at curriculum—often world history curriculum, like textbooks, or state standards, or curriculum units—and trying to look at, okay, what’s problematic about these? Like where— what could change in how these are structured. Because I think oftentimes the people creating curriculum, I believe that they are trying to do a good job of being more inclusive. But there are still these sort of issues, right. So, part of my work comes from this sense of like, I know that I as a teacher had good intentions of changing the curriculum for my students but it still— it’s like, what’s that something else that’s still missing that’s not creating that change that I want it to? And then I guess, yeah, I end up doing a lot of theory work to kind of— I guess it’s trying to get to the foundations. Like what are the underlying things going on beyond just the surface of like, this looks like an inclusive narrative, but then what’s actually going on underneath?

Josie: For sure, absolutely. And so, I guess you were just talking about like recognizing that people come into this with good intentions, but even with those good intentions, there’s still some— there’s a gap there. And so where do you think that gap is? Is it kind of— Cause it’s not— You’re right, it’s not just curriculum. It’s also the teacher, and how it’s taught, and how students are brought in. Could you maybe talk about that?

Tadashi: So, to some extent, I think, another layer of these tensions is how student thinking comes into play. I guess overall I think a lot about the idea of like knowledge production and the relations of knowledge production in the classroom. I guess I think about like, what’s the relationship between like students and the teacher and the text in the classroom? You know, okay, so if we just take the text itself, like the textbook or something. What went into producing that kind of set of knowledge that’s there? Right? And then I also try to think about, in terms of students, what’s the knowledge that students are bringing into the classroom, and how can that knowledge be incorporated into the overall kind of system of producing knowledge in the classroom. And then the teacher as well, right? What role does the teacher play in that in terms of kind of taking authority of themselves as the “expert” or kind of putting the expertise in the books that they are reading or the expertise in the students, right? And their ability to listen to what students are saying.
So, to some extent I— through my work with interviewing students, I really try to think about, okay, what’s all the thinking going on with that students are saying? Beyond just, is this a right answer or a wrong answer? What are the things going on into their thinking behind that, right? And to have the ways that students are thinking about history and world history to be just as interesting as what’s in the textbook itself. So, I think part of my goal is to get teachers to be really attentive to the ways that students are thinking about the world and to have that be just as important as the history that the world history textbook is presenting.

Josie: Right. And I was wondering if you could talk about, like how you do that in a context there’s this state-mandated curriculum with exams that students have to take. Like how do you do that kind of teaching with those structures being imposed?

Tadashi: Yeah with this I guess I’m thinking about this more from my own experiences as a high school teacher, and then also presenting this as like a possible solution for like other teachers to I guess to find the ways to subvert the state standards, kind of openings in the state standards. Like so for example, on the New York State exam, there would be these thematic questions about world history. And so, they don’t— They suggest some examples of cases that you could use. So, I would often try to take those themes and think about other examples that could be used that are not necessarily like in the traditional history textbook, right? So, for example like, thinking about like Jamaican Maroons, Maroon communities, as an example as kind of revolution or protest, right? So, thinking about like cases that might relate more to my students from the Caribbean and a New York City classroom, but that are not talked about much in the New York City textbook. Yeah. I guess it’s like trying to find those openings in the ways that you can—You can use the sort of bigger questions or themes and then find, you know, ways to incorporate different content into that.

Josie: Right. Absolutely. I guess that leads into another question that I have. My work life is very focused on textbooks [laughs], but I’m like fully aware that textbooks can be super limiting. So could you may talk about like, how do you feel about textbooks? And do you use them? Are they ever useful to you?

Tadashi: Yeah. It’s— I think textbooks are definitely useful in some ways I kind of think about their kind of like, something like Wikipedia, where it’s like a really good starting point, and it’s useful, but then it’s kind of moving from the sort of like kind of background knowledge, narrative foundation that the textbook might provide and then going into much more critical like depth of looking at primary sources and— I mean I think it would be great to do some analysis of what is going on in the textbook. So to get students to do kind of discourse analysis of like, okay, how is this narrative being constructed? Like what’s missing? What language is being used about certain groups and not being used around others? So, I think it would be great for teachers to use those issues around textbooks as a way to also study it as a text itself and to be critical about that text. Yeah. So, I mean I think— I definitely use textbooks as a teacher. You know, I will still use certain kind of base-narrative texts in my own classrooms, but then thinking of that as just the beginning point and then doing inquiry from there.

Josie: Right. Using textbooks as a tool to give students the abilities to kind of analyze like, what’s the narrative here? And be more critical about it rather than presenting it as this like “master narrative.”

Tadashi: And I think— I guess with my own work, I think it’s important to do the critiques of the textbooks, but then I also— I guess just for myself, I try to make sure that I’m doing a sort of balance of looking at like the problems that can be in textbooks but be also solutions-oriented. Right, so what would alternatives look like? And trying to look at models of that or examples of alternatives to using the textbook or ways to extend past just using the textbooks.

Josie: Yeah. I know that’s a question that I have, it’s like whether textbooks, just in the way that they’re designed, whether they could ever really be epistemically just. Or whether they could include multiple ways of knowing, like that’s a question I have about textbooks, is whether that’s possible based on how they are designed. Or if kind of new designs need to be imagined. Yeah, I don’t know the answer, but something that I’ve been thinking about for sure.

Tadashi: Yeah, and I guess kind of—I mean I think, I think one of the big tensions I have with textbooks is the presentation of “objective” knowledge. I think it’s important for the textbook and the teacher to be honest about this, this is presenting as objective, but there’s inevitably some sort of bias and ideological influence going into how this narrative is being presented. So, I think either the textbooks being upfront about that bias or the teacher helping students to unpack that bias and perspective that is there.

Josie: Yeah, absolutely. I’m trying to find a quote of one of your articles that I pulled out… mmm okay, there is a quote that went, “The promotion of ‘normal’ and ‘traditional’ curriculum is just as political as those deemed radical or politically motivated.” And I think that kind of speaks to what you were just saying, like claiming objectivity with a certain narrative is a political act even though it’s been kind of depoliticized by European ways of knowing or, you know.
So, you write a lot about epistemic violence. Could you talk a little bit about how you define the term and maybe an example of what that looks like?

Tadashi: Epistemic violence is— it’s basically when the ways that people understand the world and makes sense of the world when those ways of knowing are negated or ignored. It’s like when you deem someone’s way of making sense of the world as illegitimate, it’s really—in a big way, especially in terms of world history, it’s a way of dehumanizing people, of kind of taking away that part of their humanity. And I think in terms of world history, a big component of how being human is defined is that capacity to reason, and so when you take away the legitimacy of a group of people’s capacity to reason, then that’s an act of dehumanization. And so, to a large extent, that’s why I frame it through this term of violence. We often think of violence as these physical acts of harm. So, I use the term violence here to point to the way that like words can do harm and words can be an act in themselves. And so, to make that sort of judgement of whether someone’s way of knowing counts or not, to me it’s important, especially in schools, to understand that as a form of epistemic violence.

Josie: Right. And with you talking about language, in one of your articles, you really get into the language and grammar and look at how those are used to reinforce white supremacy in grade 10 world history curriculum. So, could you talk about some of the ways that white supremacy functions at the level of language?

Tadashi: Yeah, so it’s interesting because I— I think, partly I never really thought of myself as being a good student in English classes, and you know, I think I always thought that I was interpreting the text wrong, and things like that. But I’ve gotten really interested in the idea of grammar overall as really this representation of relationships of power. You know, it’s— Just the idea of who is the subject in the sentence and who’s the object in the sentence? And just doing some analysis around, you know, who gets to be a subject, who gets to be an actor in history versus who is the object, who is acted upon, I think really then opens up these power dynamics that can go kind of unnoticed. But they’re really kind of these powerful structures at the sentence level in these texts, right? And so— Yeah, and I guess beyond just sort of object/subject, there is also who then is being seen as passive? Or who has agency? You know, oftentimes non-white peoples in world history are included only once they are acted upon. They become a part of history once Europe has had contact with them. And then they enter history. And oftentimes, the events are only remarkable as a sort of reaction to something that Europe has done. If it’s a revolt or something. Like the Haitian revolution is remarkable only in terms of being a both an example of kind of redoing what Europeans were doing in terms of political revolutions, but then also sort of like repeating that action. But then also only in response to France’s actions. So yeah, so I think we can see these power dynamics at the sentence level in a lot of these texts.

Josie: Yeah, and I think like one of the examples that really illustrated it for me is where you talked about how passive voice functions both to remove the responsibility, or the— Yeah to downplay European or white actors that are often doing the violence and doing the dispossession and all those things, and how using passive voice means you don’t have to say who did those things. And then also how passive voice, like the same tool, is used to remove agency. Like it’s insidious the ways some of these things work.

Tadashi: Yeah, and that— that was an interesting process for me in my analysis, because I think initially, in doing my analysis of the state framework, was noticing those moments when the passive voice was used to kind of make non-white peoples objects being acted upon and then I started noticing this other dynamic of, oh, the passive voice is still being used for like white Europeans’ actions. And so, it was really trying to figure out, oh, but there’s still this significant difference in how that passive voice functions. So, it was an interesting process for me to figure out for myself what that meant, how the passive voice was being used differently. And it read very differently for me. I was reacting to that difference in the passive voice.

Josie: Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. I have an undergraduate degree in history, so— like history is very interesting to me, and how history is studied is very interesting. And you’re talking about how like history is periodized. Like all these frameworks that are “history,” how these come from a European tradition and are then imposed through all of history curriculum. And it trickles down through all of these levels. Even at the university level, a lot of these things that you have identified still exist, like these historical claims of objectivity and this periodization, like what kind of courses get offered and who teaches them.

Tadashi: Yeah. I guess along those lines, like, thinking about what epistemic violence can look like in curriculum is—Like I’ve been recently doing work at looking at like Indigenous belief systems in the curriculum, and a big tension that comes up with that is, you know, there might be room for Indigenous knowledge to be studied as an object of study, but not being acknowledged as having their own way of making sense of the world. So just the terms that are being used to study the knowledge of other people, it still takes the methods and the perspective of western science to then make sense of that and to make it intelligible. And otherwise, it’s just sort of like “culture” that we can study versus its own legitimate way of understanding the world and knowing. And so, I think that’s a way where epistemic violence can— it can have this appearance of like, oh this culture is being valued. But in actuality, it’s still being objectified. Yeah, it’s not being valued as its own legitimate system of reasoning.

Josie: Right, yeah, absolutely. This is another quote that I pulled from your article, which—and you said, “The goal isn’t simply to have marginalized people mentioned more often. Educators must always be attentive to how power shapes discourse.” And I think that really applies to what you were saying there. Like the goal is not just to talk about Indigenous knowledge systems. The goal is to value those as own knowledge systems equivalent to other knowledge systems and actually change how we think about knowledge and education, and all of those things.

Tadashi: Yeah. And along with that is— I think even in my early attempts to study world history on my own I would often still read, you know, books about Africa or China or the Middle East by white scholars. And then.. I think then at some point there was a shift for me of then trying to focus on reading texts about other places by people from those places. And you know, that’s not to say that scholars who are white who are writing about those places aren’t valuable, but it was to acknowledge that there’s this sort of difference in where the authors are coming from. Yeah just the approach that content ends up being different and the way it’s being presented is somewhat different.

Josie: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, reading some of your research I see you doing that, like kind of acknowledging your positionality and where you’re coming from and being transparent about your identity and how that affects the work that you do. So could you maybe talk more about how positionality of an author and who is being cited and all of those things play into epistemic justice?

Tadashi: Yeah, I think, I mean I think the idea of positionality to some extent I think that became important to me in a lot of ways through my students in New York in my first couple years of teaching. I think I learned humility pretty fast in teaching high school. And that it’s better to acknowledge those differences between me and my students than to make it seem like I know what they are talking about, or I know what they’ve gone through. And so, I think— I mean I think a big piece of that was like, having always identified as a person of colour, and then having my students point out that in their eyes, I’m not a person of colour because I, you know. And to acknowledge that my experiences growing up as Japanese American in Portland, Oregon, is so vastly different than my students growing up in New York City who like, grew up as Black and Latinx. And that even though I see a commonality there, there is still a big difference there.

Yeah, I mean I think in terms of positionality, it’s kind of an important piece of that is having a humility about the limitations of, you know, I’m not going to claim that I can understand this fully, or you know to, to acknowledge that perspective. And I guess that kind of comes to, like comes back to that conversation about textbooks. Like, you know, if I expect the textbooks to be honest about the perspective that they’re coming from and the bias that is inherent in those textbooks, I think it is important to be upfront about how where I’m coming from in my approach to writing of my research.

Yeah, and you know, that does play a role in who I end up citing in my papers as well. You know, I appreciate these sort of movements around citational practices. Things like movements to cite Black women. And that idea of, you know, what lineage are you creating in your work? And who are you placing at the kind of at the origin of knowledge for your work? You know, to me that speaks a lot of that idea of epistemic injustices is, you know, is the origin of all knowledge in Europe at all times versus changing citational practices and changing those lineages to be able to trace back to other locations beyond Europe. And I think there is, built into academia, there’s an expectation of who you cite. And you know, in the publishing process being told that I need to cite certain people. And that, you know, and that really becomes— it just kind of becomes this reproduction of lineages that will remain white if we just kind of continue those practices. So that— That’s kind of this other way that white supremacy can kind of become reproduced in the writing up of research is the expectation of who gets cited, how you’re tracing knowledge, often it ends up being tracing it back to Europe.

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Joise: So, I guess then queer theory is applicable much broader than just the fields of gender and sexuality like it can be used in other contexts, is that right?

Tadashi: Yeah, and I guess queer theory ends up also critiquing sort of inclusive models as well a lot of times. I think kind of a good example that I use to help understand this is like, like the idea of gay marriage is more of a normative kind of assimilating into the mainstream by adding gay people into the system of marriage. And the sort of queer critique of marriage is more like, why would I want to be part of a club that didn’t want me in there to begin with? And why would I want to be part of a system that has been known for excluding others or also has strong roots in kind of placing women as objects of property. And it is sort of, instead of trying to be included into the norm, it’s critiquing that power of that idea of normal and like let’s get rid of that category.

Josie: Yeah, that makes me think a lot of Sasha Costanza-Chock’s work on design justice. They write about, in the book, about their experiences as a trans femme person going through airport security and being flagged every time they go through because they don’t conform to male and female like norms of what a body is supposed to be. And they talk about how design justice isn’t about making a more inclusive airport security, it’s about like taking down those systems of surveillance and all of those things. It’s kind of like breaking down those systems, not just trying to be included in those systems that cause a lot of harm.

Tadashi: Yeah, and I think kind of as a high school teacher I think I often would link queer theory with like critical disability studies and the ways that my students were being categorized based on their learning styles and the ways that they think and process things. Yeah, like categories of able-bodied and normal versus, you know, abnormal ways of thinking or being then become this other category, right. So trying to dismantle what that idea of what the normal child is or the normal functional body and mind, you know, instead of trying to get students to, you know, be able to fit into that category, well let’s question what that category is and what it’s actually doing.

Josie: Right, absolutely. So I guess maybe you could talk a little bit about, I think you kind of did there, but how epistemic justice shows up in your teaching practices? Both maybe in the K to 12 levels but also in the university system.

Tadashi: Yeah, and you know and cause like we kind of started talking about like textbooks, but I think at the end of the day, like I don’t care so much about the textbook. What I care about is the students and their sense of themselves and their education. And so I think that idea of epistemic injustice really comes down to, what’s going to help my students, I don’t know, like just have confidence in who they are and in how they think about the world. And you know, to continually push them, but to you know, I guess my concern is really about the students and how they understand themselves. And so, I think a big part of how it comes up in my classroom is— I guess even like K to 12, is to break down the idea of what being smart is. Or you know, trying to move it past the sort of like, this innate inborn capacity and, you know, that the grade means— You know, like I was always really so bothered when students would have this sense of like, “Oh, I failed this class. That means I’m stupid.” And when a lot of times there were all these other factors that were impacting the work that they were turning in or not turning in to the classroom, to the teacher.

So, I think, like in my work now with teaching elementary school teachers how to teach social studies, I’d say a big component of the work that I do with that is kind of repairing students’ relationships to what economics is, government, geography, history. I think a lot of my future elementary school teachers come in with kind of like a bad relationship to some of those things. Like economics feels intimidating. And I think a lot of my work there is trying to break it down to both to acknowledge their relationships to those disciplines and to really broaden the definitions of what those mean, right? That economics is really about resources and how we distribute resources and so that can be as simple as, you know, like having like a bag of candy and how we divide it amongst everyone in the class. So really trying to break some of those ideas down to their kind of core concepts. So, I think like a chunk of that is kind of repairing students’ relationships to those disciplines and to really kind of broaden what counts as knowledge in all of those disciplines, and to really engage students’ own background knowledge as a part of those disciplines, cause often times they are not seen as that. So, a big part of it is like encouraging my future teacher students to really try and incorporate like the knowledge that their students have as a part of that process of learning in the classroom.

Josie: Yeah, absolutely. So where do you see a potential to disrupt epistemic injustice and epistemic violence in world history education?

Tadashi: I think an important component of that is to trust teachers and to provide teachers with the time and the resources to develop curriculum and adapt curriculum. Because I think localizing the learning is really important for teachers to be able to incorporate not just the background knowledge of their students but also of the communities in which the schools are embedded and the students are embedded. And, you know, that takes time and resources to be able to learn the histories of the communities and to incorporate those in. And I think— I think that’s where the learning just reaches new levels of depth and richness when the knowledge is able to be localized and embedded within students’ communities. So I think a big piece of that is really entrusting teachers with, you know, so not just, “This is the state curriculum and you have to teach exactly what this says,” to “Okay, here’s this sort of beginning point of state curriculum, and let’s also make sure that we’re trusting teachers to be able to develop curriculum or expand on the curriculum to really figure out ways to link students’ lives and their communities to these state standards and the state curriculum, or right. Or even just go beyond what the state curriculum says [laughs].

Josie: [Laughs] Absolutely.

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Josie: Thank you for joining us today. If you liked this content, let us know. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn under @bccampus, and on Instagram @bccampus.ca.

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“Epistemic Violence and World History with Dr. Tadashi Dozono” transcript by Josie Gray is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 License.

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Leva Lee: Welcome to BCcampus Mixtape. This podcast is a remix of previous live recordings from BCcampus offerings such as the Lunchable Learning radio show, Open Knowledge Spectrums and more! My name is Leva Lee.

Helena Prins: And my name is Helena Prins. We are both on the Learning and Teaching team at BCcampus. If you love to learn, you’ve come to the right place… I am joining you from the beautiful homeland of the Lekwungen Speaking people, which includes the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Leva: And I’m joining you from where I live on the ancestral and unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.

Helena: Today’s episode features conversations with some of our favorite people in the post-secondary sector in B.C.! We’ll be exploring the topic of anti-racism and inequity in post-secondary institutions and leveraging change to support racialized students. First, you’ll hear from Rohene Bouarjam, the associate director, Strategic Indigenous, Black and Persons of Colour Initiatives at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver where she provides strategic leadership and direction on embedding equity and inclusion and advancing anti-racism in policies, initiatives and programming for Indigenous, Black and Persons of Colour (IBPOC) students. Then you may recognize the voice of guest host, Olaolu Adeleye, who is a dear friend of BCcampus and who is currently with Deloitte Consulting.

Leva: You’ll also hear the powerful voice of Nadia Mallay, who completed her doctorate in Educational Leadership in Post-Secondary Institutions with a focus on institutional mechanisms and change management that can be leveraged for anti-racism work and is a postdoctoral fellow. And last, but certainly not the least, you’ll hear an excerpt from a conversation with Donneil McNab who is an associate faculty at Royal Roads University, the co-founder and lead consultant at Power of Discourse Consulting, an EDI consulting company, and also the founder of the Award for Diversity and Community Building at Royal Roads University.

Helena: Let’s listen in.

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Helena: Well, I’m very excited to welcome our guests today. Rohene Bouarjam, thank you so much for being here with us Rohene.

Rohene Bouarjam: Thank you so much for having me.

Helena: We are super excited. So first of all, congratulations on being one of the recipients of the 2021 UBC President Service Awards for Excellence. We just saw this news last week, so we’re so proud of you. How does that feel and what does that mean to you?

Rohene: Thank you so much Helena. Uh, you know, I’m truly honoured to receive this official form of recognition, and behind my gratitude is a deep appreciation for the people I’ve come in contact with students, colleagues, faculty, community members from both my personal and professional spheres. So whilst I accept this award, this is really, something that I share with many as a recognition of how far we’ve come together.

Helena: That’s just lovely. Thank you, Rohene, and you have a big title here. You are the associate director for Strategic Indigenous, Black and People of Colour at UBC and providing leadership and direction on embedding equity and inclusion and advancing anti-racism in policies, initiatives and programming for racialized students. How and why did you get into this work?

Rohene: That’s a great question. I won’t give you a snapshot of my resume, but perhaps what I’ll do is I’ll draw on two pivotal points. The first is my experience of being an immigrant. I have been in tough spaces where I’ve been the other or excluded. And felt like I didn’t belong reflecting on these experiences. I’m mindful of leaving a country, Zimbabwe, that was once colonized to seek a better life with my family as a settler in Canada. And so when I look at my career trajectory, I have sought roles that allow me to deepen this privilege with accountability and responsibility of creating belonging. The second point is I’ve always had a strong imagination and desire for justice, even at a young age. My career trajectory has placed me in roles where I could contribute questions like why not or how about we try something different and then be part of finding the right solution. Through the lens of both of these points, my roles, including my current one, which is a very long title, creates an opportunity to bridge risk, compassion, courage, and expansive imagination. It allows myself and the colleagues whom I work closely with to rewrite what success looks like for different types of students and crack open structures that create space between what has been historically and persistently tragic on what is possible and it’s really in this space that I find the most rewarding to work in as we add in big and important concepts like equity, inclusion and anti-racism.

Helena: Yes, those are big words, and that’s actually part of why we invited you here. Because we’ve read the article that you wrote for University Affairs in August and the article was about supporting racialized students from an equity perspective. And for our audience, we will share that article again in our show notes later. But you wrote that universities need people, policies and protocols that take into account how to support the success of racialized students from an equity and not equality perspective. So how would those two perspectives differ and how get there?

Rohene: Again it’s such a lovely question because I think it opens up so many opportunities for us to unpack which would likely take hours. So I hope I’ll do this question justice and saying equality means each individual student has access to and receives the same support services and opportunities, which is something that we all strive for to offer as educators and practitioners. However, when we take an equity perspective, we move away from an assumption that everyone has access in the first place. What you recognize is that each individual student has different circumstances, different starting points, different needs, different help-seeking behaviours, and it’s in the space of difference that we as higher education professionals have the ability to match out institutional structures, policies, procedures to level the space between meeting students where they are and where they want to be. You ask me how do we get there. It starts with asking questions like who is accessing our services, programs, and support and who isn’t and then moving to curiosity around why is this happening? What could be missing and how could an aligned approach that supports the success of a student be achieved? Whilst I focused on BIPOC students in my article. Because I believe that race is often excluded out of important conversations in higher education. There is value in also considering intersectionality.

Helena: Yes.

Rohene: Placing importance on equity and not equality moves us in the direction of creating fairness. Inviting students who normally would not have been in our institutions in and finally creating outcomes that address the systemic inequities that we see across so many sectors. But perhaps to begin with, who gets a certain type of supportive post-secondary education and who doesn’t?
Leva: Very thoughtful Rohene, so I’m really thrilled to have this opportunity to meet you. And I enjoyed reading your article and in that you acknowledged your experience as a racialized individual working in higher ed. And if there’s one thing you could share about what this means to you. What would that be?

Rohene: Thank you, Leva. That’s a great question. I think being a racialized staff member means being able to connect with members of the institutional community. A community who don’t see many people who look like me at most Canadian institutions. Whilst this feeling can feel like a daunting position to be in, I look at it as an opportunity to bridge my lived experience with the compassion and understanding in all interactions with students and colleagues, whether it’s sitting with a BIPOC student who relays that they’ve been subjected to racism, and saying, “I believe you.” To sitting with a colleague who shares that they didn’t intend any harm by saying what they said in a particular meeting and supporting them with an understanding of how they can do better. So, as I think about what it means to me, we all have a lot to learn, including myself and in a vibrant intellectual environment that values critical inquiry, change and growth. The one thing that I’m grateful for is that there’s space to have these types of conversations.

Leva: I also wanted to ask you the one thing there is a misleading line you say in job descriptions, so the “other duties as assigned”…so you refer to that. Could you tell us more? About why you think that changing that one line could be the one small step for systemic change?
Rohene: Yeah, it’s a small step, a really tiny one. But what it does is it symbolizes an awareness that certain goals have shifted over time in response to who is at our institution now. And with this awareness, we have the opportunity to rewrite this one-line sentence that reflects a much deeper understanding of the required skills or competence and experience that an institution needs to provide an equity-focus level of support for all students that aligns with who they are, what they bring and where they could be as a result of studying, living and growing at all of our institutions. So, the purpose of writing this article from the perspective of “other duties as assigned” was to give voice to the possibility of rewriting job descriptions that actually match the type of support that’s needed based on who comes to our institution in a different way than what has been. Historically been considered the outcomes of one person’s job.

Helena: That’s a very interesting take on it, and I think maybe that’s already one challenge for this sector is to have a look at our job descriptions and our job postings and make sure that that line gets clarified. We also ask our guests, Rohene, to provide a challenge to the listener, so I’m very curious. What challenge did you pick for our listeners today?

Rohene: I thought something was tangible and also hopefully something reasonable. So, my challenge to our listeners is what step do you commit to doing differently today in support of your fellow racialized students and staff?

Leva: It’s a great challenge and something I hope people will think about and take to action.

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Leva: Nadia is an educator, Canadian born of Guyanese ancestry and has just completed her doctorate in educational leadership in post-secondary institutions with a focus on institutional mechanisms and change management that can be leveraged for anti-racism work.

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Olaolu Adeleye: So, can you tell us a little bit about your journey of how you even arrived in education and what your role or roles, the many hats that you wear, what they mean to you, and the significance of your voice as a Black person working in this space?

Nadia Mallay: Yes, so I am the descendant first generation born Canadian of immigrant parents. So, this will be a common narrative: Education is important. Education is valued, education is just what you do and there’s no real questions about that. Uhm, going through the education system in Canada is a different experience than immigrants would have had in their own country and going through as a racialized person, as a Black person is different. Positives and negatives, I’m sure the common story is one of negative experiences, and I certainly had those. So, as I’m going through education and focus on you know the teacher, doctor, lawyer, teacher, doctor, lawyer. [laughs] The immigrant rotation. I really was into the sciences, but I was really in a supportive environment in terms of my family home life and following interest and passion and I kept gravitating towards education. I actually went into medical sciences in my undergraduate. A very competitive program, a very white program. I was one of in a huge number of students and I won’t name institutions. That institution has a documented history of excluding, in policy, Black individuals. You can imagine what that journey was that was only recently changed. So, I landed in education because I was having, I was constantly faced with issues of racism and systemic racism, so I went into the field of education. I love it. I started in K12 education, and I moved through to leadership roles and then into higher education, starting with a consultancy and doing quite extensive volunteer work for years. And I’ve just sort of stuck with it in different forms and am now involved in EDI, but not necessarily purely EDI. It’s looking at systems change; it’s looking at how we how we run our institutions.
Olaolu: And can you speak a bit about the consultancy? Is it also working in the same area?
Nadia: So Biophilic Consulting is my consultancy, and I can help with EDI work, and I’ve done EDI scans, but it’s also about change management, organizational efficiency, helping people with their resume writing, and learning to be strategic. As they go forward with their job search and career development.

Leva: That’s interesting, yeah. There’s such more awareness now and I know that EDI work is really taking prominence, and BCcampus is actually also undergoing some EDI audits for some our programs, so I’m looking forward to learning more of how we can do better. I think and put something, and implement something, in the program rather than that we’ve been doing a lot of learning and talking, but it is time for action. So, one of the questions we had been thinking about is with your experience in post-secondary, what is the one area that you believe that post-secondary institutions need to give more attention to?

Nadia: Only one? [laughs]

Leva: Most prominently.

Naida: So, it’s a system of inequity, right? That’s what I think of when I now hear post-secondary education. Um, B.C. in particular Metro Vancouver institutions in particular are really struggling with systems of inequity. I’ve seen really great change and met some phenomenal people who are doing exceptional work, of course. And of course, people have done so much work before, but it’s a system of privilege. It’s a privilege based on race, it’s colonialism, and it’s not being dismantled, and so even as we have all these advances in EDI work, and I don’t actually generally use acronyms, I don’t think acronyms are working for us. I don’t think we can speak in binaries. It’s more exclusionary than it is inclusive. And that’s the problem. If we’re going to get to authentic inclusion these binaries, these EDI frameworks and these EDI spaces aren’t working for us, so I guess my roundabout way is that if they are going to be inclusive spaces because of all the benefits that come behind inclusion and having multiple voices, then they really need to work at privileges and systems of inequity and how they’re upholding those for profit.

Olaolu: And so really, even as you speak about the binary elements of it, is part of the way forward, then opening the conversation so that the contributions and the feedback really about these systems are a lot more expansive. And if that is the case, what does that look like in practice?

Nadia: Yeah, so it can’t really be a siloed approach. It can’t just be we have an equity office and an equity group of people doing the work. That’s important, a lot of work has been done to have those spaces, but it needs to be a distributed model. Each individual needs to be aware of how they’re enacting their own privilege in sustaining a system of inequity. So, if I have an equity office, let’s say, are they developing resources, is it capacity building? Are they challenging what I know? If I’m an expert, do I have opportunities to go and facilitate change in other spaces? So that’s what I think needs to happen, is the more distributed model of equity, because I think it’s being tacked on rather than foundation up, and nothing will change unless it’s foundation up, which is, which is a lot of work and PSIs, like everyone, we are facing a lot of challenges with an unprecedented pandemic. Um, budget issues, everything that’s happening on with a complex space like Metro Vancouver, but it needs to be done properly if it’s going to be done.

Leva: And to be done in a way that can be sustainable, right? Not just tacked on. And then everybody gets fatigued over time. You don’t have the capacity to continue the work.

Nadia: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, hugely important. The sustainability.

Olaolu: These are all great points, especially as you talk about, you know if there’s an office versus whether or not it’s finding its way into curriculum, way into classrooms, way into the culture and the community on campus too.

Nadia: Yeah, but I wonder if students are coming in knowing more than the people delivering certain components of their education.

Olaolu: Right.

Nadia: Are we meeting, we’re always meeting the needs of students coming in, so are we meeting their needs? Are we meeting their abilities?

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Leva: Olaolu should we ask Nadia if she had a challenge? I think we asked if she had a challenge for our listeners. We often like our guests to give something that people can sort of focus on based on the topic of discussion, but did you have a challenge you’d like to invite our listeners to do?

Nadia: Just to stay with it, I know there’s been some great movement on anti-Black racism and if you have it within you, it doesn’t have to be every day, every moment. But when you can speak up and speak out and be supportive, really advocate. Advocate in all the spaces. If you’re in a retail space and you’re wondering if that person is receiving the same treatment and engagement that you are, ask. Not everything needs to be a confrontation and actually works best when it’s not, but just ask a question.

Olaolu: That’s great in personalizing it to really getting people to see the tangible and really actionable steps that they can take as individuals.

Nadia: Yes.

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Helena: So let’s start with some good news. One of our earlier guests on the show, Rohene Bouarjam, has been involved in an excellent new program, the Beyond Tomorrow Scholars Program. That’s a first of it’s kind initiative in Canada, and it provides both scholarships and a range of integrated institutional supports to help provide a pathway to success for black Canadian students at UBC. Olaolu, I’m very curious to know your take on the significance of this program for the post-secondary sector.

Olaolu: Yes, this is a great program. Great initiative, the Beyond Tomorrow Scholars Award it is something that offers an opportunity for people who perhaps don’t have the financial resources to get involved in post-secondary education. I hope it is something that other institutions will take into consideration, and they will follow suit in a similar vein. But I think what’s most significant about this is side, removing the financial barriers is a mentorship component. You know, none of us arrive where we are without some form of support or mentorship. And you know, there’s no one singular experience. So, giving students a wealth of resources or networks to tap into to ask questions to see modelled what it looks like, what it takes to be successful. I think that’s essential and especially important as we think about the representation of voices and students who are Black at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

Helena: Yes, that’s very exciting. I didn’t know about the mentorship piece. I think that’s really crucial.

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Helena: We are so pleased today to welcome the lovely Donneil McNab.

Donneil McNab: Hi, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and I look forward to our conversation today.

Olaolu: Pleasure to have you here Donneil and first off, congratulations on your new appointment as an associate faculty member at Royal Roads University. We want to begin by asking you to tell us a bit about yourself and we’ll start our conversation there.

Donneil: Yeah, most certainly. I think this is always the hardest question to answer, but anyways, I’ll still share a bit about myself. I was born in Jamaica. I came to Canada in 2018 to pursue graduate studies and I’ve been here ever since. A few things that I like to do: cook, I like to dance as well. I like to hang at the beach. Being somebody who grew up on a tropical island, of course, it’s not quite the same here in Canada, but I do. I do still try to hang at the beach with a good book when I can, and I also like to volunteer, which is really what brought me to quite a few of the roles that I’m in right now.
Olaolu: OK, everyone loves the beach obviously and hard to compare, yeah, the sands of Jamaica to the ones here in the Pacific Northwest, but I’m glad you’re by the water, nonetheless. Could you expand a bit more on your speaking about volunteering and the capacities and the roles that you’re currently undertaking? What are some of those roles?

Donneil: Yeah, most certainly so at Royal Roads, I do have two roles, my primary role being a student engagement coordinator in our student services department. And most recently, as you mentioned just now Olaolu, have also shifted into the academia side of things as associate faculty, and I initially got involved in higher education through volunteering. So as a student at Royal Roads University, I was looking for ways to be a bit more engaged in the university outside of the classroom setting and that’s when I started volunteering and through that, I started developing a liking for supporting students because most of my background is in hospitality, so working in hotels. So essentially customer service and I found that there are quite a few transferable skills that I have that could help support students in that space as well. So eventually I shifted to a student role, a casual student role, and when the opportunity came up for me to get a full-time permanent role, of course, I went after that opportunity. So, I really came into higher education by happenstance. Didn’t think I was going to be on the admin side of things. I’ve always wanted to be an instructor as long as I’ve known myself but not quite admin, but I find that being on both sides and being in this scholar-practitioner model really does help me to support students holistically because I do get to see both sides, and I find that really, really helps when I’m in the classroom or when I’m in the office supporting a student who has an issue. Also, for our Discourse Consulting, which is an equity diversity and inclusion consulting agency that I co-founded with two other amazing women. That also started through volunteering so my colleagues and we saw the need to reach out to educators and youth workers in Victoria and B.C. to hopefully provide them with training, which is what we eventually did. So, we created and facilitated workshops for free, for educators and youth workers, with the goal of helping them learn how to create safe spaces for all students, but specifically for BIPOC students as well. Because a lot of them don’t necessarily have the knowledge or the tools required to support students who are marginalized.

Olaolu: Right.

Donneil: So that’s the angle we came from, and we offered them for free because we do, we know that in some of these areas there are those financial barriers. So that was our angle in offering those for free and eventually, we just got to the stage where we wanted to be a little bit more official and branch out some more and support organizations as well. But we have not abandoned that volunteering piece and we do have an educational arm still within the company and we still offer free workshops to educators and youth workers who need that service but can’t necessarily say pay for that service or pay full price for that service.

Helena: You do amazing work and so many roles, so many hats and I wanted to keep all those roles and hats in mind with this next question because you know, we kind of want to just start conversations and we want to talk about what you, our guests, think we should be talking about. So, what is that area that you think post-secondary institutions need to give more attention to?

Donneil: I think there are quite a few areas that we can still give a little bit more attention to as we continue on our respective equity, diversity and inclusion journeys, but I think I’d say the one that stands out most to me or the one I’d like to highlight today is for post-secondary institutions walking the talk. So, we see many of them will have these grand statements on their websites or in job descriptions of where they think they are or where they want to be, but we’re not quite there as yet. And it comes across as being somewhat performative because even for some they’ve gone as far as to employ folks as directors of EDI or similar roles, but they want them to transform these organizations, but they’re not empowering them to transform the organization, and it can be frustrating. Because I imagine as somebody who is genuinely committed to the cause, being a role, regardless of how much you’re being paid, if you’re not able to do the work that you see that needs to be done, it is frustrating, and it’s also something that requires a lot of emotional labours. If you don’t have that support, then I can see why folks have been resigning lately from some of these roles because it is overwhelming. For a lot of institutions, you will interact with their stakeholders. They’re marginalized stakeholders and they think they’re doing something great. But when you talk to these stakeholders, they’re still experiencing systemic oppression, and they’re still very unhappy in these spaces. So, I think their institutions really need to be a bit more intentional about, you know, about the work that they say they’re doing. They need to be collaborative because you know no one knows what you go through like you do. So definitely it’s worth reaching out to those marginalized individuals in your community and seeing exactly what they’re going through and working with them and meeting them where they’re at, but I find that’s not exactly what many of us are doing, but I know it’s a journey. And I think a lot of institutions have started on that journey and I hope they do continue on that journey, but I think we can maybe pick up the pace a little bit.

Olaolu: These are all good points and just to mention the name of your consulting agency “Power of Discourse” cause you haven’t actually said it, but can you speak a bit too, you know you spoke about some of the motivation and the connections to the previous expansion previous desires.

Donneil: Yeah, most certainly, uh, so it’s Power of Discourse, most of what we’ve been doing as mentioned before, working with educators, but also going into organizations and seeing what their EDI goals are and again meeting them where they’re at. So, everybody starting at, we’re all at different places in this race, and it’s really important to not take a “one size fits all” approach when doing this work, but really seeing where individuals are at where companies are at collectively and individually. And providing the services and the resources and the knowledge they need from there. So, a lot of what we do includes EDI audits, for example, that’s a core way to really get an understanding of where organizations are in their journey and tailoring any support services to where they are at that point in time. Again, the goals are important. We try as best as possible to talk to not only management and leadership but also employees because management may say one thing and employees may feel another way. So, it’s important to get that perspective as well, which is what we do when we’re doing audits. So, the audits can include interviews. We also do policy audits and from there we start to develop that learning and development piece. So that could be workshops. We also have, because again, our name is Power of Discourse, so we believe in the power of discourse, so we do try to have spaces outside of our workshops as well. For individuals to really come together, think about what they’ve learned in these workshops and how they wish to apply it in their respective organizations. And also, just you know we provide activities for them to be able to do that are specific to their organizations or examples that are specific to what their situation is. So, the point is, once we are finished, you know doing these workshops or these sessions folks should be confident to address racism in the workplace when they see it, or any other isms, they should be very confident saying, you know, through our work or collaboration with Part C, which is what we call it, Part C, we were able to get this knowledge. This knowledge and these resources and these tools that can help us really elevate our organization and really be intentional about our EDI journey. And we do encourage folks, even if we’re not the ones that they are continuing that journey with, is to just be very focused on that continuity and not let it be something where you know. Part C comes in. We do three workshops and that’s it. Because as we all know, this is a lifelong journey. It is ongoing. It’s not something that you can do as a one-off and transform the organization. It’s something that needs to keep happening.

Olaolu: Absolutely, and I love the name because it really does speak to the importance and significance of that interaction and exchange.

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Helena: Thank you for joining us today. If you like this content, let us know. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn under @BCcampus and on Instagram at bccampus.ca.

Leva: Subscribe to our newsletter at bccampus.ca for the latest information and details on our offerings. You can also find more information about our podcast at BCcampusmixtape.com and tune in next week for the next episode of BCcampus mixtape.

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