The activism of Black women on campus to foster community and create a culture of inspiration for future Black students
C/O Bethel Samson and Malikca Lawrence
To feel like you belong here has always been a luxury for some.
This might be hard to believe, as with a couple of searches on Instagram it does not take long for a Marauder to discover at least one club, organization, or activity they may wish to affiliate themselves with. However, much of the accessibility that we often take for granted in our digital age did not come without the efforts championed by those who were the most excluded in the first place.
Student-led organizations on campus, when properly acknowledged and given the resources, serve as valuable hubs for networking opportunities, academic and professional guidance and social interactions. While such goals may be the intentions of allowing students to congregate like this, unfortunately, this is historically not reflective of the experiences of Black students at McMaster.
Consequently, there continues to be a need for Black students to have access to the same caliber of resources as their peers. These must be initiatives which are institutionally afforded, that acknowledge and take into consideration the unique cultural positionalities of Black students and Black students with intersectional identities.
Fortunately, there are already two students working to create, secure and maintain concrete spaces for Black students at McMaster even after they graduate.
Bethel Samson
Recognizing the lack of diversity in her program, Bethel Samson is a fourth-year health sciences student who decided to take action and address these concerns.
“When I walked into my cell biology course as a first-year health sci, the first thing I noticed was the lack of Black students. Considering [that] my cohort, like others, will go on to impact the future of healthcare, it was vital to me that there be students who represent Canada’s diversity,” said Samson.
The lack of representation in McMaster’s health sciences program prompted Samson to create the Black BHSc Association in collaboration with her peers in 2020. Serving as a co-founder and events coordinator, Samson and co-leaders of the BBA advocated to create equitable admissions for Black applications within the health sciences program with the goal of increasing the acceptance of Black students.
Samson’s work within the BBA successfully crafted an application stream into the health sciences program for Black students only, named the Equitable Admissions for Black Applicants. EABA provides a process where applications would be reviewed by an all-Black admissions committee. Having successfully been implemented within the 2021 application cycle, this initiative has worked to increase the number of Black students within the class of 2025.
Aside from her extensive involvement in the BBA, Samson has regularly volunteered as a peer supporter to marginalized students for McMaster Students Union’s Women and Gender Equity Network and continues to extend her events experience within WGEN as an events co-coordinator.
Samson is currently completing a thesis with the department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences on first episode psychosis and cannabis use disorder among racialized youth. She hopes to explore how Black youth can hold conversations around this culturally sensitive topic with loved ones and get the empathy and proper care they need. Aspiring to work in healthcare, Samson intends to address the neglect Black communities face within the healthcare system.
“I want to continue to grow our resiliency as a community. I want a future where if a Black patient comes in, they feel comfortable first and foremost. I hope in the future, Black first-years do not have to go through the feelings of isolation and feeling like their behaviors are overly observed like I had to,” explained Samson.
Samson hopes for the continued diversification of Mac’s student body to include the voices of more Black students in all facets of McMaster.
Malikca Lawrence
Malikca Lawrence is a second-year arts and science student also heavily involved in activism for Black students on campus.
“My first year was entirely online. I didn’t know anybody [or] any clubs and had no way of making connections that allowed me to feel a part of the Mac community. But then this year, I discovered a whole host of Black clubs I didn’t even know existed and I immediately felt a sense of community,” said Lawrence.
To empower first- and second-year students such as herself who share similar feelings of alienation upon returning to campus in person, Lawrence decided to work as a vice president events for Blackspace, a club for Black women and non-binary folks to connect, collaborate and uplift one another.
An avid reader who spent much of her time volunteering and working with libraries in her hometown, Lawrence brings her passion for books to facilitate a book club within Blackspace where students can connect through the literary works of Black authors.
Lawrence also extends her desire to create community by working with the Black Student Association, a hub for Black students to connect to professional and academic resources and opportunities.
Of Jamaican descent, Lawrence stays connected to her Caribbean cultural roots by outreaching on behalf of McMaster Association of West Indian Students. She is responsible for booking spaces and reaching out to other Black organizations for MACAWS events.
Notably, Lawrence is extensively involved with a new tiered initiative titled the Black Student Mentorship Program. The organization serves as a portal to connect Black students seeking guidance with a Black mentor, be it undergraduate students connecting with grad students or grad students looking to connect with professors.
Lawrence expressed how as a Black woman, she has often observed Black students and their lived experiences being overlooked in academia, a vicious cycle which marks the start of countless systemic cultural and academic barriers Black students will go on to face within their academic careers. It is of the utmost importance to her to offer a wide range of options for Black students to be able to choose the direction of their academic, professional and social growth.
“Talking to past students who never had these clubs, we created these spaces because we felt isolated. I hope to continue the work people before me have started and I see myself as one day being president of one of these initiatives that I am a part of and perhaps even start something new. It’s all about catering to what is lacking in the community,” explained Lawrence.
Looking forward to being involved in healthcare and working with Black folks, Lawrence hopes to continue to study how the past of the Black diaspora continues to shape the current Black experience.
Workplace diversity is misleading if all higher-ups are white
Amid the Black Lives Matter protests that happened this past summer and McMaster University’s very own report that highlighted systemic anti-Black racism in the athletics department, diversity has become an important topic of discussion.
Notably, many organizations — such as McMaster — are trying to do better with their diversity by prioritizing hiring individuals that are Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, 2SLGBTQIA+ folks and people with disabilities.
Workplaces have huddled together to improve their diversity — for example, in November, McMaster committed to hiring up to 12 new academics and scholars that contribute to Black academic excellence at the university. This effort is to increase the number of Black faculty, as well as provide opportunities for Black academics.
Yet, this movement towards diversity wields a double-edged sword: in many ways, the words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion” have become buzzwords. While companies and organizations try to diversify their workplace, many have been criticized for the ways in which they approach diversity.
For example, last summer Bon Appétit went under fire for not paying its BIPOC employees as much (or at all) as the white employees for on-screen appearances. While the new editor-in-chief and other hires are BIPOC, it took inequitable pay and several racialized chefs leaving Bon Appétit for this change to occur.
Unfortunately, we aren’t doing much better in terms of diversity at McMaster.
Within the McMaster Students Union, there are many opportunities for students to get involved in both volunteer and paid positions. Fortunately, our student community is quite diverse and a lot of this is reflected in the students involved in the MSU services. But the higher up you get in the MSU, the whiter it gets.
Fortunately, our student community is quite diverse and a lot of this is reflected in the students involved in the MSU services. But the higher up you get in the MSU, the whiter it gets.
Since my second year, the MSU board of directors has only had one racialized member per board. Let me repeat that: every year, one of the four board members that lead the student union was racialized.
It gets worse — when you look at the full-time staff in the MSU that aren’t in a student opportunity position, they’re all white. The people who are at the top, in positions of power over everyone else, are anything but diverse.
The MSU is supposed to represent the undergraduate student body, but how can it do that if it isn’t as racially diverse as our student body? Sure, the people volunteering, working part-time, or in one-year contracts may be diverse, but the people who work for the MSU year after year and have control of it beyond one contracted year are white. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t diversity to me.
The Silhouette isn’t exempt from surface-level diversity, either. In the past four years that I’ve been here, every Editor-in-Chief has been white — and I’m sure that if I looked back even further, this would apply for many more years.
While I would say we have a very diverse staff team, we have a similar issue that the MSU has, which is the fact that the person with the most “powerful” position is white.
This raises the question: what is stopping BIPOC or even people from other marginalized identities from being Editor-in-Chief? The Editor-in-Chief has a role in hiring the following Editor-in-Chief. When several Editors-in-Chief have been white, they can — consciously or unconsciously — play a role in continuing this cycle.
We’re a student newspaper. We exist to represent students fairly and equitably, but how can we do that if we don’t even have important, diverse identities leading our newspaper? How do we hold others accountable if we don’t hold ourselves accountable first?
There are plenty of skilled and diverse writers and aspiring journalists that attend Mac. We should be wondering why more of these people — why not many Indigenous students, trans students or disabled students are applying for these roles.
These issues are not exclusive to the MSU or the Sil by any means. However, if we want to see change and true diversity in the workplace, we should lead by example within our student body first.
As much as inclusion and diversity have become buzzwords in elections and values upheld by student unions, measures to implement equitable services and plans are often met with resistance.
Recently, the University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU) introduced an Equity Plan which, if fully implemented, will remove representation for most colleges and faculty programs and add ten constituency directors. These directors will represent indigenous students, LGBTQ students, racialized students, women, athletes, international students, mature students, students with disabilities, first years, and commuters.
Although the UTSU’s plan is in its beginning stages and has not yet passed at their Annual General Meeting, it has already become a controversial topic at U of T and beyond.
In an article in the National Post, post-secondary education commentator Robyn Urback condemned the UTSU’s plan for all the wrong reasons. She called it “harrowingly stupid,” and aimed to expose the plan for what she thinks it truly is: an attack on white men. Urback’s article has unfortunately served as a reference point for many U of T undergrads and others who are outraged by this plan. It’s been cited in comments in U of T’s student newspaper The Varsity and other social media platforms as an acceptable rationale for why UTSU’s plan is so “stupid.”
Yet, Urback is missing the point, as are many of those disagreeing with UTSU’s plan. While there are many things to criticize about this Equity Plan, none of these criticisms will be taken seriously if they continue attacking “equity” instead of the “plan.”
The UTSU’s plan is clearly a decision based on inclusion and the desire to give marginalized communities on campus a voice. Since representation of minorities and democratic bodies elected by the majority don’t always go hand in hand, introducing ideas that aim to better represent marginalized groups is an incredibly difficult task.
This attempt to introduce something new and unheard of before in student governments should be criticized constructively and given credit for its radical effort. The exclusion of marginalized identities from student government is undoubtedly an important issue in post-secondary representation.
Can the UTSU’s plan fix this systemic problem? I don’t think so. But I think the UTSU’s board understands the level of reform that needs to take place in student unions.
The plan will certainly increase descriptive representation on student council, making marginalized identities visible, yet it will encourage a culture of placing the responsibility of meeting minority needs to minority members. It limits representation as something that can be achieved only by those whose experiences are identical to their constituents. This assumption of similarity is extremely flawed, given that our reliance on democratic systems is based on our belief that our representatives are capable of addressing our needs regardless of differences.
Instead of emphasizing the idea that women, LGBTQA+ individuals, racialized or disabled students are present in all faculties, across the entire campus and catering to their needs is only the just and equitable thing to do, it will instead encourage the idea that placing one queer, or disabled, or indigenous student on a governing body to represent their communities will create larger cultural impacts. Sure, that one director for racialized students might offer some insight on a policy, but are the creators of this plan hoping that somehow the one voice in the assembly will be more than that? Will it cause an increase in the number of racialized directors elected for other positions on the assembly, for president?
The UTSU’s plan assumes that guaranteeing a seat at the table for these identities will solve complex problems of representation. We want our communities represented, but true success would mean achieving proportional representation in the current structure of student assemblies. It would mean members of marginalized communities being elected by students to represent them without the student union creating mandatory positions. This plan would not work towards breaking down barriers and prejudices that cause the underrepresentation of these groups in the first place.
It seems as though the UTSU forgot what the goal of their plan really is: to create a campus where equity is the norm and marginalized identities no longer have to be referred to as marginalized. By restructuring their student union assembly to have boxes for these marginalized identities, the UTSU will be building a system that secures representation but ignores the deeper problems they are trying to address.
