By: Neda Pirouzmand
One of the key issues that the MSU points out in the “Health and Wellness” policy paper is that referrals from the Student Wellness Centre are not tailored to the needs of students.
The MSU suggests that the SWC neglects to account for how students will reach community referrals or how much it will cost them.
The policy paper brings forward a number of recommendations to combat these issues, proposing the SWC connect with MSU peer support services to provide support for McMaster’s diverse student population.
The MSU also recommends that the SWC offer harm reduction services and feedback opportunities to students.
The policy paper also includes recommendations for other university stakeholders, suggesting that professors and teaching assistants be required to undergo mental health first aid training.
According to this policy paper, McMaster off-campus resource centre resources are underused by students. The OCRC has not posted on Facebook since April 2017.
Another issue is that demand is overtaking supply in the student housing market. The quantity and quality of available housing opportunities is on the decline.
In light of these issues, the MSU recommends the city of Hamilton to proceed with its proposed investment of $347,463 to hire three full-time employees for a two-year rental licensing pilot project beginning in 2019 to annually inspect buildings in Hamilton.
The MSU also suggests that McMaster seek more public-private partnerships to improve the supply of nearby student housing.
This policy paper first notes that McMaster has a ten year plan to make its campus “car free,” which would reduce accessibility by moving the HSR bus stop from University and Sterling Street to the McMaster Go bus station.
According to the paper, another accessibility concern lies in the fact that most McMaster professors neither consider nor actively incorporate strategies and recommendations outlined in McMaster’s accessibility resources.
The paper also points out that learning materials are often inequitable and the university has significant work to do when it comes to promoting and implementing accessible pedagogy.
The MSU puts forward a number of recommendations to improve the university’s accessibility practices.
The paper argues that all professors teaching in rooms fitted for podcasting should post podcasts and use accessible formats for supplementary class material.
In addition, the paper suggests that intramurals reduce their pre-playoff participation requirement from 50 to 30 per cent, as students with disabilities may not be able to make all games.
According to the paper, student accessibility services should have an open catalogue for student notes, where students in need would not be limited to resources from one student.
The dominant issue highlighted in this policy paper is the fact that faculty staff and many student groups do not receive mandatory anti-oppressive practices training.
In addition, according to the paper, McMaster Security Services has been involved in the excessive carding and racial profiling of students.
Another issue concerns the fact that there exists no record-keeping system of student demographics in relation to enrollment and dropout rates by faculty.
Students are also largely unaware of the McMaster Religious, Spiritual, and Indigenous Observances policy.
Some recommendations in the paper call for McMaster to explore alternative enrollment application streams for underrepresented groups.
The paper also suggests that applicants looking for research funding from Mcmaster identify how their research will appeal to or account for marginalized populations.
According to the paper, McMaster should mandate equity and diversity requirements for all undergrads.
Chairs of hiring committees, security staff, teaching assistants and faculty members should undergo mandatory AOP training.
Another recommendation calls for the EIO to investigate carding and racial profiling trends centered around McMaster Security Services.
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Over the last two years, Halima Al-Hatimy, a former McMaster University public health grad student, has launched multiple Ontario human rights complaints against McMaster and Hamilton Health Sciences.
She also has legal proceedings against McMaster officials Patrick Deane, Wanda McKenna, Sarah Dickson, Glenn De Caire, Joseph Zubek and constables Tyler Rogers and Peter Broz.
Al-Hatimy’s issues with the university first materialized in 2017, before her anticipated departure to Ghana with “Waters Without Borders,” a program facilitated through a partnership between McMaster and the United Nations University.
Photo C/O Halima Al-Hatimy
The day before Al-Hatimy was expected to leave, the university informed her that she had been taken out of the program’s trip as a result of her presumed plan to bring medicinal marijuana overseas.
Thirteen days later, Al-Hatimy filed a human rights complaint against McMaster and the UNU.
“The administration asked me to sign an affidavit saying that I wouldn’t take medicinal cannabis with me illegally. It was riddled with criminalizing language, telling me that I had to promise I wasn’t going to traffic, import, export or illegally purchase illicit drugs or substances. I was traumatized by the experience,” she said.
Al-Hatimy is firmly convinced the university discriminated against her on the basis of “race, age, disability and use of medicinal cannabis.”
Thus far into the proceedings, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has affirmed Sarah Dickson’s involvement in the case but cut out the UNU and David Wilkinson, McMaster provost and vice-president (Academic).
Al-Hatimy said the university has been “extremely aggressive and uncooperative” over the past year.
In particular, according to Al-Hatimy, McMaster’s campus-wide smoking ban instituted in 2017 directly tore away her demand that the university construct a medical cannabis policy to protect users on campus.
Since launching her complaint, Al-Hatimy also filed for reprisal and organized two anti-smoking ban protests, one off-campus and the other in the Health Sciences Building.
“Both times, I was racially carded. The police showed up and walked straight to me. The guy beside me was white and smoking his medical cannabis. At the time, they didn’t know he was a licensed user. They just saw an older man and a younger student with a megaphone. You’d think they’d card him first, but they carded me,” she said.
When walking in the McMaster University Student Centre on another occasion, she said she was harassed by Joseph Zubek, the senior manager of McMaster security services.
“He showed me pictures that he had of me on his phone. He said they started an investigative police file on me,” she said.
In addition to lodging human rights complaints, Al-Hatimy has launched an application for reprisal for three counts of racial profiling, intimidation and harassment.
Upon entering the impending proceedings, Al-Hatimy said she feels hopeful.
“I have a strong case, I have evidence in my favour. I have witnesses. I’ve connected with other students who have also been bullied by the university and I have evidence of their stories that I’ll be presenting to the tribunal,” she said.
Gord Arbeau, the communications director at McMaster University, told the Silhouette that McMaster is committed to being inclusive, respectful and harassment-free.
“The university’s policies and procedures support this commitment, including providing medical accommodations to members of the community,” said Arbeau, on behalf of the university’s respondents in the proceedings.
On March 29, Al-Hatimy and McMaster officials will attend a case management conference that will consolidate her applications. From there, cases will be combined and a hearing will be scheduled.
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In April, two reports based on racial equity in education involving data from the Toronto District School Board were published. These detailed a number of issues facing Black students including an increased likelihood of being streamed into non-academic programs, a higher likelihood of suspension due to attitude rather than behaviour and higher drop-out rates.
These reports mainly concerned high school policies. These issues of racial equity are hypothesized to continue at a post-secondary level given that the pathways to this level have these concerns.
The influence of high school policies can be observed, but the effects of universities’ policies cannot.
As revealed by a CBC News investigation in March, 63 out of 76 Canadian universities could not provide a breakdown of their student populations by race. The data is not there to draw any conclusions from.
“How can you decide if access programs are working if you have no way of measuring the population that should be most affected by these access policies?” said Karen Robson, head of the Gateway Cities team and the Ontario Research Chair in Educational Achievement and At-Risk Youth.
The Gateway Cities Project, a four year program funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is centered on examining the determinants of post-secondary pathways for high school students in five cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, New York and London, England. One of the main concerns brought up by Robson is this inability to access pathways from the perspective of Canadian post-secondary institutions.
McMaster is one of the 63 could not provide a breakdown. They do not ask students to provide information about their racial identity.
“How can you decide if access programs are working if you have no way of measuring the population that should be most affected by these access policies?”
Karen Robson
Ontario Research Chair
Educational Advancement and At-Risk Youth
There are a few reasons why there is opposition to this in Canadian universities. The first is that there is misinformation about the legality of collecting the data. Concordia stated it is illegal to ask in Quebec in the CBC investigation, but this is not the case.
Robson mentioned that there is a lot of misinformation that universities have about the legality of asking for data even if they did not state this upfront.
“A lot of administration believes that collecting race data is a violation of human rights when in fact, it is not. I don’t know where this came from, I really don’t, and it’s a total red herring.”
The “Policy and guidelines on racism and racial discrimination” paper created by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, approved in 2005, mentions that the collection of data about race is permissible and recommended.
The second issue is the threat of being seen as racist. The investigation stated Mount Royal University had this worry, and University of Waterloo explained it does not collect the data because the school does not discriminate based on race or any other grounds.
“It’s not so surprising that we’re not collecting race data if we can’t even have conversations about race without feeling like we might be being racist just by talking about it,” said Robson.
There appears to be some progress being made at McMaster towards collecting data.
“McMaster’s not particularly special in that they don’t collect race data. … I’m working with admin on retention strategies. I have brought this up, and they are receptive to collecting this kind of data,” said Robson.
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By: Crystal Lobo
Jan. 18 marked the start of MSU Diversity Services’ annual “Diversity Week.” This year, the theme of the week was “Constructing Our Stories,” a theme meant to emphasize the importance of sharing stories and narratives as a method of personal and societal growth. The service collaborated with many organizations such as Perspectives on Peace, Soul Foods, and external speakers, to present workshops relating to Diversity Services’ four pillars of diversity: multiculturalism, interfaith, abilities, and Indigenous affairs.
“We tried our best to reflect our pillars … Each of the workshops were sort of reflective of one of those topics in a nuanced way,” said Ryan Deshpande, Assistant Director of MSU Diversity Services.
“One thing we really tried to get away from is the idea of having a day for a pillar … That's not how people work and that was something that was definitely one of our major objectives, because being truly intersectional isn't going ‘these two things exist,’ but going ‘oh these all exist and they're all part of the same narrative,’” said Sophie Geffros, Abilities Coordinator.
On Jan. 20, one of the week’s primary events took place at TwelvEighty when keynote speaker and notable activist Kim Katrin Milan hosted a workshop.
“She built her talk around the theme [of the week] but talked specifically about issues of marginalization, identity, intersectionality and how we can own our narrative,” said Deshpande.
“She really captivated the audience. We had a full house in TwelvEighty. I got multiple messages afterwards of people being like, ‘That was so amazing. I'm so happy I came to see that.’”
Both Deshpande and Geffros stated that they viewed Diversity Week as a success. “I think everything went according to plan. The week was very successful and I don't think anything happened that I wasn't anticipating,” said Deshpande. Geffros was enthusiastic as well, “Events like this week are a really great opportunity to recharge your batteries because you get people who are both educated and not educated in these issues but who want to learn and talk and genuinely believe in these things, and it’s amazing,” she said.
While the event was successful, Deshpande and Geffros both cited ways that Diversity Week could improve for next year. Deshpande cited promotional strategies as an area that could grow. He believes that promotions have improved from last year, but is hoping to continue to promote the event to a wider audience. Geffros explained her hopes for a more ambitious Diversity Week in the future. “I think we should go bigger,” she said.
“Going forward I would like to have more complex conversations.”
Overall, MSU Diversity Week created multiple workshops and events for the McMaster community pertaining to its theme. “We want people to own their narratives and take charge of their identities in a way that empowers them,” said Deshpande.
“There is a great Junot Díaz quote, which is, ‘The only people who don't see reflections of themselves are monsters,’” Geffros said. “That is what taking diverse people out of the narrative does. It makes us monstrous because if you don't see yourself then you're almost dehumanized. So allowing us to come together and build those stories for ourselves I think is important.”
Photo Credit: Mike Beattie
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By: Ismaël Traoré
As Black History Month approaches I am troubled at the lack of institutional reflexivity and the talk-and-shake-my-head event model that will mark this twenty-first year of commemorating bougie-Blackness. There will be a few panel discussions, public forums, workshops and film viewings where audience members will show shock at the following cliché messages: a) racism exists b) White privilege is real and c) [insert wise comment about] ‘incremental steps’ towards progress. If lucky, we may also learn about the three holy grails of being a White ally: shut up, listen and educate other White people.
This seasonal prepackaged mass production of BHM activities at McMaster is mainly for White people and the majority of the events are organized with the White gaze in mind.
Events tend to reflect respectability politics, an ethic of politeness that reinforces Whiteness by virtue of Whites defining the contours of a ‘polite’ racial discourse, and efforts to prevent potential backlash or ‘White fragility’. We are afraid to disturb this White-dominated institution.
Even in groups and activities created to replace racism with racial equity, Whiteness remains intact.
Here is a cursory list of the workings of Whiteness I have observed at McMaster that limits the scope and breadth of its commitment to inclusivity and diversity. Students, staff, faculty and the administration must be vigilant to not let Whiteness be the logic or reference-point guiding their racial equity work. Such is the only way to pay homage to BHM.
Here are six things to avoid when talking about racial equity during BHM:
1. Loving the word: Declarations of commitment to inclusion and diversity do not inclusion and diversity make. Being against racism does not indicate transcendence of racism. Equity is love in action. We must love to act.
2. Lack of priority and urgency: Racial equity is a peripheral concern for the stakeholders-powerbrokers at the university. Can you believe that it is only last year that the Sociology department hired its first non-white faculty? This explains the incremental, sluggish nature of racial equity. Barely any resources go to racial equity. Racial equity should be one of our top priorities.
3. Outsourcing the work and taking credit: The administration of the university has a tendency to take credit for the often unpaid antiracist labour of individuals and groups in the university that often have no real power beyond advising and awareness-rising. Administration should do the work.
4. External and downwards orientation: Racial equity work in the university often focuses on the student body, faculty, and the general Hamilton community. This is “external and downwards” in that the powerbrokers and stakeholders of the university are often not the intended target of this work and rarely do they come even when invited. Plus, the university is infrequently the subject of critique and change-making. We need an internal and upward orientation.
5. Event as opposed to project oriented: We need less emphasis on the event-based approach and more emphasis on long-term institutional change projects. Faculties should recognize social justice work in their curriculum and hiring criteria. Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg students must now take a course in Indigenous Studies to graduate. Why not McMaster University?
6. Lack of transparency: Mainly for economic reasons, the university is invested in portraying itself as nonracist. It is hard to find documents and data about the university regarding racism, racial diversity, and racial equity. Hiding behind obscurity prevents genuine progress by creating institutional historical amnesia, fostering selective representation, and hindering grounded and levelheaded critique, assessment, and appraisal. Documents regarding these variables must be made public and user-friendly.
All in all, McMaster is at the “tolerant stage” of its development. It is “tolerant” of racial and cultural differences at the surface, such as the student body, but at the centre, the powerbrokers and stakeholders, it remains White. Though the President’s Office makes public commitment to inclusion and diversity and generously sponsors events on racial equity there needs to be a systematic assessment of its organizational culture, policies, and decision-making processes. There is an unintended paternalism in its tolerant approach that takes the form of “helping” the marginalized rather than turning the investigative gaze on McMaster’s Whiteness.
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If you have a Netflix account — or like myself, shamelessly log in to a friend’s — you have probably heard of the series Making a Murderer. I was told to watch it because, and I quote, “you will never be more likely to yell at your computer screen." As someone who frequently directs angry outbursts towards her laptop, I was intrigued.
For those who don’t know, the show is a documentary series about a man named Steven Avery and his dubious relationship with his local police department in Wisconsin. The series provides a pretty compelling case that law enforcement framed Avery for rape and murder. The show is gripping. Kudos to Netflix for making what should be boring material fascinating; there are not many things that could convince me to voluntarily sit through hours of court proceedings. While watching I did indeed direct some choice words towards my computer.
I was not alone in my rage. The hashtag #FreeSteveAvery exploded on Twitter, I’ve seen Tinder bios include people’s passionate feelings about the case, and an acquaintance posted a photo on Facebook of them holding a sign reading “Steve Avery is innocent!” at a hockey game. So if the Avery case has forced us to admit that maybe — just maybe — we have systematic failings in our criminal justice system, then why aren’t we able to admit that race may also play a part?
When talking about law enforcement we should be keeping the Black Lives Matter movement in mind, especially when discussing police misconduct. As of last month, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that Black inmates made up 37.8 percent of America’s prison population, but only 13.2 percent of the general population. Don’t let yourself believe this is only an American problem. According to Statistics Canada, Indigenous adults represented 26 percent of those taken into custody in 2013 and 2014 while making up only three percent of the population. This is not due to a higher number of Black or Indigenous people committing crimes, but instead flaws in our social and judicial systems that perpetuate systemic racism.
Steve Avery is White, which is not to say that he did not have barriers between him and a just trial. Avery comes from an impoverished family and has an IQ of 70. Throughout the series he is acutely aware of the constraints he faces due to class. The problem is that while his story is a compelling example of the miscarriage of justice, he is not unique. His case is not even the only preposterous high profile example of police and judicial misconduct in recent memory. In 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. In 2014 a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer that held Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold until he died. In 2015, a grand jury elected not to issue an indictment in connection to the death of Sandra Bland, a woman who died in jail — allegedly a suicide — after being pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes. If there are countless examples of People of Colour being mistreated by the police and the courts, many of which are just as scandalous or more so than Avery’s case, then why is Making a Murderer about a white man, someone who is statistically underrepresented in American jails?
The answer is that we are much more comfortable relating to, pardoning, and fighting for White criminals, fictional or not. We love our Walter Whites, our Peaky Blinders, our Sopranos, our Boardwalk Empires, our Deadpools, and so on. We aren’t even that concerned if our dubious heroes are less savoury characters. Making a Murderer shows Steven Avery’s disturbing letters to his ex-wife, threatening her with violence, but we forgive him because we are invested in a very specific narrative: a White man being the victim of a miscarriage of justice who deserved better.
So if the Avery case has forced us to admit that maybe — just maybe — we have systematic failings in our criminal justice system, then why aren’t we able to admit that race may also play a part?
Next month is Black History Month, and it would be foolish of us to assume that our work regarding racism is done. It is uncomfortable to think that the people we have been told will protect us — officers, lawyers and judges — may not be as unbiased as we would like to believe. However, if we are willing to defend Steven Avery then we should without hesitation stand up for the Trayvon Martins, the Eric Garners, and the Sandra Blands in our midst.
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By: Kyle MacDonald
I am white. When I work on my family’s genealogical records or listen to the folk music that links me to my far-flung relatives, I immerse myself in the stories of white people, but I do not know of anyone who would claim that these are racist practices. We should all be able to engage with our origins and identities.
Unlike these practices, the White Students Unions that have recently surfaced at a number of Canadian universities , including McMaster, are not so benign. The idea of whiteness does not provide a valuable framework within which to understand oneself or the world; rather, it perpetuates violent and divisive untruths that we need to scrub from our discourse. There are better ways to discuss and understand European identities. These White Students’ Unions should acknowledge the lies on which they are founded and disband immediately.
I am not going to retell the history of racism, which has been told many times by people far more qualified. Let it suffice for me to say that white people as a group have little in common that is worth preserving. My ancestors and their countrymen created the notion of whiteness in order to set themselves above their neighbours, for the express purpose of subjugating people of colour by force of arms, in order to carry out the exploitative missions of empire and slavery.
When groups of white students try to create “white spaces,” the standard response is that every space is dominated by white people. This is true, but it misses a point that must be resolved if the whiteness movement is going to die: to white people, common spaces don’t feel white, because being white doesn’t feel like anything. To be white in North America feels largely as it should feel to be human: free to go where one wants and say what one thinks, without fear of violent exclusion. We are numb by design: white people are free to be individuals in public, not forced to represent our nationalities or ethnic groups, precisely because racism designates white as normal. As a result, we are able to forget where we come from.
Despite the legacy of colonialism, European ancestry is not inherently shameful. On the contrary, I am proud of my roots from Ireland and Scotland to Poland and Greece. But I am proud of these places individually, because of my family’s small part in their rich histories, not because they are each mostly white. I have no German ancestry; as such, despite the whiteness of its population, I care about Germany in the same way that I care about Uganda or Thailand: as a historically and contemporarily important nation with a beautiful, complicated legacy that does not directly involve me.
Moreover, I am more Canadian than European. My father’s Scottish ancestors settled in Nova Scotia’s Margaree Valley. Some of my relatives still live there, an afternoon’s drive from Halifax. As a result, I am far closer in history to the eviction of Black Nova Scotians from Africville than to the recent Scottish independence movement.
The idea of whiteness not only obliterates the distinctions between groups of European descent, but also makes arbitrary, indefensible decisions about who is white or European. The truth is that Europe is a construction, like whiteness or like binary gender: useful perhaps for drawing a broad outline of the world, but always doomed to fail when examined closely, and in many cases completely useless even as a starting point. As far as the Mediterranean is concerned, the Danube, the Nile, and the Suez Canal all carry the same water and end up in the same place: as rain over Athens or Tripoli, no colour but that of the sky.
To those white students who feel alienated from their cultural identities, I urge you to ask your grandparents to tell you their stories. Read history books for context. Learn the languages of your ancestors. Learn to cook the food they ate. Sing their songs. Understand the strengths and the flaws of their worldviews. Reach out to other students and community members who genuinely share your heritage. Find ways to rejoice in its beauty together. Use it to make this campus more accessible to those whom racism works to exclude.
To anyone involved in a White Students’ Union: give your head a vigorous shake. Delete the Facebook group and acknowledge your errors. You won’t lose anything by sacrificing whiteness.
*After this article was written it was discovered that this trend was a hoax. Despite this, we still believe this article offers a unique perspective. For more information on the trend, see page 5 of our Issuu.
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There are two university staff members that I see everyday who look like me. They are both women, and they are both very soft-spoken. We don’t ever exchange more than a “Hello” with one another, but between us there seems to be an unspoken agreement that we acknowledge and respect one another’s work. It’s not often that I see university staff faces with a similar bone structure to mine, the same skin colour as mine, or whispered hints of accents and languages that remind me of my family and my ancestors. But, I see these traits in these two women, and for that, they are the closest things to visual role models I have on campus.
Both of these people are custodial staff, and for the most part, they are the only staff members on campus that I have seen with faces like mine.
It is alarming to me that the only adult faces I see like mine on campus are the ones that are forced to work behind the scenes, not the ones actively being portrayed as representatives of our university. During my time as an undergraduate at McMaster, I only ever had one minority professor, and I was only ever taught by her for one of my four years. When it comes to minority women on campus, the message I get is quite clear: your role is best served in service, unless you’re willing to try and beat the odds.
I’m happy to have the role models that I do on campus, our service staff work hard for our campus and community. But I hate that I very rarely see these same role models at the heads of classrooms and hosting office hours — the same roles that I would like to see for myself and my sisters. Where’s my big family of Asian, Latin, Black, Brown, Middle Eastern and Indigenous female professors waiting to welcome me into their academic arms? Where’s my professors who look like me and who are happy to look like me and want me to learn from their visual example?
According to a 2010 study by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, only 17 percent of university faculty were minorities, without a report of how many of those were women. This may seem representative given that Canada has, according to the last census, a population consisting of 20 percent minority citizens, but how is this percentage of staff distributed through the university? Does one faculty have more exposure to minority role models than another? Another disappointing statistic comes in the form of unemployment research. The largest group of unemployed professors in Canada is that of female visible minorities, with eight percent unemployment — a sizeable feat compared to the roughly four percent unemployment running across their male and white counterparts.
It isn’t a matter of there simply not being enough racialized women with PhDs and credentials; we know they’re out there, they are just not being hired as much as other groups.
Even when I was hired for my job and then was hiring positions for this paper, I heard one of our former staff members say blatantly sexist and racist micro-aggressions about hiring multiple women of colour (FYI, they asked “are we hiring too many?”).
I hold a position of power among my student body, and I acknowledge that. I am a minority woman who is filling a job that, aside from a single digit number of exceptions in our 85-year history, has consistently been held by white people (and only 12 of those white people being women). With this being said, it is part of my intrinsic nature of holding this position to feel a need to represent my sisters of all colours and try to be the professional role model many of them have yet to encounter on campus.
In general, I see a variety of colours and cultures on campus, but very rarely do I see them outside of our student body and our service staff. At this point, I don’t even care if I see professors and staff who are the same genre of minority as me, I just want to see more than one person representing minority women from the side of faculty.
So McMaster, I get that you’re trying, and I know that we work hard to promote a diverse campus, but I’d like to propose a New Year’s resolution for you: let’s get a female university staff in a range of colours — I want to see women of colour on campus clearing off chalk boards for more than one reason.
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“Do you only date people from your own background?” my friend asked. I’d like to think the answer to that question is no. My partners have all been radically different from each other — in personality and appearance — and I’ve never been accused of having a “type,” but one thing I had never really thought about was that most of my partners so far have been white.
I’m not alone in my apparent habits. OKCupid data from 2009 to 2014 shows that the vast majority of members had either a preference or indifference towards dating someone from their own race. However, the data also shows us something a little bit nastier: 82 percent of heterosexual non-Black men said that they weren’t interested in being matched with Black women, and Asian and Black men were significantly less popular among heterosexual female users. This may be information from only one website, and for a set number of years, but it is indicative of wider trends in the way we approach our relationships.
It’s not terribly surprising that racism seeps into all aspects of our society, including our romance, but you might be wondering why your preferences are a big deal. Discriminating against someone in a job interview most likely has a larger impact on them than deciding not to ask them to dinner (also, if you aren’t interested in dating someone because of their race, I’m willing to bet that person isn’t all that interested in getting a meal with you anyway). However, we can’t say that racial preferences in romance have no effect whatsoever. In her article for Vice magazine about the experience of being a Black woman on Tinder, Eternity Martis talks about the impact that racism has on a user’s self esteem. Being hypersexualized, tokenized and fetishized from all angles when looking for a relationship understandably takes a toll on one’s feelings of self worth.
Martis is not alone in her experiences, which are unfortunately not uncommon. This begs the question: if our preferences are not random, and are instead part of larger societal trends, where do they come from? Some explanations might include evolutionary psychology, but if humans are programmed to be attracted to physical prowess and symmetry, why should this exclude People of Colour? Another explanation might be that we are interested in people from our own racial background, but if this was the case then we wouldn’t see specific discriminatory trends in dating patterns.
Instead the answer is exactly what you would expect: ubiquitous White supremacist beauty standards. We can see the ways this manifests in media representation. How often do we see Asian men as romantic leads in Hollywood blockbusters? On television shows, how often are Black women described as “the one”? When you can count the number of interracial couples in contemporary media on one hand, it starts to make sense why racism might make its way into our dating lives.
At this point you may be feeling insecure about your preference for brunettes, or wondering if you have been fetishizing that tall guy you see in the student center based on his height. Don’t fret. Having preferences is not the same thing as discriminatory dating. I’m not proposing that we should all date people we aren’t attracted to in order to prove a point, nor am I demanding that you change something you may have no control over such as what features you are attracted to. People in interracial relationships are not necessarily more enlightened than the rest of us, and people who date those from their own backgrounds are not necessarily more racist. What I’m asking instead is for us to take a step back, and look at our race-based preferences critically. Let’s demand better representation in our media, expect respectful interactions on dating websites, and think twice before we dismiss someone as “not our type.”
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal
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I think I’m supposed to be outraged. My blood should probably be boiling at a video filmed by a classmate of the teenage girl at Spring Valley High, who was dragged from her chair and pinned down by a police officer in her classroom. Instead, it hurt me. She did not threaten anyone and did not have a weapon. The discussion around the incident has been focused on the excessive force used by the police, not the fact that there was an officer called to a classroom because a student declined to participate and didn’t leave the classroom when asked. Is this the response from authority that we have come to expect and accept? Why is this considered acceptable just because the student wasn’t white?
I’ve had people pour drinks on me, push me, scream at me and claim that I deserved harsh treatment with excuses like “a lot of black girls are whack.” The guilty parties will tell you that it is not about race, and then respectability politics will come into play. Respectability politics refers to the idea that if someone acts in a ‘socially respectable’ way then maybe they would be afforded the rights and fair treatment that they were supposed to have in the first place. “If she didn’t have an attitude...” “If she behaved properly...” “If she subjected herself to police brutality with a smile on her face, maybe she would have been arrested nicely.” “If she had not disrupted the school and disrupted that class, we would not be standing here today” was the direct quote from County Sheriff Leon Lott in response to the video. These respectability politics don’t affect black women only when interacting with the police. Research groups such as the African American Policy Forum and The Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy have sought to measure the impact on black girls of “[being] subject to harsher disciplinary interventions because they are perceived to be unruly, loud, and unmanageable” both inside and outside the classroom.
This is what I know for certain: the function of the police is to protect and serve the community. In that classroom no one was at risk or being harmed by the student in question; if the girl’s lack of participation was considered disruptive, surely the officer’s response was far more of a distraction. Will students feel safe attending this class now? According to a publication titled “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected,” increased levels of law enforcement and security personnel within schools often make girls feel less safe and less likely to attend school. How will this teenager in her formative years view educational institutions or law enforcement?
For all of the incidents that garner media attention, we will never know the number of times someone was not fortunate enough to have the incident recorded.
Last summer the police were called to a teenage pool party in a gated community, and a black girl was subjected to excessive force and arrested. This fall, it was a black girl in a classroom. Who will it be this winter? A girl buying skittles wearing a hoodie? I’m angry that my existence and appearance means that I apparently deserve abusive treatment in the eyes of the law enforcement, or the eyes of my teacher, or the eyes of my partner. I like to think that I matter, just as much as the next girl. This is not a hashtag, this is a message: black girls matter.
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