Reading List on Anti-Black Racism and the Law

See in particular "The Relocation Decision and Liberal-Welfare Rhetoric: 1962-1964" (pp. 135-172) and "Organization and Relocation: Mechanics and Limitations, 1964-169" (pp. 173-206)
Also available in print: call number FC2346.9.B6 C58 1999 Law and Stauffer

Delving behind Canada's veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state's role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates. Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard's intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities. A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

In acknowledging the possibility that as the world changes so too does racism, this book argues that racism is not disappearing, despite claims of living in a post-racial and multicultural world. To the contrary, racisms persist by transforming into different forms whose intent or effects remain the same: to deny and disallow as well as to exclude and exploit. Racisms in a Multicultural Canada is organized around the assumption that race is not simply a set of categories and that racism is not just a collection of individuals with bad attitudes. Rather, racism is as much a matter of interests as of attitudes, of property as of prejudice, of structural advantage as of personal failing, of whiteness as of the "other," of discourse as of discrimination, and of unequal power relations as of bigotry. This multi-dimensionality of racism complicates the challenge of formulating anti-racism and anti-colonialist strategies capable of addressing it. Employing a critical framework that puts politics and power at the centre of analysis, this book focuses on why racisms proliferate, how they work in contemporary societies, and how the way we think and talk about racism changes over time. Specifically, it examines the working of contemporary racisms in a multicultural Canada that claims to abide by principles of multiculturalism and a commitment to a post-racial society.

In the 1960s, the city of Halifax razed the black community of Africville under a program of urban renewal and 'slum clearance.' The city defended its actions by citing the deplorable living conditions in Africville, ignoring its own role in the creation of these conditions through years of neglect and the refusal of essential services. In the 1980s, the city created a park on Africville's former site, which has been a place of protest and commemoration for black citizens since its opening. As yet, however, the city has not issued a formal apology to Africville residents and has paid no further compensation. Razing Africville examines this history as the prolonged eviction of a community from its own space. By examining a variety of sources - urban planning texts, city council documents, news media, and academic accounts - Jennifer J. Nelson illustrates how Africville went from a slum to a problem to be solved and, more recently, to a public space in which past violence is rendered invisible. Reading historical texts as a critical map of decision-making, she argues that the ongoing measures taken to regulate black bodies and spaces amount to a 'geography of racism.' Through a geographic lens, therefore, she manages to analyse ways in which race requires space and how the control of space is a necessary component of delineating and controlling people. A much needed re-examination of an important historical example, Razing Africville applies contemporary spatial theory to the situation in Africville and offers critical observations about the function of racism.

Where the Waters Divide analyzes how contemporary neoliberal reforms (in the manner of de-regulation, austerity measures, common sense policies, privatization, etc.) are woven through and shape contemporary racial inequality in Canadian society. Using recent controversies in drinking water contamination and solid waste and sewage pollution, Where the Waters Divide illustrates in concrete ways how cherished notions of liberalism and common sense reform -- neoliberalism -- also constitute a particular form of racial oppression and white privilege. Where the Waters Divide brings together theories and concepts from four disciplines -- sociology, geography, Aboriginal studies, and environmental studies -- to build critical insights into the race relational aspects of neoliberal reform. In particular, the book argues that neoliberalism represents a key moment in time for the racial formation in Canada, one that functions not through overt forms of state sanctioned racism, as in the past, but via the morality of the marketplace and the primacy of individual solutions to modern environmental and social problems. Furthermore, Mascarenhas argues, because most Canadians are not aware of this pattern of laissez faire racism, and because racism continues to be associated with intentional and hostile acts, Canadians can dissociate themselves from this form of economic racism, all the while ignoring their investment in white privilege. Where the Waters Divide stands at a provocative crossroads. Disciplinarily, it is where the social construction of water, an emerging theme within Cultural Studies and Environmental Sociology, meets the social construction of expertise -- one of the most contentious areas within the social sciences. It is also where the political economy of natural resources, an emerging theme in Development and Globalization Studies, meets the Politics of Race Relations -- an often-understudied area within Environmental Studies. Conceptually, the book stands where the racial formation associated with natural resources reform is made and re-made, and where the dominant form of white privilege is contrasted with anti-neoliberal social movements in Canada and across the globe.