Racism

Study reveals gaps when it comes to recognizing racism in Ontario university sports

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:00:09 +0000

Study reveals gaps when it comes to recognizing racism in Ontario university sports

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/26/2021 - 11:00

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Janelle Joseph, a researcher in 91�Թ�'s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, led a project with Ontario University Athletics that examined racial demographics, as well as members' experiences and understanding of racism (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Breaking Research

Anti-Black Racism

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Racism

Research & Innovation

Sports

An anti-racism project led by a 91�Թ� researcher in collaboration with Ontario University Athletics found many “completely unaware of the depths of the problem.”

The project, led by Janelle Joseph, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) and her Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity and Anti-Racism in Sport (IDEAS) research lab, aimed to shed light on OUA racial demographics and members’ experiences and understandings of racism – and propose strategies for change.

“The OUA anti-racism project was unique in that it examined a single athletic organization from the perspectives of a wide range of stakeholders, including administrators, coaches and student athletes,” said Joseph.

“This allowed us to get a good understanding of the relationship between individual experiences and systemic barriers, especially across a large and diverse province such as Ontario.”

The OUA established the Black, biracial and Indigenous (BBI) task force in August 2020, with the KPE-led project stemming from the group’s work. Nearly 45 per cent of an estimated 11,200 members of OUA – including 4058 student athletes, 716 coaches and 227 sport administrators – completed questionnaires designed by Joseph and her team. Additionally, 107 members participated in interviews and focus groups, including all 20 OUA athletic directors.

Among the report’s key findings: universities across Ontario share similar experiences with racism in sport, meaning racism can’t be dismissed by universities as a problem that only happens elsewhere – on a different team or at a different school.

“The assumptions that racism exists only in the United States or only at those universities about which public reports have been shared is what allows racism to perpetuate,” said Joseph. “But in the same way that culture has shifted on how sexism or concussions are viewed in the OUA today, there needs to be a public acknowledgement of ‘hidden’ racism in order to prevent racial injustice.”

While demographic findings echo previous research on the subject showing disproportionate recruitment, hiring and leadership opportunities for white student athletes, coaches and administrators, the report provides further insights into members’ experiences and understanding of racism.

For example, while only one per cent of OUA members see racism as “extremely common,” there is a large percentage of student athletes (52 per cent) who see racism as “not at all common.” That’s a concerning result since 72 per cent of student athletes identify as white and, according to the researchers, “seem to be unaware of how ‘everyday racism’ operates.”

“Racism can take many forms,” said Sabrina Razack, a PhD student in Joseph’s IDEAS research lab. “Overwhelmingly, the examples shared by OUA members fall into the category of microaggressions, which, whether intentional or not, are still deeply felt by racialized members of the community and perpetuate exclusion.”

Razack points out that, while 41 per cent of student athletes, coaches and staff said they “never” witnessed or experienced racism, those who said they experienced it “a lot” (8.9 per cent), “most of the time” (1.7 per cent) or “all of the time” (2.5 per cent) should concern us. Of those who said they experience it “all of the time,” 31.5 per cent identify as Black.

“The biggest surprise for me was the disparity between how racism was a common, daily experience for some and yet completely unknown by others” said Joseph. “Those who are racialized described racist jokes and barriers to recruitment and promotion that, sadly, had become expected. Meanwhile those who had not witnessed, heard or seen racism first hand were completely unaware of the depths of the problem.”

To make significant change, Joseph says there is a need to first increase awareness of racism and how racial inequities are embedded in the fabric of university sport.

“We know the range of ways racism occurs and have tools for change recommended directly by OUA members,” she said. These include:

Education: create campaigns, using social media and other channels, to shift culture and build awareness of what racism looks like, provide ongoing educational tools
Recruitment: remove experience and education barriers from job descriptions while intentionally mentoring and recruiting qualified Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) candidates
Supports: create and hire for a position devoted to anti-racism for case management and programming, hire racialized students, implement mental health supports
Accountability: collect data on racial demographics and anti-racism initiatives within the OUA, specify a zero-tolerance racism policy, share publicly, commit to specific changes

Gord Grace, the president and CEO of the OUA, wrote In the introduction to the report that the takeaways from this study will serve as a foundation to support future strategic action and help make the organization a more inclusive and safe community for all. To that end, the OUA has already begun implementing some of the recommendations from the report, including the launch of the Black or Indigenous Heritage Student-Athlete (BIHS) bursary, which was announced in September.

“The entire OUA community is thankful for the opportunity to work with the IDEAS Research Lab, not only because of the exemplary work done within the Anti-Racism Project, but because of what it will mean moving forward for the entire university sport landscape in Ontario and beyond,” said Grace. “With this invaluable research in hand, we are truly motivated and better informed to help address real change in the OUA.”

That racist caricature of Serena Williams makes me so angry

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 15:45:33 +0000

That racist caricature of Serena Williams makes me so angry

noreen.rasbach Thu, 09/20/2018 - 11:45

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Serena Williams looks at her spectator box during the women’s final of the U.S. Open tennis tournament against Naomi Osaka of Japan on Sept. 8 in New York. (Julio Cortez/AP)

Topic

Serena Williams did something that even President Barack Obama could not do. She got angry and showed it.

At the recent U.S. Open Tennis Championship, Williams disagreed with some of the calls made by the umpire. They argued. Williams became so annoyed that she smashed her racket into the ground.

Another tennis superstar was also famous for smashing his rackets. In the 1980s I watched John McEnroe curse and crash his way through many matches. His confrontational behaviour was legendary. It was expected and accepted as part of his playing style. Williams’ display of anger has tournament umpires threatening to refuse to work with her.

Beyond the obvious differences in the decades between McEnroe and Williams, as well as some changes in tennis rules, I think their demonstration of anger mirrors the power and privilege in society. It matters who gets to show their anger. And who gets to feel the hard edge of it.

What is most interesting is not Williams’ anger but a cartoon that purported to depict it, drawn and circulated by Mark Knight for The Herald Sun newspaper in Australia. The cartoon ignited a wildfire of protest from the moment it was printed.

Serena Williams, right, talks with referee Brian Earley during the women’s final of the U.S. Open tennis tournament against Naomi Osaka of Japan (Adam Hunger/AP)

Decades of racist stereotypes

In the caricature, Williams is shown as an angry woman, jumping up and down protesting the umpire’s decision. The visual language of the Williams character is instantly and culturally recognizable to many. It is just another variation of the mammy stereotype. Only this time she is angry rather than grinning.

The mammy stereotype originated in slavery. She was always a rotund woman, dressed in an apron and headscarf and with a grin as wide as her hips. Its function was to show Black women as docile, dim-witted creatures who lovingly took care of the white household. They were not a threat.

The days of the whip are long gone but the mammy stereotype lives on. In the film world, there is Hattie McDaniel playing Mammy in Gone With The Wind. There is Lillian Randolph, the voice of Mammy Two Shoes, and the object of fun in the classic series Tom & Jerry. And there are the maids played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in The Help.

A mammy might be living right now in your kitchen. Pick up a box of pancake mix and Aunt Jemima smiles back at you. Her updated portrait cannot hide her origins in the kitchens of slavery. Or how about a mammy or Aunt Jemima cookie jar for the counter? These are readily available on mainstream shopping websites. Vintage ones costs more because they are collectors’ items.

Strength, anger and stalled careers

In the cartoon, the Williams caricature is almost 10 times the size of the other woman. While this centres her as the dominant figure in the drawing, the scale of the size difference has racial overtones too.

U.S. Open finalist Serena Williams after her final match loss against Naomi Osaka (photo by Shutterstock)

The Black figure is taller, larger and stronger in the drawing as well as in the white imagination. For example, in hospitals Black women get less medication to manage pain as nurses and doctors assume they are stronger and don’t feel it as intensely.

Black women living with mental health issues face a similar racial stereotype about their strength. When therapists and psychiatrists believe that we are so strong, they are less likely to take our suffering seriously and more likely to misdiagnose and mistreat it.

Black women who are assertive risk being labelled the “angry Black woman.” This is a powerful tool for quashing discussions of different perspectives and seeks to silence Black women. It has stalled or killed many Black women’s careers.

The stereotype of being bigger and stronger also affects Black men. In one study they were perceived to be physically stronger than white men and seen as more of a threat based on their size. Police reports of their encounter with Black men stress the size of the men, becoming a justification for the use of excessive force.

Just ask Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Alton Sterling. Well, you can’t ask them because they all are dead. Unarmed. Killed by the police.

Whitewashing Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka beat Serena Williams in the U.S. Open final. Osaka is bi-racial with a Haitian father and a Japanese mother. In the cartoon she was whitewashed. She was drawn as a small, slim white woman with a blonde ponytail. The Osaka figure could not contrast more with the Williams caricature. She is in control as she politely and assertively addresses the umpire.

Serena Williams hugs Naomi Osaka, of Japan, after Osaka defeated Williams in the women’s final of the U.S. Open tennis tournament (Andres Kudacki/AP)

The Williams figure is clearly out of control as she jumps and snarls. The baby-pacifier falling out of her caricature lips add another layer of racist meaning. Angry, large and infantile, this Black woman cannot be taken seriously.

The whitewashing of Osaka serves only to highlight the importance of race colouring every aspect of the cartoon. Due to the backlash, the newspaper defended the cartoon, claiming it was a satire that has nothing to do with gender or race. Tons of people did not agree with their explanation. The cartoon made me angry.

Jacqueline L. Scott is a PhD student at the 91�Թ�'s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

‘Sounding together, standing together’: 91�Թ� concert fights prejudice with music

Romi Levine — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 16:19:30 +0000

‘Sounding together, standing together’: 91�Թ� concert fights prejudice with music

Romi Levine Fri, 04/21/2017 - 12:19

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Faculty of Music members, from left to right, Joshua Pilzer, Nasim Niknafs and Farzaneh Hemmasi organized a concert that promotes diversity in the face of prejudice (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Subheadline

Faculty of Music-sponsored concert takes place on April 24 at the Hart House Music Room

As they watched horrific world events unfold, U of T Faculty of Music members Farzaneh Hemmasi, Nasim Niknafs and Joshua Pilzer were finding it hard to sit idly by.

Donald Trump had been elected as U.S. president. Alt-righters were gaining prominence globally. And close to home, there was the attack on the Quebec City mosque.

“Those things, all together, made us feel like a response of some kind was necessary, and that we didn't want to let those very disturbing events go uncommented upon,” says Hemmasi, an assistant professor of ethnomusicology.

Instead of taking their anger and frustration to Twitter and Facebook, they decided to respond through music. They rounded up a group of performers of diverse cultural and musical backgrounds for a concert, called “Sounding Together, Standing Together,” which takes place Monday April 24 at the Hart House Music Room.

“We started to evolve this idea that we could be doing something we had been trained to do, to specifically respond to the wave of racism and various phobias that have been surging,” says Pilzer, an associate professor of ethnomusicology.

The concert repertoire has everything from jazz duets to Egyptian folk songs.

Hussein Janmohamed, a PhD student in the Faculty of Music, will be performing with Awaaz Ensemble, a group of singers who have specialties in a wide-range of musical genres including western classical and Arabic.

“We come together to sing music that explores the conversations among cultures in Canada. We root each piece of music in a specific cultural context,” he says.

For Janmohamed, who is Muslim, the concert is a way of addressing the misrepresentation of his faith by media and politicians – and a response to events like the U.S. travel ban on a number of Muslim-majority countries.

“To participate in this concert is important to bring forth an expression of the faith that counters and stands up towards the negative representation, and provides a peaceful voice of Islam, which is the Islam that I know that's practiced by a quarter of the world's population,” he says.

Concert organizers say students and faculty members in the Faculty of Music have been affected by the U.S. travel ban. That includes Niknafs who was born and raised in Iran and holds an Iranian passport.

“I had to go through emotional violence again,” says Niknafs, an assistant professor of music education. “Going across the border has always been an issue for me regardless of the country. Being an Iranian, you happen to be savvy about politics around you all the time.”

While music doesn’t instantly heal the emotional wounds caused by prejudice, it can bring people together to start a conversation, says Pilzer.

“Being musical, listening to music is an act of listening, and so there's potential for listening, for understanding, for a kind of communication,” he says.

91�Թ� marks International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

hjames — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 17:45:27 +0000

91�Թ� marks International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

hjames Tue, 03/21/2017 - 13:45

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From left to right, Anti-Racism & Cultural Diversity Officer Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, award winners Dawn T. Maracle, Nana Adwoa Frimpong and Kimberly Tull, and Vice-President, Human Resources & Equity Kelly Hannah-Moffat (photo by Nadia Rosemand)

Hannah James

Author legacy

Hannah James

Topic

City & Culture

Indigenous

Truth and Reconciliation

Racism

Race

Diversity

Members of the 91�Թ� community shared painful stories of racism and discrimination – including at residential schools and during the ’60s Scoop – at a conference marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD).

And they talked about how they are working toward more representation, and getting issues recognized and addressed.

“For the truth to be known, you have to listen,” said Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, director of 91�Թ�'s First Nations House, and a panellist in one of the morning sessions at Hart House.

“If you don’t understand the history, how can you build a relationship when you don’t understand the people?”

The session was part of a two-day conference organized by the university's Anti-Racism & Cultural Diversity Office this week to highlight issues facing racialized communities at post-secondary institutions and the work being done to address them. The event included discussions ranging from how to lead anti-racism transformation in colonized spaces, to Islamophobia, anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism.

One session, “When Anti-Racism Isn’t Enough: Blackness at 91�Թ�” asked the question: What good is an anti-racist framework that does not account for blackness? That panel – composed of PhD candidates from across a range of disciplines at 91�Թ� – discussed how progressive groups and spaces can take up the vocabulary of social justice in ways that may mobilize ideas of diversity and inclusion but alienate Black people.

“This is the first conference that we’ve organized as part of the IDERD campaign,” said Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, 91�Թ�’s anti-racism & cultural diversity officer. “This was about creating a dedicated space to engage in conversations about race, racism and anti-racism, and the various intersectional implications within the post-secondary context. While we recognize that individual manifestations of racism are important to address, and we continue to address those, a significant challenge continues to be the substantive institutional and systemic barriers.”

Another session, “A Conversation on Data Collection and Student, Staff and Faculty Recruitment and Retention” featured presentations by representatives of 91�Թ�, Ryerson and York University.

91�Թ� is one of the first universities to collect detailed information about the diversity of its faculty and staff through a voluntary survey last year, hoping it will help with recruitment efforts.

“It’s important to also look at what we’ve achieved, in terms of inroads made to eliminate racism and where we need to go, what we need to be doing as racism manifests in different ways for specific groups,” Carnegie-Douglas said.

Racism is a missing social determinant of health, says 91�Թ� physician

ullahnor — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 15:53:54 +0000

Racism is a missing social determinant of health, says 91�Թ� physician

ullahnor Wed, 02/15/2017 - 10:53

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Dr. Onye Nnorom says the effects of racism can occur over the course of a Black person’s life, having direct and lasting consequences on health

Liam Mitchell

Author legacy

Liam Mitchell

Topic

City & Culture

Black

Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Medicine

Racism

Doctors and public health practitioners have long known that the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age have a profound impact on their health. They refer to those factors as the social determinants of health.

But there is an important one missing from the list, argues 91�Թ�'s Dr. Onye Nnorom: racism.

In a presentation at Public Health Ontario (PHO) titled “Is Black Health a Public Health Issue? (Yes, thanks for asking!),” Nnorom, who is affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, reviewed how the effects of racism that occur over the course of a Black person’s life has direct and lasting consequences on health. It’s the result of systematic oppression that disrupts family units and keeps many Black individuals in a lower socio-economic state, she said.

Second-generation social scientist traces effects of poverty; tackles myths about racists

lavende4 — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:56:54 +0000

Second-generation social scientist traces effects of poverty; tackles myths about racists

lavende4 Mon, 07/18/2016 - 14:56

Cutline

Geoffrey Wodtke: growing up in poor neighbourhoods impacts success in school (Diana Tyszko photo)

Peter McMahon

Author legacy

Peter McMahon

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Art & Science

The neighbourhoods I grew up in were middle class,” says Wisconsin-born 91�Թ� sociologist Geoffrey Wodtke. “But growing up in and around Milwaukee — one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. and containing some of the poorest areas in the country — we were never that far from some very disadvantaged places.”

As a prof in the 60s and 70s in the U.S., Wodtke’s educational psychologist father became interested in racial inequity and schooling, “back when it was a taboo topic,” Wodtke says. “I grew up talking with him about that, reading a lot of the stuff he’d put in front of me and got into that as an area of research as a result.”

Wodtke — whose mother worked with students from a variety of poor neighbourhoods as a special education teacher in Wisconsin — has started to make a name for himself with the discovery that the amount of time children spend growing up in poor neighbourhoods directly impacts their success in school. “In general, the longer a child spends in a poor neighbourhood, the worse off they are,” Wodtke says.

An individual who lives in a poor neighbourhood for part of their childhood and in a wealthy neighbourhood for another part of their childhood is more likely to finish high school, for example, than comparable youth who spend their entire childhood in poor neighbourhoods.

Wodtke’s findings are derived from data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which has followed children from birth through early adulthood almost every year since 1968.

He compared outcomes — whether someone graduated from high school, whether someone became a parent as a teen — among children who lived in different neighbourhoods for different amounts of time but who were otherwise comparable on measured family and household characteristics.

The findings about the importance of duration of exposure to certain neighbourhoods have led to a re-analysis of some big housing mobility experiments in the U.S., Wodtke says.

For example, Wodtke notes that moving a child from an environment of poverty to one of opportunity specifically during early childhood appears to increase the chances for those youth of attending college and earning a higher income as a young adult. There has been some success in the U.S. on this score when randomly-selected residents of poor, high-density housing projects are provided with housing vouchers enabling them to move to a higher income neighbourhood.

Wodtke hopes to next investigate why growing up in a poor neighbourhood has negative effects on children.

“There’s some sense that children living in poor neighbourhoods don’t go as a far in school because the schools to which they have access just aren’t very good.”

But there may other explanations, Wodtke says. For example, children living in poor neighbourhoods are disproportionately exposed to violent crime and environmental health hazards that interfere with brain development and cognitive function.

“Unfortunately, there are few empirical studies on this, so I’m currently in the process of gathering data.”

Another area of interest for Wodtke is attitudes toward race. Several years ago, there was extensive media coverage of a study that said smart white people are less racist than less-intelligent white people. The findings didn’t ring true to Wodtke.

“I was a little skeptical of that claim and I thought ‘That’s a much too simple answer,’” he says.

Working with data from the General Social Survey and Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, he found that white people who ranked as intelligent think of themselves as quite liberal and are more likely to reject negative racial stereotypes and support racial equality in principle. They support residential integration and inter-racial marriage and are less likely to refer to black people as lazy or unintelligent.

However, this same group of intelligent white people were no more likely, and in some cases they were even less likely, to support policies designed to encourage racial equality — such as workplace affirmative action, open housing laws, or busing between school districts — than their less-intelligent counterparts. Moreover, among white Americans who were born well before the Civil Rights Movement, the association between higher intelligence and rejection of negative racial stereotypes completely disappears.

“When you take a broader look at the association of racial attitudes and intelligence in the U.S., you see a much more complicated picture than what was being put out in the media,” Wodtke says.

Racism

Study reveals gaps when it comes to recognizing racism in Ontario university sports

That racist caricature of Serena Williams makes me so angry

Decades of racist stereotypes

Strength, anger and stalled careers

Whitewashing Naomi Osaka

‘Sounding together, standing together’: 91�Թ� concert fights prejudice with music

91�Թ� marks International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Read more about collecting diversity data at 91�Թ�

Read more about REDress and Black’s residency at 91�Թ�

Racism is a missing social determinant of health, says 91�Թ� physician

Read more at the Toronto Star

Second-generation social scientist traces effects of poverty; tackles myths about racists