Journal of Critical Race Inquiry
Volume 11, Number 2 (2024) pp. i-ii
Editor’s Note
Jane Kirby
We are three issues and over 14 months into Israel’s continued assault on the Palestinian
people, with, as of December 3 of this year, over 44 500 Palestinians dead. Meanwhile,
much of the Western world remains silent or complicit. We’re also collectively experiencing
an eerie case of déjà vu—simultaneously shocking and entirely predictable—at recent
election results that indicate a similar predilection towards racial violence in North
America. If one believed in progress or the triumph of humanitarianism at the end of the
twentieth century, we can conidently say that those lofty ideals have been crushed.
The articles in this issue—focusing on critical race theory in schools, on anti-traficking
legislation that criminalizes racialized workers, and on the experiences of racialized
adolescents with cancer care—point to many of the ways that racism and racialization
manifest, and they also don’t obviously strike a hopeful tone. But the complexities
presented by the authors in this issue also point to the ways oppressions develop unevenly,
such that space for agency and change are opened up: A local school board develops critical
race curriculum that far surpasses provincial standards; workers create, and ight for
recognition for, their own credentialling system to circumvent criminalizing legislation;
racialized adolescents work with researchers to use interdisciplinary and art-based
methodologies to better connect and make sense of their experiences.
This complex sense of hope is relected in the generosity of spirit that undergirds this
issue’s cover art, created by Métis visual artist Carleigh Candice Mignonne Milburn. Heart
Berry takes the humble and sweet strawberry as inspiration for considering the love,
healing, and connection to land necessary for decolonization and reconciliation among both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. For the artist, it is not only the shape of the berry
we can learn from, but also its role in nourishing us, and in “nurturing strong relationships
within families and communities.”
Regan Tyndall and Dr. Kashif Raza take media controversy over CRT in schools as a
departure point for considering how anti-racist and critical race approaches are being
taken up in legislation and curriculum in Ontario. Considering both the now dormant Racial
Equity in the Education System Act and Hamilton-Wentworth district’s “Learn. Disrupt.
Rebuild.” module, they conclude that while provincial-level policy might be limited in its
ability to enact CRT, more potential for transformative curricula and content exist at the
local level. Local educators, parents, and school boards have considerable agency in
disrupting racism within school systems.
EDITOR’S NOTE ii
Elene Lam et al.’s consideration of Newmarket, Ontario’s recent bylaw regulating body rub
establishments makes a similar case for tackling racism from the ground up. Laying bare
the contradictions and racist history of anti-traficking campaigns, the authors demonstrate
how racialized communities—rather than external non-governmental organizations or
municipalities—are best positioned to meet their own needs and rally together to protect
themselves. In the face of harsh and discriminatory regulatory practices, the migrant
workers described in this research have rallied together to speak out against the bylaw,
resulting in increased public recognition of their struggles, the recognition of foreign
credentials, and a seminar series that leads to municipally recognized accreditation.
The need to centre the experiences of racialized peoples is also relected in Tiffany Hill et
al.’s moving accounts from racialized adolescents undergoing cancer care. Co-authored
with some of the youth, this research offers insight into how both health research and
cancer care spaces might be transformed by arts-based and participatory approaches,
particularly for those from communities for whom research has traditionally been
extractive and reductive in nature.
Adesoji Babalola’s review of Daniel Meister’s The Racial Mosaic: A Pre-History of Canadian
Multiculturalism relects on the by now familiar (at least to readers of JCRI!) critique of
Canadian multiculturalism in relation to the public intellectuals who popularized the idea.
Through consideration of the work of media personalities Watson Kirkconnell, Robert
England, and John Murray Gibbon, Meister shows how, in Babalola’s words, “European
whiteness was the only culture considered valuable enough to be included and embraced in
Canada.” Babalola suggests that while Meister’s work offers a valuable genealogy through
which to consider the racist roots of multiculturalism, it is limited by being centred on
“white people racializing other white people” rather than a more expansive genealogy that
also considered the relationship of these ideas to Black and Indigenous populations.
Finally, the conversation between Paul Akpomuje and his colleagues—all Black faculty and
students at Queen’s University—relecting on the Poetics of Migration event hosted in
Kingston, Ontario, in January 2024, offers insight into how transformative Black
geographies can be lived through Black thinking, organizing, and conversation. Considering
the limits of categories like “international student” and the myriad ways Black thought is
surveilled and policed both on and off campus, the conversation points beyond the
boundaries imposed by borders and towards—to quote Katherine McKittrick’s
contribution to the conversation—“anti-colonial and diasporic placemaking activity.”
In the best-case scenario, this is also the hoped-for role of JCRI: to disrupt the imperatives
of thought rooted in austerity, exclusion, and racism, and instead offer a space for works
that are challenging how these forces manifest both within academia and beyond. The
contributors to his issue take up this challenge, and we are pleased to provide a home for
this work.
I will be signing off from JCRI for the next while for maternity leave, and leaving the
Managing Editor role to Kate Cairns, an outgoing faculty member from Rutger’s University.
Future contributors—you are in capable hands (!). I look forward to seeing how the work of
the journal continues to evolve with Kate’s support.