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So you say you're an anti-racist organization? Prove it
70 Plays4 years ago
Yodit Tesfamicael, an organizer with Students4Change and Black Women United talks with us about the work she's a part of to help improve black lives at Norquest College. An important starting point has been getting that institution to collect race-based data. Turns out you can't be an anti-racist organization if you have no idea how black people are doing.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Progress Report
00:00:13
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta.
Yoda's Work at NorQuest College
00:00:21
Speaker
And today we're joined by Yoda Tesfah-Michael, an organizer with Students for Change and Black Women United. And we're going to assess the work she's been doing to improve the lives of black students at Northwest College. That's the community college here in Edmonton. Yoda, welcome to The Progress Report.
00:00:36
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for having me. So let's get a bit of context for NorQuest out of the way so people kind of know what we're talking about. So it's actually not that far from the office here, right? No, it isn't. It's right in the heart of downtown. Yeah. And we're looking at around 20,000 students. Yeah, approximately 20,000 students and a pretty diverse student population.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's kind of the first point of higher education for a lot of like newcomer Canadians, right? It is. Yeah. Um, and part of that is also because of the programming that they offer. Uh, so it's one of the larger institutions that offers ESL programming and a number of other certificate diploma programming that would attract that particular demographic.
Challenges of Race-Based Data Collection
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, and the demographics here are important, right? It's like nearly two-thirds women, you know, they talk a lot about how many kind of countries of origin, how many languages are spoken. Yeah. But one thing that they haven't been able to quantify, and that's something that are going to start quantifying, is just how many black students they have.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so that's definitely something that's been an interesting take with some organizations is to focus on a lot of the multicultural elements and intercultural elements, but really having difficulty with the race, you know, looking at race-based data and how that's impacting their student body, which is interesting because, you know, that kind of information would be really helpful if you're wanting to improve student outcomes or have a general sense of what black students are experiencing on your campus.
Critique of the 'Colorblind' Approach
00:02:05
Speaker
they don't see race, you know, it's black, brown, green, yellow, polka dot. I mean, that's the kind of like default stupid liberal take, right? Which is that like, we look at us in a colorblind society where we have conquered racism. And and so why would we collect this data? Yeah, yeah, which is kind of interesting, given that, you know, in every almost every other aspect of
00:02:28
Speaker
our world, data is pretty important. And we also have a general understanding that race does affect people's socioeconomic lives. And definitely education. This is something that has been talked about over and over again. But there seems to not be this desire to really think about whether this is even happening, not even an interest to examining whether this is actually, in fact, the case.
00:02:56
Speaker
And that's been pretty frustrating because the general knowledge among the student body and the communities that black students are facing, you know, disproportionate forms of anti-black racism from their counterparts.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, like there's a white proverb out there, a white male proverb particularly, right? Which is like, show me the data, right? I need to know everything in order to make the proper decision. And I think that's best exemplified by one of our city councilors here in town, Mike Nickel. And if an organization is going to say that like, oh, we're an anti-racist organization, we're committed to improving the lives of black people, well,
00:03:32
Speaker
If that's the case, how many black students do you have? Do they graduate? What are their discipline records like compared to non-white students? What are their failure rates compared to non-white students?
Demands to NorQuest College
00:03:43
Speaker
How many scholarships do they get compared to non-white students? If you have no fucking clue what is happening to your black students, you can't credibly call yourself an anti-racist organization or university.
00:03:54
Speaker
No, you cannot. And one of the interesting things that's come out of a lot of institutions is the idea of equity, diversity, and inclusion, in which they're supposed to implement policies that are going to improve the experiences of racialized students. Well, you can't really do that unless you know what's going on. And this is something that a lot of people have been saying over and over again, is that you actually have to know what's going on. What are their success rates? Are they, in fact, equivalent to other non-black students in the institutions?
00:04:22
Speaker
you know, this kind of like willfully denying that that information is important is not, to me, doesn't make sense. And, you know, I would, it does have that very much, you know, all lives matter or colorblind approach. And, you know, it's not really important. But one of the things that I find interesting is that, you know, there is some, there is some identification for those who identify as indigenous. And there are particular reasons for that, I think.
00:04:51
Speaker
that specifically taught in order to advance, you know, for indigenous students. However, we're not kind of seeing, you know, the other aspects of it is that, you know, are they measuring this against student outcomes? You know, are they able to actually say like, you know, this institution is a great institution for indigenous students to come to or black students to come to because we have a high success rates for these students. And I don't think that they can adequately say that right now.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, and getting race-based data, getting Norquest College to collect race-based data was part of a suite of things that the group that you're working with, Students for Change, that you were able to kind of get out of Norquest College. Can you kind of tell me about the work that you've been doing there?
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, so this kind of started off, at least in the recent last few months, because Norquest had made an announcement that they were willing to listen and change and wanting to work with communities on issues related to race. And this was, of course, after the killing of George Floyd, Regis Paquette, and a number of other black and brown folks that have been targeted by police forces.
00:06:02
Speaker
And so, you know, we saw a number of institutions make these kinds of grand announcements and gestures to making changes at their institutions. And so, you know, we took them up on it and we sent them a letter sometime in mid or late July and made a proposal for them to accept, you know, these four calls to actions that we... A list of demands.
00:06:25
Speaker
A list of demands, yeah. A list of demands and have a joint press release stating that they in fact will be looking at these four things and will be implementing them. So that's kind of how that all started. But kind of going before that I had relationships with personally I had family members who had attended this program who indicated to me that they had you know issues with
00:06:51
Speaker
the college and their experience around race and anti-black racism specifically. And as I was getting involved a few years back with Black Women United, a member of our community came forward and she said, you know what, there's like a huge anti-black racism problem at Norquest, particularly in the licensed practical nursing program, and we need help, you know.
00:07:13
Speaker
So in about, we didn't really get kind of organized until earlier this year in January and we started to meet and think about well who do we, how can we get some allies and how do we organize ourselves to think about some strategies to really put pressure on the school to look at these issues.
Organizing for Change
00:07:31
Speaker
And so you, but you personally had like a cousin or a couple of cousins who had a bad time in the licensed practical nursing program. Yeah. And so one of my cousins in particular, I recall him stating that, you know, he was failed unfairly from a clinical.
00:07:46
Speaker
So in the licensed practical nursing program, you do clinicals to demonstrate, you know, as part of your training. And he was unfairly, he failed. And he, at least the general attitude was that, you know, this happens to a lot of the black students and this particular instructor that he had tended to target black students and didn't evaluate black students fairly.
00:08:11
Speaker
And so that was something that I became aware of while he was studying, and then a number of others kind of echoed those same sentiments and thoughts.
00:08:23
Speaker
And so this is like, oh, there's a problem here. We've got to do something about it. We've got an institution that is publicly stated, hey, we want to do something. Yes. And so you took advantage. Yeah, we did. We took advantage. And how that all came about was that, I mean, we just gave them the option. You can either partner with us and work with us on this because we are representing a group of black students, former graduates, a few current students at Norquest.
00:08:48
Speaker
And as well as people like me who are in the black community who are organizing around anti-black racism all the time. Or we can do this on our own. And that was really the approach that we took. Because we didn't want to further stall these things. I mean, oftentimes what institutions can do is kind of co-opt efforts and initiatives that are coming from the community and not really meet the needs of those students.
00:09:17
Speaker
in the way that we need them to be. And so a lot of compromise happens on the back end of things. So we kind of were like, no, you can't talk about EDI, that's a whole all lives matter. Not to say that it's not important, certainly it is, but we need you to focus on black students and we need you to think about anti-black racism in particular. And we can't wait a year or two years for you to come up with a strategy. Here's some really easy four things that you can implement and start to look at.
00:09:45
Speaker
And what were those four things? What were your demands and what did they kind of put out, hey, we're going to do something on this? Yeah, so definitely one of them was, well, initially we actually wanted to have Norquest implement video recordings of critical integration assessments. And critical integration assessments are actually an assessment that students have to do to demonstrate a particular skill in nursing.
00:10:07
Speaker
So that was kind of changed a little bit in the one that we actually sent out in the press release. But the good thing is that they are looking into that, and we've talked to them a little bit about what that might look like. And so that was one. The second was supporting black students' mental health from the community. The stories that you would hear of students, black students in particular, experiencing racial trauma was just
00:10:37
Speaker
Really overwhelming and quite frankly just so depressing to hear So what does that mean? Are they getting the counselors or the details still being worked out? The details are still being worked out so we're at least hoping that we would have a More community-based focused people who are from the black community or you know others people of color who look specifically at how racism impacts, you know black and brown students And to really provide those services and provide targeted services for you know black students
00:11:08
Speaker
And then what were the other demands?
00:11:10
Speaker
And then we have, so obviously, the race-based data. So we wanted them to look at disaggregated race-based data for student outcomes. So we wanted to look at the retention rate, attrition rates, the grades of students we were receiving. And that was going to be important, because what we do know is that black students are not finishing the program in the length of time that is advertised. So Norquist College, at least the program,
00:11:38
Speaker
The licensed practical nursing program is supposed to be a five term program. And you can find students saying that, you know, I failed like clinicals so often or had to repeat courses so often that this has actually taken me five years to do. So two, two and a half year program taking five taking five. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, and that's, that's concerning because that that that's money, that's time, you know, and that's not something that is a luxury for a lot of the students.
00:12:03
Speaker
And so that was, you know, kind of it was it was kind of the most important aspect. I think one of the more important calls to actions that we put forth. And then the last one was for us to have an assessment of student awards and scholarships so that we can improving advancement for black students.
NorQuest's Response to Demands
00:12:23
Speaker
And one of the things that we do know or am somewhat aware of is that the assessments for awards and scholarships can be quite outdated. And so we're interested in looking at what are the financial calculations that they're doing to award students. If you have to have lots of volunteer hours and you do not have the privilege of volunteering,
00:12:46
Speaker
It doesn't actually meet the needs of students who may need the funds, but in fact the people who have the privilege to be able to volunteer and then be awarded for these scholarships. So we really need to look more carefully at who's being awarded for these scholarships and are they in fact serving the students that it claims to be serving.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, like, are scholarships going to poor students? Are they going to students who have the time to tell the best story? Exactly. Yeah. And that's another part of the application process is, you know, what's the story? Can you talk about a hardship that you've experienced or, you know, how you've kind of grown as a person and, you know, all this stuff. And, you know, it's not it's not always practical for people for black and brown students.
00:13:24
Speaker
And if you're like an ESL single mother of two or whatever, it's like, yeah, you don't have time to write an 800 word screed about how your life is hard. Your life is already hard. Yeah, life is hard. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, oftentimes a lot our mothers, mothers, you know, young children, they come from multi-generational families. So they're living in households where they might have.
00:13:44
Speaker
you know, grandparents and children, other extended family members. So it's just, you know, they're doing a lot of the kind of caretaking work of the family on top of also trying to advance their own personal education and careers. So, you know, where's that time to do that? And this LPN program is, you know, a way for folks who were nurses in other countries to like actually get their foot in the door here because quite often their qualifications don't transfer over, right?
00:14:11
Speaker
They don't. And that is a reason. So it's attractive for a number of things. And I think that that's definitely one of them. Your credentials are not recognized here in Canada. So here's an option for you where you don't have to spend a whole four-year degree to go to do a nursing degree or go to an elite university like the U of A and do something else. But a quick two-year program where you can get some training and make a decent living.
00:14:37
Speaker
And then there's the other group of folks that I think, you know, who are, let's say, newcomers, who study English at Norquest oftentimes, and then have these kind of two-year diploma programs that are also made available to them, right? So social work and health care aid, and so a number of certificate programs and some diploma programs that are really attractive to people who want to pursue their careers if they've kind of acquired the English level that they need to pursue them.
00:15:06
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, and I think that that's what's really interesting thing with some a place like NorQuest is that they actually do want this, you know, they do want the diverse body. They do want, you know, people who come from different parts of the world and are looking for other options and different kinds of programming. You know who their customers are.
00:15:24
Speaker
they know who their customers are exactly and so for me it's kind of mind-boggling that you wouldn't really want to think about you know how do you evaluate the student body and how do you ensure that you're meeting the needs of the student body and we're talking about you know thousands of dollars that students are investing into this school and so that's just kind of a bare minimum for us is that you need to know what's going on and you know the hard conversation also is you need to start to
00:15:48
Speaker
and ask some kind of accountability at your institution when you do see that things are not working the way they're supposed to or students are complaining about instructors that are blatantly racist. And that's just a, it's not a comfortable conversation to have, but it's very real for a lot of the students.
00:16:03
Speaker
So all of the demands seem kind of based on the ability to collect race-based data. Was that the kind of hardest one to actually get them to agree? Did they want to all lives matter it, like off the top? Well, initially it was more like, well, we want to have a conversation before we release this, because you might want to think a little bit more about these calls to actions. And we were like, no, actually these are pretty easy for you to implement. They don't require a lot of thinking. And they don't actually require a lot of resources.
00:16:31
Speaker
I don't know how much money would cost for the office of registrar to start collecting race. To add another question to the forum. Exactly. They already do it for gender and they seem to do it for different languages and countries of origin. So how much money is it going to take for you to just add in one other variable or factor into there?
00:16:52
Speaker
Same thing with the assessments. I mean, assessments of student awards. It just requires you to just reevaluate, which is something that your staff should already be doing. It's something that you need to do as things change and maybe scholarships are not serving the kind of population that you intend to be awarded.
00:17:06
Speaker
So yeah, so it was a little bit odd that they kind of were like, oh, well, we need to think about, you know, what, you know, how to how to actually do this. And we're just like, no, I think you need to commit to at least a few things here to demonstrate that you are actually serious about this. And then we can talk about the specifics. And these were kind of broad enough that, you know, we can have more discussions or further discussions of what that would actually look like.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I don't think, I'm not going to say two data points is a trend, but I think there is, it is something to consider that not only is NorQuest College now collecting race-based data, but the Edmonton Public School Board is also collecting race-based data.
Performative Politics in Policing
00:17:42
Speaker
And that knowing this information at, you know, for Arcata 12 students is also super important.
00:17:49
Speaker
It is, yeah. And one of the things that's interesting is that the challenges that you see at the higher institutional levels often are a result of the challenges of the K to 12 level. So I'm a University of Alberta student in the master's program. And one of the trends that we've been seeing with among the black population is that we have a lot of black international students. We don't have a lot of black domestic students, or what they call domestic, so those who have matriculated like- Grew up in Alberta. Grew up in Alberta, exactly.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so we're kind of like, OK, well, what's going on here? You don't see those same dynamics with other racialized groups. And so we know that there's kind of, I think, definitely challenges that black students are having between K to 12. So it is absolutely paramount that the K to 12 system looks at race-based data. And we also, again, have anecdotal kind of evidence or people have shared with us that they experience anti-black racism all the time in our K to 12 schools.
00:18:46
Speaker
So, and I think we've seen that kind of in the media as well. Yeah, Justice for Amell, Bashir and the folks there and his family. And, you know, and the Edmonton Public School Board is, I think, you know, got, they got SROs out of schools, you know, the people behind that push were largely black, right? Like, this is, if you want to be an anti-racist organization, if you want to call your organization anti-racist,
00:19:12
Speaker
the bare minimum is collecting racist. Yeah, it is. It's literally. Yeah. And I think that that's funny that now, you know, I think that we're seeing a lot of institutions say this, that they want to be anti-racist and they consider themselves anti-racist. Well, you know, again, this all goes back to performative politics of like, you know, you can say all you want what you are. But the more the most important pieces are you actually doing
00:19:36
Speaker
Are you actually making changes that would actually improve the conditions of black students? And that's you know, that's kind of like the the bare minimum is to look at like what is going on I'm glad you brought up performative politics because that's an excellent segue to this clip I have of Edmonton police chief Dale McPhee at his at his recent home
00:19:56
Speaker
press conference kind of announcing a listening tour it wasn't a really I don't know it was kind of a strange announcement because it was it was we're gonna do action but the inaction was we're gonna listen anyways I'm gonna play this clip for you and I want you to to react to it
00:20:12
Speaker
We acknowledge that there were past consultations where we didn't truly hear or act upon the calls or change what we were asked or what was asked of us. Being an anti-racist and responsive police service is an incredibly multifaceted task. We become both the driver and the subject of necessary social change. It requires equitable change in our organization, in our training, in the kind of environment we provide in our workplaces,
00:20:41
Speaker
in the way internal relationships work, in the way we budget, but most important it is how we establish
00:20:48
Speaker
and sustain our relationships with the community that we are here to protect and serve. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because, and I don't think I had mentioned this to you before, but I was actually on the African Liaison Committee with the Edmonton Police Force from 2015 to 2017. And I was part of the, you know, and that was really set up so that, you know, they could have better relationships with the community. And that's kind of the language that you hear all the time is improving relationships and improving relationships.
00:21:16
Speaker
You know, relationships are not just about being able to sit around at a table and exchange information as to what's going on in the community and that kind of stuff. And that's all important. I'm not trying to knock that down.
00:21:32
Speaker
You know, you also have to hold your institution accountable. Again, the kind of fundamental elements is that if there are police officers or if the police force is not, you know, if police officers or the police force is behaving in an anti-black way, you kind of need to get
00:21:52
Speaker
those people out of there or you need to start to, you know, just have a level of standard that you do care about the black people who are going to encounter these police officers or the black people who are going to encounter this institution. And there's really nothing, you know, as much as you want to have great relationships with me, it tells me a lot if you're not willing to hold people accountable at your
00:22:16
Speaker
your organization if you want to call yourself an anti-racist police force you can start by disbanding your police force yeah and of course yes you could and and that um and more you know kind of the interesting thing is now where they've spent millions of dollars into this
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, and militarizing your police force like I mean it's you know And I know that this the mayor said it was tone deaf. It was beyond tone deaf It was just like it was I don't even know what you want to call that stupid. It was
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah, you have 15,000 people in the streets demanding change. And then you bring this. Yeah, it's just like, are you kidding me? And so I just don't buy it. I think that, again, we're doing a lot of the typical language of progressive politics and we're an anti-racist, and the ridiculousness of being able to even assign yourself as an anti-racist institution.
Reallocation of Police Funding
00:23:13
Speaker
Where's the legitimacy in that as a policing institution?
00:23:18
Speaker
yeah like like okay uh you want to call yourself anti-racist you want to call yourself an anti-racist police force like where do you even start like language means nothing anymore like yeah no we've entered this the progressive hellscape where like words have no meaning yeah
00:23:33
Speaker
police forces are forces of change. And it's like, no, they're violent upholders of the status quo. And the status quo is also inherently brutal. We have the data. When good researchers actually get race-based data, it shows that Black people face materially worse conditions than white people. So, I mean, I don't know. I don't really have
00:23:59
Speaker
much kind of hope there and you know it it really isn't what they spend their money on where they spend their time on and the countless number of task forces that they put on again and again and it's just like you know we're tired we're tired of you talking retired of having conversations about this just redirect those funds out of the policing force and into the community services that we need I mean we know that you know
00:24:22
Speaker
you know, if you want to reduce crime or if you want to improve the conditions of people's lives, well, you actually have to give them, you know, proper living conditions. They need a house. They need a house. They need food on the table. They need education. They need health care. Like just make it all free, please. And when the Edmonton police budget is chunking out, you know, $350, $400 million a year, the single largest slice of the Edmonton city council pie, budget pie, like,
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, just like you don't get any more money. Yeah way way less money the plan I mean the plan is to get rid of it eventually like I mean even chief McPhee has talked about this like yeah We need to do a good enough job to put ourselves out of business like agreed.
Race-Based Data Collection in Education
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, you know. Yeah. Yeah Society has progressed past the point for police. Yeah
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah. And I think what was really disappointing to me was that we're in the middle of a pandemic. Like people are losing their jobs. People are getting sick. And this is how we spend our money. This is where our tax dollars are going to. I was just like, it's so irresponsible and so, I mean, I don't know what else to say. I was just like, this is not what black people need. This is not what indigenous people need. This is not what poor people need. This is not helpful for the majority of us.
00:25:30
Speaker
And you have Don Iveson kind of, his consistent kind of a plea and approach on this has been to go to other levels of government for money. Right? And it's like.
00:25:40
Speaker
oh federal government help us you know provincial government help us and the provincial government has clearly said no yeah federal government help us please uh do these things where they want to buy hotels and put homeless people in houses you know before it gets cold yeah and uh and it's like motherfucker you're spending 400 million dollars a year on the police exactly yeah like i don't know what i mean we you can only imagine what what that would do if we were to
00:26:04
Speaker
even to take a percentage of it. 100 million. Yeah, I know. Even 100 million could make huge differences for our community, our city. And to me, it's just kind of mind boggling that they just refuse to do that. Yeah, I don't know. In the vein of collecting race-based data, you said you were a graduate student at the University of Alberta. Does the University of Alberta collect this data at all?
00:26:28
Speaker
No, it doesn't. And actually, I'm also working with the Black Graduate Students Association. We have a black students collective there of a group of black student groups that actually met with the president. We met with him, I think, earlier in the month and we presented again calls to action or our demands. And one of these things was, again, space data. You need to figure out what's going on.
00:26:49
Speaker
And so what we know is that the Office of Registrar is looking right now at staff and I think the professor at data, they're trying to collect that or they've started. They haven't yet started for students and so we're going to really be pushing for
00:27:05
Speaker
for them to start doing that. The good news is that certain black student groups have been successful, so the Black Medical Students Association has at least gotten the medical school to identify black in the admissions process. So now you have indigenous and black, I believe.
00:27:22
Speaker
But it's piecemeal. It's not across the universe. It's not. And that's one of the frustrating things about these large institutions is that they're so kind of diversified. And there's not a university-wide approach to these things. And that's why we went to the president, because we're like, you need to make sure that this happens, university-wide. It's no longer acceptable that these things are happening in different departments of faculties. And you also need to understand your student body much more carefully. And again, if you want to meet equity diversity targets, you're going to need to know the student population.
00:27:51
Speaker
I mean, that's a work in progress. We've also, you know, we're going to hopefully be meeting with like we have with the dean of students and they're particularly important because they serve the student body. You know, they have a lot of student services and we're like, can you at least do voluntary data like you know in the in the short term and that's been kind of the.
00:28:08
Speaker
Our approach is, you know, there's things that you can do, you know, you can put in an opt-in model in the meantime just to know what's going on. And also, it's quite informative on how to actually create a more standard and, you know, long-term race-based data collection model if you really want to. You can pilot some of these things.
00:28:27
Speaker
Figuring out is half of the struggle. Emmett's in public school board is like, okay, well, how are we going to get parents to agree and fill this out? And how are we going to frame this in a way that we're going to have enough uptake so that it's going to be statistically relevant? You do have to think about it. It's a problem to be solved for the data you collect to actually be useful.
00:28:48
Speaker
And, you know, it's encouraging to hear that this is being worked at other institutions, but really it's like the provincial government, the federal government, like our healthcare system, our education system, like the Edmonton Catholic School Board is not collecting race-based data, you know? Like, I've heard a couple of rumors from folks that Alberta Health Services, our massive healthcare infrastructure, our massive healthcare bureaucracy is gonna start collecting race-based data, but like,
00:29:13
Speaker
Good, but like well, you know, that's just a rumor at this point. Yeah You know if you if you want to be if you can I'm just gonna say it again if you're gonna claim to be anti-racist Yeah at the very least. Yeah, you got to know whether or not you're being racist or not exactly. Yeah Yeah, I mean and this is this is like across the board everywhere and it's such a struggle and this is where you kind of like You know with institutions that are built And then this is really the struggle right institutions are often built
00:29:42
Speaker
to kind of be colorblind at the very least, if not outright racist at the very worst, right? And this is where you kind of hit that kind of brick wall with them every time. And it's like, oh, we care about students and we want to make sure that black students are like, OK, do you know what's going on? Like, can you at least or can you and the hard thing is that we're saying, like, collect this data, collect this data, it's coming from us, from the community, like, oh, well, we don't know if we could do that. And there's sensitivities around this. And there's all this kind of like,
00:30:10
Speaker
you know, excuses or, and suddenly they're so sensitive, right, at this point. You can collect data and, you know, violate other people's rights in certain areas, but you have, now you're suddenly sensitive about this issue. Like, there's a lot of contradiction and not, you know, kind of this willful, you know, just denial or ignorance to really wanting to make this change. And it just doesn't make sense. And you sort of sit there and you're like, okay, well, where does that leave us if you're not willing to, you know, collect race-based data because,
00:30:39
Speaker
you're worried about how students may perceive this or students are afraid that they're gonna this stuff is going to be used against them and it's like well it's only going to be used against them if you use it against them like this is you know and so they bring up all these kinds of like concerns and i'm like and you could tell they're not very well thought out like yeah black students know whether uh it's going to be used against them because like they're they're black and they're facing like anti-black racism throughout their lives all the time yeah
00:31:02
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, but I think we're at a point where at least in Canada It's I mean, I don't know what's like and I think in the states. It's pretty You know, it's standard in a lot of institutions, but it's nice to see at least there's consideration for these things right now and you know, we really just need to hold their feet to the fire and You know do the kind of do the voluntary stuff the opt-in models just so you know what's going on like it's it's a process and I think that one of the things that gets in the way of this is
00:31:32
Speaker
you know, people afraid of being appearing to be racist. I'm like, you're already racist. Don't worry about that. Like, you know, we're already there. So and that's, and that's, I think, who they're really protecting or who they're protecting is really their perception, like the perception of the institution, right? It's like, you just need to get over it. Like, there's a problem. Deal with it.
Supporting Yoda's Work and Conclusion
00:31:50
Speaker
You need to acknowledge and move forward.
00:31:52
Speaker
Well, let's leave it there. I think that's a fantastic note to end it on. Yodit, how can people follow along with your work, support the various things that you're a part of if you're a black student or you want to get help out? What's the best way to get a hold of you, best way to follow along? Yeah, the best way to get a hold of us is our email, studentsforchangeyeg at gmail.com. So the four is a number, studentspluralforchangeyeg at gmail.com. You can also help some of the announcements or the things that we'll be doing
00:32:22
Speaker
maybe announced on Black Women United's page. That's where we kind of just because it's through my work there. So you can follow Black Women United on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. You can also email us at bwunitedhawaii.g at gmail.com.
00:32:37
Speaker
Fantastic. Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure having you in the studio and learning about the work that you're doing. Folks, if you want to hear more podcasts like this, there's a few easy things you can do to help us out. Smash that like button, rate, review, subscribe, the usual list of things podcasts ask you to do. But doing all those things actually really does help us. And we don't spend any money on advertising, so it is all word of mouth.
00:33:06
Speaker
The other big thing you can do to help us is obviously support us financially. If you can throw in $5, $10, $15 a month, it really does help keep this independent media project going. And you're joining about 250 other people who regularly kick in a little bit of money as well. So the easiest way to do that is to go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons and put in your credit card and easy peasy.
00:33:26
Speaker
If you have any notes, thoughts, things you think I need to hear, you can reach me on Twitter at Duncan Kinney. You can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme, thank you for listening, and goodbye.
00:33:42
Speaker
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