Anti-racism in Teaching and Learning

As educators, it is critical that we reflect on how our teaching and higher education practices and norms conform and contribute to racist systems and structures.  Educators in higher education are being challenged more than ever before to reflect, look inward, and imagine new ways to actively generate change.  This is a long, hard process of reflection, learning, unlearning, and action.

As a first step in this process, you may choose to engage with the work of BIPOC authors, scholars, activists, and educators who speak to the ways in which institutional structures and systems operate to perpetuate racism.  Equipped with this foundational knowledge, we are better able to interrupt these systems and begin the work of anti-racism.

Here are some of the titles Teaching and Learning are reading to further our own education around anti-racism.  This is a non-exhaustive list of resources that we hope you will find useful.

Racism, Pedagogy, and Education

• Canadian Education System is Steeped in Anti-Black Racism by Robyn Maynard
• How does Racism in Canadian Post-Secondary Education Impact Student Success and Outcomes by Dan Cantiller
• They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up by Eternity Martis - Available at the YukonU library and at Teaching and Learning

White Supremacy and Privilege

• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad - Available at the YukonU library
• White Fragility: Why it's so hard for White people to talk about racism by Robin DiAngelo - Available at the YukonU library

• Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center (ACLRC) - Anti-Racism
• How to Be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi - Available at the YukonU library
• Welcome to the Anti-Racism Movement - Here's What You've Missed by Ijeoma Olua

Acknowledging and Addressing Racism in the Classroom

• Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education - OISE Black Faculty in Conversation
• MSW@USC Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power, and Privilege
• Strategies for Antiracist and Decolonized Teaching by Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal and Danielle Carkin Lacorazza
• Effective Teaching is Anti-Racist Teaching - Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, Brown University

As part of this process of learning and unlearning, here are some of the questions Teaching and Learning and other YukonU faculty have been discussing as part of our own anti-racism work:

• How does a dominantly white culture affect our university and classroom?  In what ways do our students/staff/faculty experience these effects?  How does Whiteness translate into our work at YukonU? 
• Asking good questions can be part of a disruptive process.  What questions might you ask of yourself?  Of your colleagues?  Of the policies and processes at YukonU?  Of our broader Yukon community?  What questions would you ask to disrupt these systems?