by marcus singleton
The NBGN is super excited to have Dr. Andrea Davis as our guest for tomorrow’s Chill & Chat. Having Dr. Davis as our guest speaker motivated the NBGN leadership team to go back and rewatch her talk at the 2020 UBC Provost’s Speaker Series on Systemic Racism where the topic was about the potential for Black studies programs in Canada. During this talk, Dr. Davis gave a phenomenal snapshot of Black Studies history and origins. In her words, “Black Studies is interdisciplinary in its orientation, focusing on the histories, cultures, ideas, and experiences and politics of Black people.” According to Dr. Davis, not only does Black Studies connect us to history, culture, ideas, experiences, and politics of Black people, it also “helps us begin to understand how deeply embedded anti-Black racism is in the very fabric of Canadian University life.” Dr. Davis is correct in her critique of Canadian education, and it is safe to say that anti-Black racism is in the very fabric of education on all levels in Canada.
Black Canadians have been fighting to be treated and seen as human beings in the Canadian educational system for a very long time, which is why the NBGN as an organization is focused on the work of Black scholars and graduate students within the field of Black studies. Black studies is much more than just a field of study—if a field of study is understood as simply an area of academic concentration, a discipline. However, since Black life involves an ongoing fight for our freedom and full humanity, Black studies is “about transforming the core character of [Eurocentric-centred institutions we attend as Black people] and the societies in which we live.” To this point, Dr. Davis expresses that Black studies prepare students not only to understand the world, but to see what the world is and to create opportunities for Black students to develop their ability and desire to make the world better. “To connect [learning institutions] to local and global struggles so that all of us may live free.” So, as you can see, Black studies is so much more than just a field of study because the purpose of this movement in Canada goes far beyond earning grades based on a Eurocentric measurement of learning.
Black studies is also a study of history, and history is not the study of the past, but it is the study of the future. And the more we can draw from the lessons of Black freedom fighters of the past we can achieve academic freedom in the future. “Academic freedom,” according to Dr. Davis, is the antithesis of “Black freedom.” She also believes “academic freedom is Black death.” This statement reminds me of the historic student protest on the campus of Sir George Williams University in Montreal in 1969 where Black students were fighting for both their academic freedom and then, for their lives (see Mohabir & Cummings, 2022; and the NFB film, The Ninth Floor). The spirit of resistance that was in the Black students at Sir George Williams University in ’69 was rekindled in 2022 through the Black students at York Memorial Collegiate Institute who made history fighting for their academic freedom and humanity by responding to a racist news article that painted them and other racialized students as criminals. This led to a student walkout and a press conference in front of one of the Toronto District School Board offices. Whether the fight is in post-secondary, undergraduate, or graduate levels, oppressive learning places affect us all as Black people. We have to fight this fight collectively, not in silos, but in community. The fight for academic freedom and humanity is ongoing for Black Canadians and Black people all over the world. To this Dr. Davis believes
Black lives and Black Studies remain oppositional and under siege. We may choose to sit in the comfort of Canadian classrooms and think that the issues affecting Black communities in the United States have nothing to do with us…[but] these issues repeat across the world in different formations from the United States to Canada to Nigeria. (Davis, 2020).
The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, proved that what happens to Black people in one geographical location can affect Black people in another. Drawing from history, the study of the future, we must reinstitute the African word and practice of Ubuntu which means humanity to others. Or in the words of Desmond Tutu, “my humanity is bound up in yours.” With these words from Tutu in mind, Black studies also essentially help us to see that our humanity is bound up in each others, and if Black people are prevented to experience academic freedom, none of humanity is free.
In conclusion, Dr. Davis also draws from the historian Darlene Clark Hine who identifies Black studies as being (1) intersectional; (2) rooted in non-linear thinking; (3) diasporic and comparative not bound by a single geographic location; (4) must connect and draw parallels and chare the continuities and discontinuities between Black and other marginalized groups wherever they are located; and (5) is about solidarity. Dr. Davis offers us these five characteristics of Black studies, through Hine’s work, to serve as a guide for the work we do as Black graduate students and emerging scholars of Black Studies. Whenever we lose our way, we should always go back to these guiding characteristics and recentre our purpose, goals, and visions, in this ongoing fight for Black academic freedom.
