Login | Register

Who is responsible for justice here? Centering the contributions of anti-racist student organizers to address white accountability in the Canadian university.

Title:

Who is responsible for justice here? Centering the contributions of anti-racist student organizers to address white accountability in the Canadian university.

Gagliardi, Meghan (2019) Who is responsible for justice here? Centering the contributions of anti-racist student organizers to address white accountability in the Canadian university. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

[thumbnail of Gagliardi_MSc_S2019.pdf]
Text (application/pdf)
Gagliardi_MSc_S2019.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Spectrum Terms of Access.
2MB

Abstract

This thesis is premised upon the well-established understanding that universities across Canada and North America have been constructed through and are embedded in white supremacy — a historical and colonial system of power which privileges white, Euro-centric knowledges, bodies, and cultural norms and values. Examining the challenges of achieving racial justice in Canadian universities, many scholars have concluded that cultures of whiteness shape the university and pose fundamental barriers to racial justice. This results in a predominately white institutional environment resistant to the inclusion of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) communities. And this not only privileges white, Euro-centric ideologies, epistemologies, pedagogies, and bodies, it dually restricts BIPOC access to and belonging in the university. Using the notion of the ‘culture of whiteness’ as a point of departure, this work examines manifestations of, and resistance to, white supremacy in the Canadian university through a detailed case study centering the contributions of anti-racist student organizers. This thesis offers a close-up examination of how white supremacy is established, reproduced, and resisted in one contemporary urban university setting: Concordia University in Montreal. Drawing from interviews with eleven anti-racist student organizers and supplemented by reflections grounded in auto-ethnography, institutional ethnography, and participant observation, I examine manifestations of white supremacy and the conditions of student anti-racist work in the university. Centrally, on the basis of this research I argue that the responsibility for racial justice is unfairly assigned, and these assignments perpetuate rather than interrupt structural and cultural white supremacy in the Canadian university.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Geography, Planning and Environment
Item Type:Thesis (Masters)
Authors:Gagliardi, Meghan
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:M. Sc.
Program:Geography, Urban & Environmental Studies
Date:14 January 2019
Thesis Supervisor(s):Collard, Rosemary
ID Code:984929
Deposited By: MEGHAN GAGLIARDI
Deposited On:23 Jun 2021 16:12
Last Modified:24 Jun 2021 01:01
All items in Spectrum are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. The use of items is governed by Spectrum's terms of access.

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads per month over past year

Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
- Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
Back to top Back to top