In fact, this often leads to Black, Indigenous, and other racialized students to being pushed into “special education” streams and disproportionately ignored, punished, disciplined, or expelled compared with white students. Yet many schools refused to confront the systemic racism driving these patterns, choosing instead to blame the students or their parents for the challenges they face (Gillborn, 2015; James, 2019).

The vast majority of teachers in Canada are white women. Gebhard (2020) discusses this as an issue by asserting that “the role of white women in education has historically been to reproduce rather than disrupt colonial epistemologies and discourses of white dominance as these intersect with white womanhood” (p.207). This continued system of ‘keeping the status quo’ may be partly due to ignorance and partly because thinking about or confronting systemic racism and white supremacy is deeply distressing to many people, particularly those in a position of power.

I am going to leave this short piece I wrote in 2023:

Black children are not scary. They are scared.

Over and over again, we see news about black children being arrested, beaten or murdered on our streets. There is no respite in the school system either, where black children are neglected, punished, and expelled disproportionally over white children. As Munroe (2021) says so powerfully, “within all of these conversations about racist practices, what often gets left out are stories about the ways school disciplinary practice and policies affect Black students’ emotional well-being and traumatizes them. Black students continue to be judged as inferior and dangerous. Even with ‘progressive discipline,’ Black students who violate rules are seen as offenders rather than teens in need of support” (para. 4).

It is very clear that black children are not scary. They are scared. Cole (2020) goes on further and very plainly outlines the emotional and systemic consequences of suspending and expelling black children from our schools: The gun violence issues in the city of Toronto have been one of the number one stories in this city for the past two years. Why does no one make the connection to poverty in the city of Toronto and to the expulsion of black students, which further alienates them. We've heard so many times the impact of not giving kids a place at school where they feel welcome or they feel like they have an environment to learn. We push kids out of the education system and we have this huge epidemic of violence and anti-social behaviour (para. 32). This means that keeping kids in school is of utmost importance.

In addition to keeping them in school, black children need support, care, love and respect. This means teaching black histories, contributions and perspectives and integrating them year-round, including black authors, resources, and contributions in the classroom (Facing History & Ourselves, 2021). This also involves celebrating and appreciating black excellence and cultural contributions in art, music and literature. Love (2014) says ignoring students' culture is an injustice and an oversight. Welcoming black joy into the classroom by allowing students to be themselves and share their culture will enable them to feel seen and appreciated. Emdin (2016) adds to that assertion and further emphasizes that “the classroom that reflects the culture of youth while highlighting how beautiful it could be challenges the ways that the teacher and students engage with each other even before teaching begins” (para. 17).

References

Cole, D. (2020, February 6). What’s it like to be black in Canada? Under policing, it’s hell [Interview]. In cbc.ca. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-feb-6-2020-1.5454037/what-s-it-like-to-be-black-in-canada-under-policing-it-s-hell-says-desmond-cole-1.5454039

Emdin, C. (2016, March 22). For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood (L. Ferlazzo, Interviewer) [Interview]. In Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-for-white-folks-who-teach-in-the-hood-an-interview-with-chris-emdin/2016/03

Facing History & Ourselves. (2021). Black History Month Resources: Approaches, Identities, Histories, Legacies & Inclusion. Facingcanada.facinghistory.org. https://facingcanada.facinghistory.org/black-history-month-resources

Love, B. (2014). Hip hop, grit, and academic success [Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZqPMzgvzg

Munroe, T. (2021, February 17). How to curb anti-Black racism in Canadian schools. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489

There is actually quite a lot of racism, transphobia and sexism in white gay male spaces. White people and white culture are often treated as the default in queer spaces. Because of that, queer and trans people of color frequently feel excluded and have to push back against that logic in both personal interactions and institutions.

This is happening right now in North America. Withdrawing of support, cutting funding, silencing, looking the other way etc. Trans people in particular are under direct legal, social and cultural attack from the far right. This started in the US, and now is happening in our more conservative provinces.

Many SGM teachers describe their school district as being more “reactive" than proactive when it comes to queer issues. The general consensus among them is that if a problem came up, then school officials would move to act, but even then only if a significant number of people actually "raised a stink” (Mayo Jr, 2020, p. 35).

Queer people "lurk" in the shadows of society for safety. Many underground and online spaces exist for support, learning and community. In my research I found that many queer elders shared their experiences online to help young folks learn the history of the struggles SGM people went ( and still go ) through, because there are no safe spaces for them to share this, particularly in rural and conservative areas.

I discussed this in my thesis as well. In addition, I am also in a "straight" relationship which comes with more privilege. Even though I am a queer woman, I am married to a man, which affords the protections of heteronormative logics when I am in public with him. I do not worry when I am out with him. VERY different to the experiences I had with my femme partners.

Queer theory also challenges the binary, Ekins and King (2006), for example, discussed the understanding that not only gender but also the norm of (binary) sex is socioculturally and historically produced. They demonstrate that much of the science around sex, sexuality, and gender is based on the binary gender divide, viewed without question. When scientists encountered exceptions to this binary, they tended to explain away the anomalies rather than challenge the binary itself. This highlighted that the binary is a social creation, drawing attention to science and medicine's political and cultural dimensions in these areas (Ekins & King, 2006, p. 26).

Yes, but also, even if there is a policy, the administration doesn't necessarily enforce it properly.

One queer teacher recounts a distressing incident involving students and administration: “I was disciplined after having my name spray painted on the side of the school ‘______ is a FAG’, I was called into the office, and the first questions directed at me was ‘HOW DID THEY KNOW!?!!?’ I have since moved schools” (Taylor et al., 2015, p. 131).

This is still happening in parts of Canada! No wonder that a large majority of SGM educators feel uncomfortable to be ‘out’ at school. This is a testament to the culture of heteronormativity and cisnormativity that still permeates schools today. These social norms are breeding grounds for homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism.

It is saddening to see the cultural zeitgeist slowly change toward hate and marginalization of Sexual and Gender minorities in North America. Some areas are better, and some are worse, but the situation for most queer educators in North America still ranges from somewhat comfortable to outright intolerable. In a massive study with 3319 Canadian educators by Egale Canada (2015), they found that: 473 participants (16%) identified as LGBTQ.

In this study: Most (73%) LGBTQ educators reported that when they were hired, their sexual orientation or transgender identity was not known to the school administration, while 17% indicated that their administration had known. One in ten (10%) educators said that administration realized the educators were LGBTQ only after they had started their employment. Similarly, 76% of LGBTQ educators who had permanent contracts said their school administration did not know the educators were LGBTQ when they received their permanent contract. A third (34%) of LGBTQ educators had been advised not to come out at their school, with 59% of those educators reporting that the advice had been given by partners, friends, or family members, 56% by their classmate(s), 26% by their school administration, and 14% by an education professor (Taylor et al., 2015. p. 128).

When faculty and staff are closeted, how could students feel safe to to be themselves?

I found this concept fascinating because this aligned perfectly with my research findings on Reddit and YouTube. While my research looked into inclusive queer spaces online; spaces of possibility for Transmasculine individuals, I could not help but notice that the vast majority of posters and commenters in these communities, were white, educated, Christian, physically abled, affluent and western. It was very disheartening to see that while these communities had great representation of mental health challenges and queerness and were supportive and creative, they were also very homogenous. There was almost no intersectionality of racial, indigenous, religious and dis/ability diversity within these spaces, which means that there was only mostly one kind of perspective present.

If you can believe it, I worked as an HR generalist and manager at a tech company before I came back to academia and schooling writ large, and one of the things that is taught in Human Resources education is the notion that the success of companies relies on cognitive diversity at work. Companies that have multiple perspectives and actually promote DEI ( not performatively ) perform better, because they have better problem solving capacity due to many different perspectives VS. just one, that of white men. Now, the measure of "performance" can be debated, but certainly the companies that adhere to cognitive diversify are much nicer to work for.

I read this book (among others) as part of my directed studies with my supervisor who teaches critical media literacy. This paragraph does not do it the justice it deserves. It is a harrowing read. I highly recommend it, even though it is a little dated, the principles in it apply to AI perfectly. It is short but powerful.

This is such important work. Language is often the soul of a community, a culture, a people. In Canada, many indigenous languages and dialects were eradicated and wiped out as part of a cultural genocide of indigenous peoples. I wish there was more restorative work undertaken to preserve the myriad of First Nations, Inuit and Metis languages we have lost or about to lose.

This entire process is discussed in Pygmalion Democracy (2026). Due to deceptive forms of nationalism and propaganda, marinating in new technologies, communications and platforms, masking social inequalities and anti-democratic practices, "normative" democracy as we knew it, does not exist anymore and hasn't in quite a long time. I did editing and editorial work on this book, and I am not going to lie, it made me depressed for a hot minute.

This reminded me of Coded Bias (2020), a documentary directed by Shalini Kantayya discussing the invisible role of AI in the production of racialized and gendered social control with influences in government, healthcare and employment. We have seem that LLMs learn from our existing biases in the words we write and often inadvertently produce algorithmic oppression.