Declaration Denouncing Anti-Black Racism and Encouraging Solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement

As a School of Social Work, we are committed to condemning all forms of racism and promoting racial justice in all that we do. Only by acknowledging the pervasiveness of anti-Black  and anti-Indigenous racism in Canada, and by taking concrete steps to eliminate all forms of racism, can we begin the process of change towards racial justice. As social work practitioners, teachers, educators and researchers located in Northern Ontario, we stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and are committed to making changes in our schools and in our daily practices to eliminate all forms of racism .

We support the work of the Black Lives Matter (Canada) Movement to :

• Dismantle all forms of state-sanctioned oppression, violence, and brutality committed against all Black communities, including African, Caribbean, Afro-Indigenous, migrant, queer, trans, and disabled Black communities. 
• Decolonize Turtle Island and Nunavut Nunangat. Black Lives Matter struggles are tied up with the struggles of the Indigenous people of the land on which many of Black ancestors were brought and forced into brutalization—a living apocalypse. There is no Black Liberation without Indigenous Liberation on Turtle Island.  

Context 

The brutal murder of George Floyd in the United States in May 2020 reminds us that our attitudes, perceptions, and police violence against Black people today go back to the Anti-Blackness ideology that permeates Western societies since the beginning of slavery and the slave trade.   Anti-Black racism along with white privilege hurts Black and Brown bodies every day in Canada and in the world. The resulting Anti-Black sentiments and Anti-Black racism reflected in policies and practices that perpetuate racial injustice must be challenged and dismantled. We commit to making changes in our Schools and in everyday practices to eliminate all forms of racism.

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1. Canadian Human Rights Commission - Anti-Black racism in Canada: time to face the truth.
   https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/eng/content/statement-anti-black-racism-canada-time-face-truth
2. https://caswe-acfts.ca/addressing-anti-black-racism-in-social-work/
3. https://blacklivesmatter.ca/
4. Cooper, A., Baylis, F., Cameron, C., Francis, A., Lovejoy, P., States, D., . . . Williams, N. (2019). Rapport sur l'histoire de l'esclavage et de la race de Lord Dalhousie. Halifax, NS; Département de psychologie de l'Université de la Colombie-Britannique
   https://psych.ubc.ca/news/statement-on-anti-black-racism/