Today in awesome books you should check out
From Slavery to Black Power and Hip Hop: McGill's Charmaine Nelson explore Ebony Roots
Black History should not begin and end with Black History month.
Charmaine Nelson, a professor of art history at McGill, is the editor of Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada.
Published by Cambridge Scholars, it's a scholarly work, born out of a conference on Canadian Black Studies held at McGill a few years back.
But the topics are as different as the black people who inhabit this country, their viewpoints, experiences and legacy -- whether they be the descendants of colonials slaves, railway porters or 1960s activists or first-generation immigrants.
"I am hopeful that the book will generally shed more light on issues of black historical and contemporary presence in Canada and highlight the distinctiveness of Canada's heterogeneous black communities, which are too often subsumed by narrow definitions of African-American blackness," Nelson, currently on sabbatical at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), where she's a visiting associate professor in the department of Africology, told me in an email exchange.
Essays cover the gamut from the role of hip hop to the place of blacks in Canada's political system, academia, high art and pop culture.
In All Roads Led to Montreal, for instance, David Austin examines how Montreal, and particularly Sir George Williams University (now part of Concordia, of course) became a magnet for young blacks seeking an education, and a sounding board for their struggles for recognition.
Nelson cites the discussion of "academic racism" as an important one which has too long been overlooked.
"The under-representation of blacks in these positions (as professors, teachers and upper administration) and our mistreatment within educational institutions, needs to be urgently addressed on a national scale."
Nelson blames "the specific function of multiculturalism in Canada" for shutting down discussions about race and racism in Canada, whether it relates to black, aboriginal or other people of colour.
"This silence is a facet of how Canadians seem to simultaneously deny our cultural histories and off-load them onto the United States," says Nelson.
"Easy examples of this are Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 2009 comment that 'Canada has no colonial history' and the fact that most Canadians know about the Underground Railroad and Canada's role in liberating African-American slaves post-1833, but know nothing of the slavery practiced in Canada for centuries by English and French-Canadians pre-1833."
Source
Okay, I may be a liiiittle biased about the "awesome" thing, Dr. Nelson was one of my art history profs at McGill, and she is seriously one of the best ones I had.
Black History should not begin and end with Black History month.
Charmaine Nelson, a professor of art history at McGill, is the editor of Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada.
Published by Cambridge Scholars, it's a scholarly work, born out of a conference on Canadian Black Studies held at McGill a few years back.
But the topics are as different as the black people who inhabit this country, their viewpoints, experiences and legacy -- whether they be the descendants of colonials slaves, railway porters or 1960s activists or first-generation immigrants.
"I am hopeful that the book will generally shed more light on issues of black historical and contemporary presence in Canada and highlight the distinctiveness of Canada's heterogeneous black communities, which are too often subsumed by narrow definitions of African-American blackness," Nelson, currently on sabbatical at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), where she's a visiting associate professor in the department of Africology, told me in an email exchange.
Essays cover the gamut from the role of hip hop to the place of blacks in Canada's political system, academia, high art and pop culture.
In All Roads Led to Montreal, for instance, David Austin examines how Montreal, and particularly Sir George Williams University (now part of Concordia, of course) became a magnet for young blacks seeking an education, and a sounding board for their struggles for recognition.
Nelson cites the discussion of "academic racism" as an important one which has too long been overlooked.
"The under-representation of blacks in these positions (as professors, teachers and upper administration) and our mistreatment within educational institutions, needs to be urgently addressed on a national scale."
Nelson blames "the specific function of multiculturalism in Canada" for shutting down discussions about race and racism in Canada, whether it relates to black, aboriginal or other people of colour.
"This silence is a facet of how Canadians seem to simultaneously deny our cultural histories and off-load them onto the United States," says Nelson.
"Easy examples of this are Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 2009 comment that 'Canada has no colonial history' and the fact that most Canadians know about the Underground Railroad and Canada's role in liberating African-American slaves post-1833, but know nothing of the slavery practiced in Canada for centuries by English and French-Canadians pre-1833."
Source
Okay, I may be a liiiittle biased about the "awesome" thing, Dr. Nelson was one of my art history profs at McGill, and she is seriously one of the best ones I had.