Colour Matters: Essays on the Experiences, Education, and Pursuits of Black Youth

by Carl E. James

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Published: March 2021

Product Details

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Page Count: 390 Pages

Illustrations: 11 figures

Dimensions: 6.10 x 9.20

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390 Pages, 6.10 x 9.20 x 1.20 in, 11 figures

Hardcover

$79.00

ISBN: 9781487508678

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Based on research conducted in Black communities, along with over thirty years of teaching experience, Colour Matters presents a collection of essays that engages educators, youth workers, and policymakers to think about the ways in which race shapes the education, aspirations, and achievements of Black Canadians. Informed by the current socio-political Canadian landscape, Colour Matters covers topics relating to the lives of Black youth, with particular, though not exclusive, attention to young Black men in the Greater Toronto Area.

The essays reflect the issues and concerns of the past thirty years, and question what has changed and what has remained the same. Each essay is accompanied by an insightful response from a scholar engaging with topics such as immigration, schooling, athletics, mentorship, and police surveillance. With the perspectives of scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, Colour Matters provides provocative narratives of Black experiences that alert us to what more might be said, or said differently, about the social, cultural, educational, political, and occupational worlds of Black youth in Canada. This book probes the ongoing need to understand, in nuanced and complex ways, the marginalization and racialization of Black youth in a time of growing demands for a societal response to anti-Black racism.

Carl E. James is a professor in the Faculty of Education at York University.

Foreword
D. Alissa Trotz

Introduction: Exploring the Social and Educational Experiences of Black Canadian Youth Over Time

1. Historical and Social Context of the Schooling and Education of African Canadians
Response: Complicating Gender and Racial Identities within the Study of Educational History
Funke Aladejebi

2. Generational Differences in Black Students’ School Performance
Response: It’s the Same with Black British Caribbean Pupils
Shirley Anne Tate

3. “To make a better future”: Narrative of a 1.5 Generation Caribbean-Canadian
Response: Using Gender to Think Through Migration, Love, and Student Success
Amoaba Gooden

4. Students “at risk”: Stereotypes and the Schooling of Black Boys
Response: Black Lives Matter in the USA and Canada
Joyce E. King

5. More than Brains and Hard Work: The Aspirations and Career Trajectories of Two Young Black Men
Response: What Folks Don’t Get: Race and Class Matter
Annette M. Henry

6. Class, Race, and Schooling in the Performance of Black Male Athleticism
Response: Basketball’s Black Creative Labour and the Mitigation of Anti-Black Schooling
Mark V. Campbell

7. Troubling Role Models: Seeing Racialization in the Discourse Relating to “Corrective Agents” for Black Males
Response: Black Role Models and Mentorship Under Racial Capitalism
Sam Tecle

8. “Up to No Good”: Black on the Streets and Encountering Police
Response: It Could Have Been Written Today: A Montrealer’s Reflection
Adelle Blackett

9. “Colour Matters”: Suburban Life as Social Mobility and its High Cost for Black Youth
Response: Respectability Politics and the Search for Upward Mobility in Canada
Andrea A. Davis

10. Toward Equity in Education for Black Students
Response: “I will treat all my students with respect”: The Limits to Good Intentions
Leanne Taylor

Epilogue
Michele A. Johnson

Acknowledgements

Biographies of Contributors/Respondents

"In this insightful new collection of essays, James has presented a complex, and often disturbing, portrait of the educational experiences of Black students in Canada. Stereotyping, micro-aggressions, lowered expectations, and obstacles of all kinds obstruct the dreams and aspirations of too many. For those who seek to understand and intervene to make education a resource for equity and justice, this volume will be an invaluable resource."
Pedro A. Noguera, Dean, University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education

"These essays tell a story of over two decades of continuous Black struggles in Canada and elsewhere for justice. Told largely through encounters with formal educational institutions, Colour Matters plots the intractable nature of anti-Black racism in those institutions. James does not end there, though – he also shows how students, parents, and communities produce change and will continue to do so. These essays are an academic biography of sorts, mapping James’s own intellectual journey as researcher and advocate. This is an achievement."
Rinaldo Walcott, Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute, and Associate Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto