Montreal Slogans and Abstracts (Narrative Analysis)
The slogans and abstracts presented here are a preliminary result of our analysis of the interviews we conducted with members of Black Community Supplementary Education initiatives and organizations (BCSEs). Each interview was analyzed separately using narrative methods. The slogans and abstracts here represent the views of the participants with respect to what they considered to be amiss with the schooling for Black children in their areas;
how their BCSEs exercised agency and intervened in responding to these conditions; and
what it felt like for them to do this work.
*This section of the website attempts to capture the views of the various participants as they shared them with us and what it feels like to them to do BCSE work.
They do not necessarily represent the views of the research team. It is worth remembering that all respondents and their organizations are working within the pervasive climate of antiblackness in Canada and in Canadian educational institutions as well as other prevailing dominant discourses. This context informs both their ingenuity and agency as well as how they may be constrained in their interventions and/or their varying ideas of what Black futures should look like and what it might take to get there.
Click on each name for a deeper dive into each participant’s insights.
“Our community needs something tangible to say “That’s ours.” That will happen through businesses and real estate. The old folks don’t get that!”
“Let's not pathologize our communities and reproduce elitism. Let's build on our richness.”
“Representation is missing in what we teach and who teaches it. We need to be allowed to focus on Black students without having to justify it.“
“Government funding limits our ability to build programs on our own terms, we need to adopt an Afrocentric approach.”
“BCSEs are not here to fix failures through summer school, we are here to work all year round and push for radical change at the policy level. ”
“Working in BCSEs allowed me to sniff out the subtle things that the school system chose not to see.”
“The archives don’t lie: BCSEs began with mothers. They united in crisis and navigated expected personality differences. ”
“I became a troublemaker for refusing racist expectations for our children and challenging a system that mistook Caribbean languages for deficiency. I was OK with that.”
“BCSE work was a source of pride for us. We were strategic in filling the gaps that the system did not.”
“As long as funding dictates/directs the discourse, the struggle remains incomplete.“
“Let us stay with our Black children and help them. Let us help each other advance in our careers. “
“I want to see more vision and strategy, not more spaghetti dinners.”
“We women made invisible sacrifices to keep BCSEs running where there were no opportunities for Black kids. Our men were too caught up in status instead of fulfilling their appropriate traditional leadership roles. ”
“BCSEs should value participation and culture, otherwise they will end up with a toxic atmosphere and will reproduce colonial and competitive dynamics.”
Running in politics is a dirty game, but we need to take our seat at the table.
“BCSEs help students and their families to navigate the system, while at the same time trying to change the system.”
“The need was there, it has always been there, and we in the community saw it long before the government recognized it. We were innovators in creatively meeting those needs. “
“Seeing Black students ignored was frustrating; I had to hold staff accountable; the work was sometimes embarrassing and painful. ”
“We were community before we went after wealthy funders. White saviours don’t understand systemic racism or our vision. I’m tired of having to represent our communities as “in-need” to get funding.“
“One could say that our struggle is not to help students do the homework assigned by a racist teacher, but rather to drive out the racist teacher.”
“We aim to take a holistic approach to all of our educational initiatives. We need to address systemic problems systemically.”
“BCSEs were never about gentle work. We had to be aggressive and assertive and fight for our children every step of the way. ”
