Scholar Cheryl Thompson discusses racist stereotypes, including the words used by comedians like Dave Chappelle, pictured here, in Toronto, in 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill
In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, host Vinita Srivastava and scholar Cheryl Thompson dive into the meaning of the n-word and the 150 years of racism embedded in it.
This illustration of Little Eva and Uncle Tom by Hammatt Billings appears in the first edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’
(Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive)
This is the full transcript for Don’t Call Me Resilient, episode 1: What’s in a word? How to confront 150 years of racial stereotypes and language.
Bill Robinson dancing with Shirley Temple in ‘The Little Colonel.’
(20th Century Fox)
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ the best seller of the 19th century, is not a relic from the past. The complex Uncle Tom figure still has a hold over Black politics.
Fists raised in solidarity for George Floyd in Charlotte, N.C.
(Unsplash/Clay Banks)
Don’t Call Me Resilient is a provocative podcast about race that goes in search of solutions for those things no one should have to be resilient for.
Tubman, left, with a few of the former slaves she helped escape.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Although millions voted to put her face on the bill in an online poll, many still don’t know the story of her life and the role faith played in it.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
My research shows that white trainee teachers are willing to learn and to bring black history into their teaching, but need support to do so.
Civil rights leader Wyatt Tee Walker addresses a crowd at St. Phillips AME Church in Atlanta.
Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
In a sermon two weeks after MLK’s funeral, civil rights leader, Wyatt Tee Walker, urged young seminarians to be hopeful and take action for making change happen. His sermon has valuable lessons today.
Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future.
Marvel Studios
Afrofuturism allows Black people to not only imagine their distant futures but also how to survive the anti-Black present.
John (Army) Howard was Canada’s first Black Olympian and competed at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
(Canadian Olympic Committee)
Canada’s pioneering Black athletes may be unknown to many, but their efforts paved the way for others who went on to perform at the highest levels.
John Marrion depicted here was part of the 104th (New Brunswick) Regiment of Foot. The 104th soldiers once snowshoed over a thousand kilometres in about fifty days during the War of 1812.
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art/Canadian War Museum/CWM 19810948-008 (NO REUSE)
The Canadian soldiers who took part in one of the biggest feats of the War of 1812 included Black soldiers of the 104th New Brunswick Regiment of Foot.
Josh Gibson slides into home during the 1944 Negro Leagues All-Star Game.
Bettmann/Getty Images
While segregation was a shameful period in baseball history, the Negro Leagues were a resounding success and an immense source of pride for black America.
A studio group portrait of the Fisk University Jubilee singers.
James Wallace Black/American Missionary Association
Spirituals were created out of the experience of enslaved people in the US. They weren’t songs of anger – but of an abiding belief in the victory of good over evil.
African American Vernacular English is part and parcel of Black identity. Its distinctive linguistic features are
denigrated — wrongly.
(Shutterstock)
African American Vernacular English is part and parcel of Black identity. Its distinctive linguistic features are — wrongly — denigrated.
Volunteers in Iowa ahead of the Iowa caucus listening to a speaker on Jan. 25, 2020.
Stephen Maturen/ AFP via Getty images
Schools and colleges can teach political hope that can help citizens make better choices.
Many African Americans made education a high priority after the Civil War.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Many historians and other scholars say what Americans have traditionally learned about the complex period that followed the Civil War falls short of what we should know.
The Collective of Black Artists (COBA) has been supporting African and Caribbean dance in Canada for 25 years.
COBA/Yosseif Haddad
COBA, the Collective of Black Artists has been working to introduce Canadian audiences to African and Caribbean dances for 25 years.
When it comes to wealth, black families still lag far behind in the U.S.
Twinsterphoto/shutterstock.com
Thanks to a long history of exclusionary government programs, the typical black family now has only 10 cents for every dollar held by the typical white family.
Rosemary Brown, then a member of the B.C. legislature, speaks at a protest against pornography in downtown Vancouver in 1984.
(CP PHOTO/ Chuck Stoody)
Do Canadians like their activism to be communicated in the safest and blandest manner possible?
Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen are on this short list of enduring must-read writers.
Left to right: Nobel Prize, U.S. Library of Congress, Yale archive
Here is a small list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century.
The historical depiction of ‘the mammy’ is a racist stereotype, with an enduring impact. Hattie McDaniel (right) won an Oscar for her role in ‘Gone with the Wind’ with Vivien Leigh (left).
Selznick International Pictures
Stereotypes of Black women continue to impact how they are treated in institutions.