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Background/Context: Unconscious racial bias (URB) can be a pernicious form of racism. In light of increased awareness of and research on the subject, URB work has become a key focus of equity work in health care, education, and corporate contexts as part of broader calls for racial justice. In Canada, targeting URB in education has become a policy priority at the national, provincial, and school board levels. The role of individual and organizational URB is now widely recognized in policy as central to equitable outcomes in schooling; however, research is limited on how to engage these forms of racism in educational contexts. Prevailing approaches to URB work in schools often include truncated one-off workshops, which leave unaddressed the connections between the individual racial biases, and the operations of white supremacy and racism at the institutional, systemic, and structural levels. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: While URB is increasingly well-understood by social psychologists, there has been limited engagement from critical scholars working in areas such as critical race theory (CRT), anti-colonialism, and critical whiteness studies—despite the popularity of interrogating URB as an anti-racism strategy in education. CRT in education has laid bare and problematized the central function of schooling in the safeguarding and management of white supremacy. This project emerged from a dual recognition of URB as a productive entry point for racial awareness and anti-racism work, alongside a significant concern about the failure of mainstream URB discourse to address structural racism and white supremacy—masking at times the deeper ways that Euro-colonial racism underpins social relations in contemporary U.S., Canadian, European, and other contexts. This work seeks to address these limitations in the design of the study through deep work with participants. Specifically, the study sought to understand better the impacts of reading critical texts focusing on systemic, structural, and institutional racism on teachers' understandings of their own racial biases, as well as teachers' perspectives on the impacts of reading critical texts in terms of their professional practices. Research Design: This article reports on the findings of a 10-month study with secondary teachers in Toronto, Canada, focusing on critical approaches to racial bias mitigation in education. In addition to asking participants to enact a series of URB mitigation strategies developed in the field of social psychology, this study also required participants to read and reflect on one of the following critical anti-racism nonfiction texts: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (2018); Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard (2017); Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, edited by Mica Pollock (2008); Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada by Paulette Regan (2014); and Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects by Christina Sharpe (2010). The project was designed using multiple data sources from participants, including electronic survey responses, ongoing journaling/reflection, a midpoint check-in questionnaire, and a final interview. These multiple entry points, as well as the duration of the project, aimed to go beyond the taken-for-granted and toward deeper understanding over time. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings suggest that reading these works impacted teachers' understandings of race and racism in terms of their teaching, as well as in terms of their personal relationships to race and racism, increasing their inclination and ability to address race and anti-racism. This work allowed for critical reflection to seep into the most intimate and invisible moments of operationalized whiteness in the professional and personal spheres of participants. This suggests an important complementarity between teacher intervention practices emerging from social psychology, and the introduction and engagement of critical anti-racist and anti-colonial texts in terms of teachers' work for racial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding data on race, racialized populations, and anti-racism in Canada can be a complex process when conducting research. One source of data is the Census of Canada which has been collecting sociodemographic data since 1871. However, the collection of racial, ethnic, or Indigenous data has changed throughout the years and from Census to Census. In response to the need for more support in finding ethno-racial and Indigenous data, the Ontario Council of University Libraries' Ontario Data Community has created an online guide to provide guidance, in part, about the terminology used for Indigenous and racialized identities over time in the Census. In this article, the modifications to how ethno-racial origin questions have been asked, and the ongoing changes to sociocultural perceptions impacting the Census are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds on research that found a significant lack of racial diversity in Canadian university kinesiology programs. We extend previous findings by including the experiences of students who reveal how whiteness structures every aspect of their kinesiology education. We employ Critical Race Theory and theories of whiteness within a case study of eight kinesiology faculties in Canada. The mixed methods data collection included: (a) analysis of website photos and anti-racism documents to determine the perceived racial diversity and anti-racism priority; and (b) semi-structured interviews with five undergraduate students from one kinesiology program to analyze their experiences with whiteness. We found (1) white privilege was evident through an overrepresentation of white bodies among the professoriate, overlooking whiteness in research and teaching, and a dearth of policies targeting anti-racism; and (2) that white social dominance was prevalent but made invisible in student culture, which allowed the needs and experiences of racialized and international students to be ignored. Eurocentric ideologies of meritocracy, individualism, and scientific objectivity that reflect the values of the dominant group create a white racial frame that remains unnamed but centered. The aim of this research paper is to further inform how whiteness operates in kinesiology programs. We connect student experiences to whiteness theories and propose recommendations to guide the dismantling of whiteness in kinesiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores multicultural politics of 'anti-racism' through a detailed and contextualized study of the 1993 March 21 campaign in Canada's largest federal administrative tribunal, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). I argue that multicultural state politics thwart serious engagement with anti-racist critique, and drastically reconfigure the meanings and consequences of anti-racism. Within multicultural state politics, anti-racism quickly devolves to apolitical recycling of diversity discourses, and benign celebrations of cultural festivities. As I will show, state multiculturalism is a cheap institutional production that heavily relies on the unpaid labour of racialized civil servants, and leaves the status quo largely intact. Ironically, multicultural celebrations of diversity produce novel opportunities for racialization and racial exploitation. While the celebrations go on, relations of racial dominance are reproduced and protected from critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antiracism research often examines how stigmatized groups transform the meanings associated with their group. A complementary approach analyses the tactics that dominant and subordinate groups use to defend or advance their ‘group positions’ in situations that threaten the status quo. A case study of the proposed relocation of an Aboriginal child welfare facility to a rural Ontario township sheds light on both processes. Before rejecting the proposal, white residents and municipal councillors used delaying tactics, searched for race-neutral justifications, offered unsolicited advice, created new rules, and censured ‘traitors’. The Native agency (and its few white ‘allies’), guided by traditional decision-making practices, initially tried to provide ‘neutral’ information, stay positive, and emphasize common interests. When these tactics failed, they considered others before foregoing the opportunity to appeal to an independent tribunal. Ultimately, this case shows how laissez-faire frames and small-town dynamics can limit the choice and effectiveness of antiracist tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the paradoxes of Toronto’s experience of immigrant and minority political incorporation. The city once synonymous with ethnic homogeneity is now among the world’s most multicultural urban centers. The city, which proclaims “Diversity Our Strength” as its official motto, has a poor record of electing immigrants and minorities to public office. And the city, whose municipal council is overwhelmingly composed of White, European-origin politicians, has an exemplary record of promoting inclusion, equity, antiracism, and human rights in its policies and programs. The article analyzes these ambiguities of governing immigrant city Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]