Research Seminar + Reflection on Remembrance Day
Happy to be sharing my research at the first Doctoral Special Seminar Topic (DSST) on Community Music Therapy of Laurier’s inaugural PhD in music program. Yesterday, I spoke about KW Sentro’s operations and outlined the 8 chapters of my manuscript-based dissertation. Looking forward to dialoguing with my colleagues and experts in the field.
I’m learning in my doctoral studies that the reason decolonization is taking such a long time to accomplish is not because it inherently takes a long time, but rather because the White people in power struggle with the inevitable reality that Whiteness must be de-centered and they refuse to relinquish their power and benefits from White privilege. Many Black, Indigenous, and racialized (BIR) scholars have been articulating equitable ways forward for decades but White scholars continue to be ill-informed, defensive, and difficult overall. I’m so grateful for this knowledge and my ability to articulate it.
On this Remembrance Day weekend, I acknowledge that nationalism and nation-building are White supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, colonial, and racist ideologies used to put down and keep Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities (BIR) divided in order to uphold the White racial order. It is especially problematic when the governments of so-called democratic and free societies financially and militarily support genocidal regimes and stand in solidarity with the oppressors, justifying that bombing and killing thousands of children is called “defence” and continue to affirm their right to do so. Nothing about mass forced displacement or bombing hospitals and refugee camps is about defence.
Remember when the world rallied together for Ukraine? All the money that was raised? All the traditional Ukrainian songs that were sung? Why are White Ukrainian lives worth speaking up for but brown Palestinian lives are not? Remember the silence and ignorance around the Syrian war? The silence around Palestinian deaths is loud. The silence for Venezuela and migration from South America is loud. The West’s historical exploitation of Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers is loud. The list of races Canada oppresses is long. Need I go on?
Shout out to Rupi Kaur for turning down Kamala Harris’ and Joe Biden’s invitation to celebrate Diwali at the White House. What a tone-deaf request of a conscious racialized author, activist, and ally. Happy to know that she stands in solidarity with Palestine. Read more here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzUBPx8xwMp/?igshid=MWxtbDRmNmYyYjFlcg==
To defensive White people, please direct your emotional and irrational reactions to this post to fellow White people who are willing to put up with you. This racialized guy has no emotional bandwidth for White fragility. To racialized folks, considering the dynamics of oppression, we should not be divided on this issue. This affects all of us, bodies and minds.
Thx.
