cityscape
Toronto Universities Need to Talk about Race
Three local universities have the opportunity to raise an important conversation, should they accept the challenge.
Photo by Howard Yang Photography from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
Almost exactly 11 years ago I received, in my frosh week orientation kit at the University of Toronto, a purple refrigerator magnet that taught me the exact definition of sexual consent. “‘No’ means no; ‘drunk’ means no; ‘yes’ means yes,” read the decal, which had been distributed to every new student on campus. It was the first time I had concretely seen lain out what I’d only ever intuited: that everybody’s boundaries need to be checked and respected in order to maintain a healthy community. As an American teenager, this tiny piece of information seemed revolutionary. Beyond its practical imposition of personal accountability, the consent magnet conveyed an ethos of in-it-togetherness that, to me, seemed emblematic of the new society I’d stepped into.
I share this anecdote because it was one of a few impressions that made me recognize the concrete ways in which Canada—and more specifically, Toronto—strove to foster a culture of co-operation and respect that the U.S. simply didn’t. It’s easy to forget that in 2004, consent was not yet widely understood as the most basic ingredient in preventing sexual assault. And as it happens, many of my girlfriends who went to schools in the U.S. were advised to adopt a “buddy system” approach to protecting their bodies instead, the administrative equivalent of “don’t say we didn’t warn you!” scoffed through a chomped cigar.
A decade later, the University of Toronto administration’s response to last week’s online threats of violence, directed at campus feminists, has been reassuring. The university responded by increasing campus security and issuing statements of support. A union-organized rally in solidarity with the university’s feminist population this week received vocal support from across the community. And good that it did; when the safety of students is threatened, it is only right that staff respond with concern and compassion.
And yet, as posters advertising a “White Students Union” cropped up across three Toronto campuses, response has been more muted. In fairness, officials at York, Ryerson, and U of T have all ordered that the posters be removed. “We don’t condone this sort of thing,” said a Ryerson spokesperson. “It’s offensive.” And so, the posters are being reported and removed with fingers crossed that they’ll be forgotten, regarded as an extremist fringe group’s impolite action. End of discussion, right? Don’t feed the trolls, blah blah.
Only recently has it become a matter of widely acknowledged fact that where race is concerned, we in Toronto are not quite in it together. While the disproportionate over-policing of communities of colour has been a hot topic of conversation in the past year, many of us are only beginning to wrap our heads around how core institutions, from education to housing, perpetuate white supremacy beyond newspaper-headline talking points every day, all the time. We’re still living in a world where phrases like “old-stock Canadians” get thrown around in federal leader debates without even the shadow of a scare quote. We have something nastier on our hands than a few posters.
This is what white supremacy looks like and, like it or not, we’re all de facto members of that particular club. An opportunity has arisen for university administrations to talk frankly and openly about their own roles in maintaining that status quo, to respond with the same outpouring of support and compassion so recently offered the university’s threatened feminists. There could be, oh I don’t know, an official statement released by any or all of the affected universities explaining why exactly a White Students Union is offensive when other ethnic groups are able to have their own sanctioned clubs, for those who seem not to understand the difference. The universities could open up a conversation, in co-operation and respect, and maybe even add to their collection of frosh week fridge magnets.