Anti-Black racism efforts in higher education topic of virtual UWindsor discussion

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The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis nearly two years ago and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests spurred universities — including the University of Windsor — to introduce anti-Black racism initiatives, many of which are well underway today.

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While support for Black students, new curricula, and the cluster-hiring of Black faculty show “it’s a really exciting time and a time of great promise,” there’s still more work to be done. That’s according to, Annette Henry, an education professor cross-appointed to the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice, who gave a virtual lecture Friday to cap off a distinguished speakers series presented by the University of Windsor’s Office of the Vice President of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

“Institutions of higher education are especially prone to reproducing inequalities,” said Henry, whose scholarship examines race, class, language, gender and culture in teaching and learning. Racism is “deeply entrenched within university culture.”

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For Black faculty in academic institutions, it’s also a “very taxing time,” she said. Black faculty are often charged with sitting on these new anti-Black racism committees and hiring taskforces.

“There’s a kind of a racial taxation, a burden of diversity,” Henry said.

“There are so few of us doing this work, and there is a need in so many arenas.”

In the summer of 2020, the University of Windsor launched its 20-member Anti-Black Racism Task Force as part of a broader initiative to dismantle systemic racism on campus. In the following months, it announced a strategy to recruit 12 Black faculty members by the end of the 2023 hiring cycle, as well as an Anti-Black Racism Initiatives Fund, offering $10,000 grants for research, teaching, learning and curriculum projects, and student leadership opportunities.

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While “we know hiring a cluster of people is not a quick fix” and is “only one gap we can address,” Henry said it’s an important strategy that has “potential to increase the number of Black faculty and diversity the discipline.

“It promises positive effects for the universities involved. These affect what we can teach, who we might attract as faculty, and students’ desires to people who look like them and who validate their backgrounds and their work,” she said.

Henry invited participants to consider “how wonderful” it would be for students to have more curricular options and see themselves represented “and also understand the Black diaspora from their own informed perspectives.” Black graduate students in the faculty of education at the University of British Columbia she’s interviewed for research studies said the curriculum was Eurocentric and did not speak to their experiences.

“Good things are happening and we have to celebrate that,” Henry said.

However, “structural change is needed. Until then, the systemic racism will continue to be manifested in the colonial ways that Black Canadian faculty are disregarded.”

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