Dear Dr. Albanese and the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Black Faculty and Staff Caucus at Queen’s University support the statement and demands put forward by the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) regarding the racial profiling of Shelby McPhee at the Social Science and Humanities Congress/University of British Columbia (Spring 2019). We are a group of scholars whose research, teaching and activism actively critiques and undoes race thinking and practices of racism while focusing on how black studies seeks out and engenders liberation struggles. We are a group of scholars whose research, teaching, and activism are abolitionist. We are a group of scholars who are keenly aware that the university and university spaces—such as academic conferences—are hostile to non-normative communities, non-normative perspectives, and non-normative experiences. We are a group of scholars who have fought within and outside our own institution to unsettle white supremacy by centering the intellectual work of black people, indigenous people, and people of colour. We are a group of scholars who are aware that the thorny questions of equity and diversity are unfinished. The unjust and racist profiling of Shelby McPhee signals for us not a surprise or a disappointment, but a rolling out of ongoing intolerances and colonial logics that have always shaped the Canadian academy. We, like the BCSA, will continue to recognize and honour existing spaces of resistance inside, across, and outside the university. We, like the BCSA, will continue to fight for future sites of liberation inside, across, and outside university campuses.
We stand in solidarity,
Queen’s University Black Faculty and Staff Caucus