Welcome to Litsy!

Another gloomy #audiowalk today, with essential reading in my ears. All Canadians need this book.

A dense, thorough history of state-sanctioned anti-Black racism in Canada: slavery, segregation, policing, education, poverty, immigration, education, and the child welfare system. An infuriating, essential read. I learned a ton. My biggest takeaway is that many Canadian institutions/laws/policies purporting to address "race neutral" problems are in reality functioning to uphold white supremacy and control/criminalize Black people (among others).

Maynard is talking about immigration and deportation practices in Canada that target and forcibly remove Black people but do not actually address the supposed problem of "illegal" immigration. Maynard has also addressed drug laws in the same way: no efficacy in overall stopping drugs being consumed, sold, or imported but very effective in controlling Black and other marginalized people who are drug users or are selling/importing small amounts.

This book makes me want to run down the middle of the street screaming, which is entirely what it's supposed to do, I think.

"The realities of Black life in contemporary Canada remain shrouded behind a carefully curated national mythology of racial equality."

"Multiculturalism is better understood as part of an historically continuous practice of outward tolerance, of trying to contain Blackness through discourses of Canadian benevolence."

#BlackBooks #BlackVoices

Next book club picks!

Full of facts and statistics/

Worked on a little something while listening to the tagged audiobook. The brown is the finished product.

Books I‘ve added to my TBR.

I made a list of mostly Canadian books about (anti)racism. I want to counteract white Canadians‘ self-congratulatory tendency to compare Canada favourably to the US and say we don‘t have racism, or we never had slavery, or police brutality doesn‘t happen. Not true. Read these books! https://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.com/2020/06/01/10-canadian-books-about-racism...

This week's library haul.

So many books dealing with anti-Black racism are about the American context only, so I'm very grateful that Robyn Maynard has written this book focusing on Canada.
#BlackBooks