Juno News - Racially segregated events in Canada？

What on earth is going on with the increase in racially segregated events happening in Canada and particularly on Canadian university campuses? In this episode of Campus Watch, we discuss the phenomenon of Black-only events happening at Canadian universities and colleges.

00:00:00.000 What on earth is going on with the increase in racially segregated events happening in Canada

00:00:06.040 and particularly on Canadian university campuses? Yep, you heard me right. No, we're not talking

00:00:12.400 about white-only events. We're talking about black-only events that are appearing at a lot

00:00:18.080 of universities across Canada. Here at True North, we run a series called Campus Watch where we

00:00:22.940 write about some of the more bizarre or quirky or just generally problematic things that are

00:00:28.600 happening at university and college campuses. And in recent weeks, we've written a number of stories

00:00:34.100 about racially segregated events happening on campus. What's going on here? Well, the basic

00:00:38.780 answer is that February is Black History Month. And of course, there are events that are more about

00:00:43.600 celebrating, acknowledging, recognizing various issues to do with Black History Month. And

00:00:48.900 naturally, a number of those events will be geared more towards a predominantly black audience. Okay,

00:00:53.240 fine. Black History Month is certainly nothing new. But what does appear to be new is putting these 0.98

00:00:58.420 qualifiers on who can attend the events and saying that this is for a black identifying audience

00:01:05.080 only. Those sorts of phrases are what they use there. Is this something that we're going to see

00:01:10.340 become more commonplace? A lot of people just aren't aware of what's happening on university campuses

00:01:15.320 because, well, they're adults and they're out in the world not paying attention. It's one of the

00:01:18.960 reasons we have the Campus Watch feature to say, hey guys, here's what's happening on campus. And

00:01:23.340 I think as we've learned historically, some things that start in academia, they become writ large and

00:01:28.820 they become broader phenomenon elsewhere. Now, we did have a broader example of this happening. The

00:01:33.620 National Arts Center in Ottawa, a cultural institution, putting on a black-only evening

00:01:39.020 of theater for one production of a play they have going on. And there was a lot of public outcry. A lot

00:01:44.000 of people saying, what? We don't feel very good about this. Seriously, asking a lot of questions about,

00:01:48.860 well, what if a white person does purchase a ticket? Are they allowed to show up? Or if there is a

00:01:53.360 mixed-race couple who would like to attend the event together? Is someone going to be barred from

00:01:56.980 going? I mean, a lot of head-scratchers, people saying this just doesn't feel right. And National

00:02:02.040 Arts Center doing a bit of a backtracking on it. And that event is no longer happening, at least to the

00:02:06.700 degree that they had previously described it. So, are we going to see a backlash about what's going on

00:02:11.500 at university campuses? Is this just a flash-in-the-pan thing that's just happening this year,

00:02:15.540 maybe a bit next year, and then we'll forget about it? Or is it a sign of things to come?

00:02:19.720 I think most people would say they're not crazy about seeing a greater prevalence of these events.

00:02:24.860 But we shall see, because right now, they're happening at university, and there's a lot of them.

Juno News - February 12, 2023

Racially segregated events in Canada？

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