Juno News - Racially segregated events in Canada？

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

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