Experts: Black History Month | February 2020
Every February, Canadians are invited to participate in Black History Month festivities to honour the legacy of Black Canadians, past and present.
Here are some experts from McGill University that can provide comment on this topic:
Philip S. S. Howard, Assistant Professor, Department of Integrated Studies in Education
“Black History Month is one of many opportunities that should be taken to highlight stories about Black life—both stories of pain, and stories of joy. These stories are too often erased or distorted, and without them, we cannot completely understand the world in which we live. Since history is always being made, it is also important during Black History Month to carefully consider the conditions of Black life today with a keen vision toward what it might require to eradicate anti-Black racism and to fully promote Black freedom.”
Philip S. S. Howard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in and the co-editor of the collection African Canadian Leadership: Continuity, Transition, and Transformation published by the University of Toronto Press. He works in the areas of critical race studies, anti-colonial studies, and Black Canadian Studies/antiblackness in education. His current research projects investigate contemporary Canadian blackface as a postracialist phenomenon, and Black people’s agency in educational contexts in Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal.
philip.howard [at] mcgill.ca (English)
Myrna Lashley, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
"I look forward to the day when the history of black people in Canada is so incorporated in the Canadian zeitgeist that it is viewed in the same manner as the histories of all ethnic groups which make up the Canadian mosaic."
Myrna Lashley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University as well as an adjunct researcher at the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit of the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. She was a director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and has also served on the Comité consultatif sur les relations Interculturelles et Interraciales de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal. She is the Chair of the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security, as well as Vice-chair of the board of the École Nationale de Police du Québec. Her current research interests are in cultural aspects of youth mental health, and cultural aspects of radicalization leading to violence.
myrnalashley [at] gmail.com (English)
