As such, I stand by anti-oppressive organizers. I would like to offer up some of my own experiences with organizing, in order to shed a little more light on the situation.

A very good starting point for this discussion has to do with realizing that not all activism is organizing, and not all organizing is anti-oppressive organizing. One does not have to subscribe to an anti-oppressive framework to consider themselves an activist or an organizer, and as such, it’s important to not throw all these groupings under any one label. Additionally, not everyone who works in anti-oppressive organizing subscribes to radical politics. Lumping miscellaneous campus organizations into this ‘rad’ bubble is inaccurate, subjective, and, at the end of the day, means nothing.

One does not have to subscribe to an anti-oppressive framework to consider themselves an activist or an organizer, and as such, it’s important to not throw all these groupings under any one label.

Just as it’s inaccurate to lump all different kinds of organizing together, it’s also inaccurate to assume that we’re all offended at the drop of a hat. First of all, I’d like people to stop assuming offence the moment when I ask someone to not use certain terminology, because the majority of the time, I’m not offended. Assuming so means you do not understand my response at all. There is a huge difference between using terminology that has been deemed insulting by social consensus, and using terminology which is historically and presently used to deprive people of their humanity and equal standing in society. When this terminology is employed in conversation and debates, the effect, regardless of the intent of its usage, is that the word leverages power, which is unacceptable because no one has the right to leverage power. Trying to distract from what’s going on by attempting to make the issue about me, implying that I should be embarrassed if someone thinks I’m ‘too serious’ or that I ‘can’t laugh at myself,’ doesn’t work either.

So when I ask someone not to use certain words, or am curt when engaging with someone whom I’ve known to employ incorrect language before, it is because I am perplexed by a power play taking place in front of my face, not because I’m offended. I am not just going to stand by and watch someone overtly try to leverage power against others or myself. The negative impact of oppression and discrimination that stems from leveraging power begins somewhere, and it has to end somewhere. So if it’s starting with you, why shouldn’t it end with me?

To be honest though, I’m not sure why people are choosing to be so reactionary when asked to change their vocabulary just a little. First and foremost, people have the right to expect people to use the vocabulary by which they choose to identify themselves, as opposed to using the word forced upon them by a random white dude à la Christopher Columbus.

Additionally, language evolves on all topics all the time. The only reason we view some evolutions as more difficult than others is because they are not commonly discussed in the mainstream. In short, if it’s not an evolution that rich cis white guys care about, the mainstream is less likely to value it as well.

So when I ask someone not to use certain words, or am curt when engaging with someone whom I’ve known to employ incorrect language before, it is because I am perplexed by a power play taking place in front of my face, not because I’m offended.

Not having to inconvenience oneself for others is an unearned comfort and an unfair advantage in today’s world. Inequity persists for this very reason, because someone gains an advantage from it. This mentality trickles down to maintaining the most inane comforts, such as defending one’s alleged ‘right’ to refer to sex workers as ‘prostitutes’ even by mistake. From this germinates the argument that sex workers should feel grateful that people refer to them as ‘prostitutes’ instead of ‘hookers’ or ‘whores.’ Why should someone be grateful for not having their profession as inappropriately misidentified as it could be? Especially when this is a basic level of common courtesy that the average human enjoys, without even having to think about it. These changes in vocabulary are not trends, but representations of the evolving needs of different communities.

Speaking of people who organize, we can’t be on call to educate y’all all the time about all the things! That’s not our job. Just like other people at McGill, I have a job where I actually get paid for the things I do, in addition to dealing with school, social commitments, family, and organizing.

Sometimes, when I’m having a really shitty day, it may not bring me extreme pleasure and the utmost joy to put in the emotional labour and time that it can take to have discussions – however well-intentioned – about anti-oppressive framework and theory, let alone to deal with people who ask to be educated but then end up arguing with me and wasting my time.

Not having to inconvenience oneself for others is an unearned comfort and an unfair advantage in today’s world.

Due to these experiences, I’m wary of pretty much anyone who’s coming to me on an individual basis to ask for education. There are hundreds of events centred on social justice issues happening on campus. These people can attend any one of these events, and ask their questions there. Better yet, they could get in contact with one of these organizations, via an official channel of communication, to pose their questions and to learn. This is why self-education is so necessary. It’s fun, it shows commitment to social justice, and it means you don’t have to deal with a potentially tired and cranky anti-o organizer. Personally, I’ve found the blogs Everyday Feminism and Black Girl Dangerous, and the Facebook page End Colonial Mentality, to have amazing educational content about intersectionality and the language different communities are using, among other things.

At the end of the day, if you don’t want to get on board with the work I do, that’s fine. If your allyship for my cause doesn’t come on my terms, then I don’t want it; just as if I’m organizing with other communities, and my allyship doesn’t come on their terms, then they probably don’t want it. We don’t need unwanted allyship, and to imply anything else is condescending. Not having your precious ‘care’ because I’m not doing things your way doesn’t mean my community and others will be marginalized for the rest of time – mostly because we have this little thing called agency. If this is what you’re bringing to the table then I, along with many others, will just balance the scales on our own.

Margaret Gilligan is a U3 Joint Honours student in World Islamic and Middle East Studies, and Hispanic Studies. To contact her, please email margaret.gilligan@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post Why I’m not offended appeared first on The McGill Daily.

One library that has been particularly affected by the cut to print acquisition funding is the McGill Islamic Studies Library (ISL), given its impressive collection of texts from across the globe that are not available digitally. The ISL would also be particularly inconvenienced by the proposed, haphazard removal of its print sources to off-site storage. While the digitization of resources and a change in the setup of library spaces are not necessarily negative changes in and of their own, it is imperative that these changes are approached for the right reasons and in the right ways, by listening to those who would be directly affected.

According to the vision statement given in the library administration’s 2014 feasibility study, “McGill University’s print collection is used less and less frequently while occupying prime real-estate in downtown Montreal.” The vision statement asserts, “plans need to be developed to relocate the majority of the print collection to appropriate storage while retaining a minimal presence of print books in high demand in the various branches.”

There is an underlying assumption behind these decisions that students want more study space as opposed to access to physical books. Michael DeRamo, a Master’s student at the Institute of Islamic Studies who attended the Islamic Library Advisory Committee meeting on October 30, asserts that we must first question this notion that print collections are being accessed less frequently. “You notice [the administration] did a survey at the end of last semester [asking] ‘what’s your reason for coming to the library?’ “When the results came out, it was like 6 per cent of the people were going to the library to look at books, [and] the vast majority was going to study. Well, they distributed that survey in the middle of exams, so of course everybody is going there to study.”

In order to make room for this study space, McGill libraries would have to move books from their open stacks into off-site storage vaults. However, the proposed process by which the books that allegedly ‘no one uses’ would be selected for storage is faulty at best.

“There [have been] suggestions that there was no opposition to [the closing of the Education Library] or that the library administration hasn’t heard any discontent. […] We have to think about whether this is true or not, whether the closing of libraries like the Education Library is remembered, whether it’s produced a decrease in quality for scholars of education. – Pasha M. Khan, chair in Urdu Language and Culture at the Institute of Islamic Studies

According to DeRamo, “They’re going to look at statistics of the last time a book has been checked out, and the one[s] that [haven’t] been checked out since 1995 will go to the high-volume storage.” Problematizing this, DeRamo added: “But they don’t know if people are using that book in the library, you know, maybe it’s a big book […] You go to the library and use it then put it back on the shelf.”

With regard to structural causes behind these library changes, Frances Calingo, a U3 student in Middle East Studies and Anthropology, told The Daily, “This seems to be a part of greater austerity measures, which makes me very uncomfortable and frankly scared.” Calingo explained, “Part of the austerity measure is cutting back on things that aren’t seen as ‘essential’ or ‘necessary.’ […] What is starting to happen is putting more time and more resources and more money into libraries that are larger and that people think are more used.”

Once libraries are closed, the history around their closures can start to be rewritten. As Pasha M. Khan, the chair in Urdu Language and Culture at the Institute of Islamic Studies, told The Daily when asked about previous library closures, “There [have been] suggestions that there was no opposition to [the closing of the Education Library] or that the library administration hasn’t heard any discontent.” Khan explains, “We have to think about whether this is true or not, whether the closing of libraries like the Education Library is remembered, whether it’s produced a decrease in quality for scholars of education.” Indeed, there was intense protest around the closure of the Education Library.

Part of the problem with the library administration’s approach to ‘improving’ libraries is the underlying assumption on its part that all libraries serve the learning process and contribute to the quality of scholarship in the same ways. While financial strains are a valid concern, a universal approach to all libraries that ignores differences amongst the libraries and dissent from faculty and students is not a viable solution.

While financial strains are a valid concern, a universal approach to all libraries that ignores differences amongst the libraries and dissent from faculty and students is not a viable solution.

In the case of the ISL, for example, its particularity and its importance comes in part from an impressive collection of texts and manuscripts written in Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Urdu, and many other languages besides English or Latin languages, texts that are used and cherished by students and professors alike. Contrary to the feasibility study’s November report, which found that library print sources are not being used, Calingo underscores not only a want but a necessity for print sources, at least in the ISL. “A lot of the places where primary source materials are being produced for our library don’t subscribe to this kind of digitization,” Calingo says.

Similarly, DeRamo notes that “[the ISL] has done a wonderful job of getting all these sources from the Middle East. Usually, these things don’t exist in translation, you can’t buy them [in Montreal].” DeRamo also emphasizes, “We have a lot of people here who work on manuscripts, that work on historical questions, and everybody here works on things that are in other languages. Those are three things that are completely not conducive to digitization, to high-volume storage.”

The digitization movement is more concentrated in Western European and North American countries. The Eurocentric assumption that it is in all libraries’ best interest to digitize ignores the needs of departments at McGill that need resources from places other than Europe and North America.

DeRamo points out that “[Masters students] have come from all over the world to work at this institution, to do research here, because we really think it’s a wonderful collection […] almost one of a kind in the Western hemisphere.” DeRamo continues, “Sometimes we want to feel like the university as a whole recognizes the treasure that is here, in all senses of the word. Architecturally, it’s a treasure on campus; historically, it’s […] the first institution of its kind on the continent, the first Islamic studies institute of any sort, it has a lot of heritage. […] We want to make sure that the university recognizes that.”

The library administration’s feasibility study suggests that “with the relocation of the print collection to appropriate storage, McGill University can re-imagine how spaces are used.” However, the current physical spaces of libraries hold just as much value as the materials that these spaces contain – one cannot discount the experience as a student of just getting to be in a library and working with physical texts. According to Khan, because of the library’s rich history, “students think that it’s equally important for them to interact with physical materials and with the physical space of the ISL given that, again, it’s perhaps the core of the Institute’s history.”

As students, we can continue to get our voices heard by making it known that we do not forget or accept the closure of our campus libraries, nor will we accept any cuts or changes that do not serve our collective needs. We can certainly try to use the tools the library is giving us to communicate by volunteering for their feasibility studies and giving our feedback about libraries.

McGill is has a diverse student body with diverse academic needs. While from a bureaucratic standpoint it may be easier to lump all libraries and their patrons into one category, in the long run, this can only hurt the academic accomplishment of students, and thus that of the university.

The post In defence of our Islamic Studies library appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Arielle Newton, the editor-in-chief of Black Millennial Musings, sums up the main issue in her article “What You Mean By #AllLivesMatter.” “Yes, all lives matter in ideology. But all lives don’t matter in practice. Should society and history tell us, Black lives don’t matter. When the murder of an unarmed teenager goes unpunished, and is further justified, all lives don’t matter. When a white man shoots up a movie theater, kills 12 people, terrorizes a nation, and is still alive […] all lives don’t matter.”

Newton’s observation of social inequities are pretty undeniable, so why is it that there is continued dogmatic rallying around #AllLivesMatter in response to stating that #BlackLivesMatter? The reason is that if the inequities that Newton points out are admitted, the myth of having already obtained an egalitarian and inclusive society free of prejudice would be delegitimized, and revealed to be just that – a myth. So, in order to protect those who benefit from the myth, some people must respond to #BlackLivesMatter by saying #AllLivesMatter. By doing so, they are asserting that it is politically incorrect to focus our attention on the lives of only one group of people. Once #BlackLivesMatter has been silenced, the myth will be safe and sound.

“Yes, all lives matter in ideology. But all lives don’t matter in practice. Should society and history tell us, Black lives don’t matter.”

Furthermore, when the assertion that ‘black lives matter’ is deemed politically incorrect, this in turn silences discussion about why all lives seem to matter only in theory, and not practice. The absence of history from the discussion of whose lives matter, for what reasons certain lives matter, and how this has led to today’s social inequities allows neoliberalism to go even further and brand the assertion that ‘black lives matter’ as ethnocentrism, or ‘reverse-racism’ (yet another myth). This is an attempt not only to silence ‘black lives matter’ activists, and all other activists raising awareness on other issues faced by black communities, but to completely destroy the assertion by equating it with the harm that ‘the real racists’ have inflicted upon black people for centuries. Basically, the myth is claiming that when black people assert that their lives matter, they are subjecting others to the same pain as the pain felt in black communities from a history of oppression and from lived injustices. Such a claim is, of course, complete bullshit.

On the other hand, when it comes to public spectacle, we, white people (I say we, since I am also white), are more than willing to throw our hands up in ‘solidarity,’ getting the cheap thrill of putting on a mask to play the threatened black person. We then cavalierly lower our hands, and in doing so, toss away an entire history to the side – a history of black people raising their hands into the air, with no guarantee it will actually do anything to ensure their safety. We do this once we begin to simply feel threatened, even if in reality there is no such threat to our lives or even well being.

To quote Alicia Garza, one of the co-creators of #BlackLivesMatter, “If you really believe that #AllLivesMatter, you’ll fight like hell for black lives today.”

Spoken-word poet Mwende Katwiwa argues on her blog FreeQthaMighty: “I understand wanting to show up and support, but white people need to understand that this symbolic act of raising your hands in a position of surrender is meant to illustrate how black people are violently targeted by police because of their race. If you don’t experience that, you should not mimic the gesture in an attempt at ‘solidarity.’”

When we put our hands up, we are appropriating not only a history of suffering under disproportionately exerted police and state-sanctioned violence, but a contemporary reality, a living terror, that endures for humans whose very existence has been branded as a threat, no matter how high they throw their hands in the air.

In this sense, saying “all lives matter” and raising your arms send the same message: we will hold our hands up in solidarity with black people, only until it could actually compromise the safety we have as white people to move about untouched in the majority of society’s spaces. We will say that “black lives matter,” but when we start feeling scared that the spotlight is being taken off our white lives for one second, then we begin to protest that ‘All Lives Matter.’ While we try to hide our intentions behind the perceived neutrality of #AllLivesMatter, streaming the rhetoric toward the idea of ‘all’ or ‘everyone’ will inherently lead to a greater focus on white lives, due to higher value placed on white lives by the media and our society’s institutions. Once again, we are using the advantages granted to us by racial constructs that lean in our favour in order to maintain a state of constant self-preservation at the expense of human lives.

When they speak and act to remedy these wrongs, the place of white people is to do nothing more and nothing less than, first and foremost, to listen.

To quote Alicia Garza, one of the co-creators of #BlackLivesMatter, “If you really believe that #AllLivesMatter, you’ll fight like hell for black lives today.” However, when a fight is not your fight, and in fact, your history is the reason this fight exists in the first place, you probably shouldn’t be on the front lines of that fight. As YouTube star chescaleigh says in her video “5 Tips For Being an Ally”: “Speak up, not over. If the fight for equality were a girl group, the ally wouldn’t be the lead singer, or the second lead singer, they’d be Michelle [from Destiny’s Child].” So, if you go to demonstrations, don’t put your hands in the air, and, if a demonstration or event is labelled as black or people of colour (POC) only, respect that. If this still bothers you, remember that you are not being welcomed with open arms into one space for one time, as opposed to being not only actively excluded, but having your physical and mental wellbeing at risk in multiple spaces over the course of history.

Most people are horrified by anti-black police brutality, and other forms of institutionalized and individualized racism that plague our society. However, horror does not trump terror. Nor does it trump trauma; nor the loss of a brother, a mother, a lover, or a friend, to violence committed by police. Black people, and other people from communities disproportionately affected by police violence, have lived experiences and knowledge of this terror that, chances are, people outside of these communities are not going to experience. Hence, when they speak and act to remedy these wrongs, the place of white people is to do nothing more and nothing less than, first and foremost, to listen, and then to engage with our exclusionary communities in order to make way for the changes that these voices are calling for.

Margaret Gilligan is a U3 Joint Honours student in World Islamic and Middle East Studies, and Hispanic Studies. To contact her, please email margaret.gilligan@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Racialized police brutality in the U.S. and Canada

According to a report published by the Malcom X Grassroots Movement, “Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman, or child.” This statistic is terrifying to say the least, and highly indicative of the dire changes that need to take place within the U.S. to preserve the human rights and dignity of all those living within the country. Ndoro points to ignorance as a contributing factor to racialized police brutality. “In a perfect world, police brutality and race would be two concepts that have no causal relationship with one another at all. However, as pessimistic as this may seem, in today’s world, police brutality and race are very connected, despite the many strides social justice and humanitarian movements have made to promote and educate the world about racial equality. I believe that the link between police brutality and race is ignorance. A police officer [who] is ill-informed or fearful of a particular group of people is one who is at risk of making misjudgements about a situation that could lead to the use of unnecessary or excess force in the course of duty. If prejudice and inexperience are eliminated, and cultural and racial sensitivity become the norm in police ranks across the country, we will see a decline in instances of brutality and wrongful harm during police activity.”

Enama also takes other factors into consideration when talking about police brutality. “Race is not always a reason behind police brutality; there are other factors at play,” she says “I am not saying that there aren’t instances where police brutality was motivated by race; however, what I am saying is that there are other factors that should also be addressed. For example, police accountability for their actions, or better training for those entering the police force.” By police accountability, Enama means police stepping up and taking responsibility for their actions, as opposed to trying to defend and justify them. She adds, “Ferguson’s case was a reminder that much still needs to be done in the U.S. in regard to holding police officers accountable for what they do, and that [racial divides] and stereotypes are still very much alive in the U.S.”

While fingers are often – and most of the time rightfully – pointed at the U.S. for its dismissive attitude toward its black-identifying population (as Human Rights Watch did after the verdict of the Ferguson non-indictment was released, and as journalist Nicholas Kristof did when he pointed out that U.S. incarcerates more black men than apartheid South Africa), does pointing a finger at the U.S. and claiming your country, your province, your city, is ‘not that bad,’ remove you from the responsibility to be critical of your own community, and to facilitate change within it? Many, such as Enama, feel that “saying that you are better than someone else doesn’t make you exempt from eradicating the problem. What I hear from many Canadians is that the situation in Canada is better than that of the U.S.. I assume that this is true, but the problem is still present.”

“The thing that scares me the most in this world is losing one of my siblings to police brutality.”

Kai Thomas, a McGill student in African Studies and Anthropology, also points to multiple oppressive practices that underscore the ways in which police brutality manifests itself in Montreal – one of which is the use of unnecessary aggressiveness by the police. “Just the other day I was talking to somebody who was born and raised in New York, and was recently incarcerated in Montreal, and he remarked that he noticed an even more intense degree of aggressive behavior when dealing with police in Montreal as opposed to New York. And that’s not to say that that’s a statistic or anything like that, but these are the kind of reflections that are not actually so uncommon to have or hear [with regard to interactions] with the police in Montreal.”

The mass incarceration of black and Indigenous populations is used as a way to control those bodies. In Canada, Indigenous people make up 4 per cent of the general population. According to a 2014 report by the Office of the Correctional Investigator, they make up 22 per cent of the prison population. The report also states that “black inmates now account for 9.5 per cent of the total prison population (up from 6.3 per cent in 2003/04) while representing just 2.9 per cent of the general Canadian population.” Racial profiling also seems to be prominent within the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SVPM). As Thomas states, “I was speaking to a guy who at one point had a Range Rover, and he would get stopped daily by the cops. The psychological effects of having those interactions [also need to be considered]. Being profiled and harassed by police, especially when you feel that it’s because of your racial phenotype, is an extremely disturbing experience. People can even have symptoms of [post traumatic stress disorder] after having an experience like that. It’s very traumatizing.”

Provincial documents publicly released by the Quebec Human Rights Commission have acknowledged that police in Canada are trained to employ racial profiling. On this, Thomas comments, “[During] the war on drugs [in the States] you had certain training programs put in place for police to recognize people who seemed to be out of place – sometimes with implicit references to look for race, sometimes with explicit references, especially when stopping drivers of cars. That training model was efficiently adopted in Canada [in the 1990s], so there is evidence to say that police are literally trained to look for racialized bodies and to associate them with criminality in certain contexts. This kind of training to racially profile people, to associate blackness with a proclivity for violence […] that occurs well before most people enter a police academy. There’s a degree to which it’s already happening whether or not you have the documentation of all this training that was conducted.”

Canada’s shortfall of accountability

Comparing Canada to the U.S. can have concerning effects that stand in the way of eradicating anti-black racism. Thomas tells The Daily, “When it comes to talking about blackness in Canada, it’s always done in comparison to the States. This continual comparison to the U.S. is often deployed as a way to demonstrate Canada’s perceived moral superiority. [This] is a very dangerous road to go down because it has […] the tendency to erase very real experiences of oppression that have occurred and that continue to occur in Canada – speaking historically. Just because we didn’t have plantations does not mean that we didn’t have that same system of racial hierarchy, does not mean that we didn’t have very entrenched ideas of the lesser or the absent humanity of black and Indigenous bodies. We have to live with the repercussions of that and can’t pretend that the first relationship that settler colonials on this soil had with black bodies wasn’t that of enslavement. You can’t run away from that fact.”

“Walking across campus, I can’t not think that my black ancestors were the ones who were enslaved to build this place.”

It can be challenging to put forth a comprehensive analysis of the link between police brutality and race. In the case of Canada, Thomas also contributes this to the ideologies of multiculturalism and colour-blindness. “The multicultural mosaic is this utopic idea [that] Canada is a multicultural society: it’s pluralistic, it’s harmonious, et cetera. […] The other myth that we like to to brandish – especially one that black folks run into when talking with white liberal people – is that of “colour-blindness.” It’s the idea that, ‘I never see your colour.’ […] ‘I don’t see any difference.’”

Thomas also discusses the way in which Canada will flaunt its alleged multiculturalism when it is in Canada’s best interest to do so, but will leave the people who make up their mosaic hanging when they voice their concerns. “Canada wants to see you when it can show off its harmonious multicultural relationship; however, if you, as a person of colour, or a black person, have complaints, then ‘we don’t see colour, we’re colour-blind.’ So it’s kind of like a paradox, two contrasting ideals that are deployed depending on the needs of the Canadian body, institutions, or white liberalism in general.”

He explains that this paradox is what makes it difficult to constructively talk about connections between police brutality and racism. “If we’re committed to those ideals [of multiculturalism and colour-blindness] then there’s no way to talk about things such as the history of slavery in Canada [and] the huge overrepresentation of black folks in prison. […] All these bodies of evidence that come up in different forms in Canada are rendered kind of unspeakable by this Canadian commitment to the multicultural mosaic and to colour-blindness.”

Solidarity and equality at McGill

“The first step to solving any problem is acknowledging that the problem exists,” explains Enama. “Hence, I [would] like to see the McGill community acknowledging that there are many black lives and counting that have been lost to police brutality, or that will be lost to police brutality, as well as that those who died because of this brutality were loved and cherished by many.” Ndoro adds the importance of undoing stereotypes and biased attitudes toward black populations. “All I want from the world is more effort to reject traditional black stereotypes and increased understanding of the conditions and circumstances that influence black perspectives.”

“Just because we didn’t have plantations does not mean that we didn’t have that same system of racial hierarchy, does not mean that we didn’t have very entrenched ideas of the lesser or the absent humanity of black and Indigenous bodies.”

Changes in opposition of police brutality against black bodies can also take place on an institutional and individual level, as Thomas explains. “In terms of McGill, I think what is very necessary to happen is to get more diversity, especially among faculty. Like, a solid commitment to equity in hiring practices. And not only that, but a commitment to [relevant studies, because] programs such as African Studies are struggling to stay alive. There’s a professor in Montreal, Aziz Salmone Fall – and this is paraphrasing his words – [who] said that McGill has a historic obligation to black and Indigenous studies, especially given that James McGill was an owner of black and Indigenous slaves. The very premises on which we walk every day are built on relationships based on anti-black violence. […] Walking across campus, I can’t not think that my black ancestors were the ones who were enslaved to build this place. It’s important to get those sorts of knowledge out into the public. I would like to see the recognition of that, and the commitment to continuing those sorts of commitments to diversity and to equity.”

When talking about what individual allies can do, Thomas says that, “In a place like Canada, black people don’t have [the numbers that they do in the U.S.]. So it makes the question of allyship all the more important. I would encourage allies and people who wish to be allies to really take that extra step to educate each other and be open to education about the types of issues that are happening. It’s a scary thing to think about, but [also] to be prepared to be a dissenting voice when something oppressive happens, and regardless of whether black people are there or not. [It] can be a powerful thing when you have people who are not necessarily being targeted by certain things but are intervening nonetheless. Within that we see the possibility for a more powerful and more subversive type of organizing, because the state likes it when you keep to your own little enclaves, and you don’t see the interconnectedness of oppression.”

Be it in the U.S. or in Canada, there is an attitudinal change that needs to take place on an individual and institutional level. This needs to occur in order to bring an end to police brutality and related inustices – such as racial profiling and the overrepresentation of visible minorities in prison – in addition to the constant threat that police brutality poses to the lives of black people. Enama still feels that “the thing that scares me the most in this world is losing one of my siblings to police brutality.” Ndoro adds to this that “judging solely by how uneasy, I, as a black male, still feel when in the presence of police officers or other lawmen, I do not believe much has changed.” The very first step to creating spaces where all people feel and truly are safe is to recognize that anti-black police brutality is indeed a reality faced by many, in the U.S., Canada, and many other places. We need to stop pointing fingers at others in order to distract from a change that needs to occur on a transnational scale.

The post Ferguson, mon amour appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For McGill students, discussions about the survival of print books are particularly timely in light of recent and ongoing changes in the library system. As library budget cuts put the shift from print to electronic on the fast track, not everyone in the community is convinced that we’re heading in the right direction by digitizing.

When The Daily spoke with Professor Pasha M. Khan of the Institute of the Islamic Studies about this shift, he cautioned strongly against jumping the gun when it comes to relying entirely on digital sources in libraries. “It may even be short-sighted at this point,” he said, adding that “digital is important, of course […but] one needs to be flexible when thinking about the future.” According to Khan, we should “think about digital as one of many media for the distribution of this kind of information.” At this point in time, we cannot possibly know all the consequences of a full switch to digital texts.

Khan also highlighted the importance of critical thinking with regard to the popular discourse surrounding this switch. While we are quick to present and perceive this shift as cultural innovation, Khan argues that this is not quite the whole picture. “A lot of this rhetoric of innovation and ‘visionariness’ is just a smokescreen for the times – for austerity measures [at the provincial level] – to make sure that certain people can reap the rewards of a bad economic situation over others,” Khan explained. “And I think that’s really something we need to think about – the socio economic underpinnings of this kind of development.” While discursive framing of the switch to e-books as innovative sounds quite positive, the actors behind it may not be so well-intended.

The Birks Reading Room coordinator Allan Youster also held some suspicions with regards to the real motives behind digitization. “Publishing books is big business and university books are a large part of that big business,” Youster said, further explaining that “control of publishing has been centralized by large corporations under market pressure to be more profitable.” Digitization further centralizes publishing, eliminating local markets for smaller publishing companies. In a university context, Youster said that “library budgets are under extreme financial pressure everywhere.” Because of this, “the lure of […] buying digital and thus saving on housing costs, has excited some budget-conscious librarians.”
Budget-driven or not, when The Daily asked Youster why anyone should even bother with old–school books anymore, he responded, “Why bother with a camera, when you have a cellphone? Why even go out for a walk, when it’s so much easier sitting in front of your computer game? Some people will bother because it’s important to them.” Comparing this sudden shift to the move from vinyl to digital music, Youster noted that while “the doomed fate of vinyl” seemed certain then, vinyl is still around today, having “found a small place to grow.” Youster maintained that “the printed word will survive” – but the question remains of how it will do so.

But if innovation is not the only motive behind a switch to e-books, then nostalgia cannot be the only defence. While e-books may give us access to more texts quantitatively, print books give us more access qualitatively. E-book systems may provide a greater number of books, but the variety of these books is ironically more limited than print. Much of the Islamic Studies Library’s (ISL) collection, for example, is in print, because when it comes to books written outside of North America in languages like Arabic, Urdu, Persian, or Turkish, digital versions remain largely nonexistent. Khan explained to The Daily that here at McGill, “the ISL’s acquisition budget for print books has been slashed, and yet [in such languages] print is often all we have.”

In an interview with The Daily, Adrian King-Edwards, owner of The Word Bookstore on Milton, agreed with Youster that print sources are far from being goners. King-Edwards is not even convinced that students themselves are turning more toward e-books. “You continuously read this thing that books are finished, but I watch in the store. […] Students are still keen on buying books, and a lot of students are building [their own] libraries,” Youster said. “They come into the store every week and they collect books in their field. And it happens often with graduate students, foreign graduate students, because they realize that the books that are available here are not going to be available at home, and it’s certainly a good opportunity.” King-Edwards described bookstores and libraries as the “custodians of cultural heritage [that is] represented by books.”

Regardless of the proliferation of e-books, many people do prefer paper books. British marketing research agency Voxburner published a survey in 2013 showing that 62 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds preferred print to electronic. If it is the younger generation who is supposedly addicted to technology, the fact that this same population prefers print emphasizes how print books could be here to stay. For some reason we keep going back to The Word to pick up another piece for our growing libraries, and we keep flipping through the physical pages at the library. But while a passion for convenience may drive the shift to e-books, many in the McGill community will still stand in defence of books and claim that print is not dead.

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