Building solidarity: The founding of the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) black caucus

Abstract

Blackness is a diasporic identity and exists globally in the power of community-building and organizing. Blackness transcends nationalism and internationalism with a strength derived from solidarity rooted in a shared social-political consciousness. Yet, despite the popularity of Black organizational spaces globally, the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) had no such group before 2020. Most mainstream Canadian scholarly associations did not have such a group either. Sociology, one of the disciplines charged with the theorization of race and ethnicity in society, had no collective voice for Black scholars in Canada. We changed that. We are building upon the work of Black sociologists W.E.B. du Bois, Ruth D. Peterson, C.L.R. James and that of Canadians such as Agnes Calliste, and Wilson Head. This essay presents the mandate for the CSA Black Caucus, its history and foundational moments, and its goals for the future of Black sociology in Canada.A series of national and international events have led to the creation of the CSA Black Caucus. The emergence of Black Lives Matter, a recent iteration of Black advocacy, draws attention to racism in the criminal justice system while building upon a rich tradition of resistance to enslavement, segregation, and racial discrimination (Calliste, 1996;Cooper, 2007Cooper, , 2016Small & Thornhill, 2008). The racial profiling of Black graduate student Shelby McPhee in 2019 at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, held at the University of British Columbia, instigated nationallevel discussions about the need for institutional change in academia (CBC, 2019). The May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by a White police officer resulted in global and broader awareness of anti-Black racism. Meanwhile, several post-secondary institutions and scholarly associations publicly pledged to engage in a process of critical self-examination to meaningfully address anti-Black