‘Good Intentions’ that ‘Do Harm’: Canada's state multiculturalism policy in the case of Black Canadians

Abstract

This essay identifies Canada's recognition of the United Nations Declaration for People of African Descent (UNDPAD) as a multiculturalist iteration. In this scope, the essay discusses the Community Support, Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Initiatives (CSMARI) program as a central element of state multiculturalism, through which Canada plans to meet commitments to Black Canadians-and by extension, the UND-PAD. Although the CSMARI program is well intended, it causes harm to Black Canadians by reinscribing stereotyped material lack and other forms of racialized scarcity. Rather than address longstanding socialeconomic histories that sustain racialized poverty, state multiculturalism policy inadvertently reinforces these. The CSMARI program's focus on material lack as opposed to the systemic aspects that underpin these, amplifies Canada's multicultural myth of inclusivity while leaving unquestioned the cultural barriers that block Black citizens. State multiculturalism policy maintains the status quo by commodifying and depoliticizing anti-racism, while also neutralizing the language of naming experiences of exclusion. This essay adapts an anti-Black racism feminist theory to recast state

Contradictory Mobilities and Cultural Projects of Afropolitanism African Immigrant Nurses in Vancouver, Canada

“…The hesitation of Black nurses to name racist experiences shows us how the status quo subjugates by normalizing one-sided requirements for tolerance and politeness, presented as normative standards of professionalism in the workplace (Essed 1991). Importantly, these subjective experiences reveal the insidious nature of racism in Canada's liberal multiculturalism society (Kihika 2022), as a function of its systems, and its practices and policies of governmentality (Willmott 2021). While rooted in well-meaning frameworks, this pervasive racism that makes it difficult for Black nurses to name their experiences is associated with the racial battle fatigue syndrome Black immigrants develop in the context of the contradictions of liberal ideology (Daniel 2021).…”