Official reports have been declaring systemic racism in North America’s education system for more than 30 years. What will it take to change?

Even before COVID-19, education experts were sounding the alarm about the future of racialized children in our schools. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored — even deepened — the divide.

On this episode of Don’t Call me Resilient, we speak with Kulsoom Anwer, a high school teacher who joined us from her classroom in one of Toronto’s most marginalized neighbourhoods. With her is Carl James, professor of education at York University. Together we discuss the injustices and inequalities in the education system and, in the conversation, we also explore some possible ways forward.

Every week, we highlight articles that drill down into the topics we discuss in the episode. This week, both articles say that combating racism in schools is not only possible, but also that solutions are in the hands of educators.

To make change, teachers must not only question existing power dynamics, but they must also acknowledge and validate the racism that is experienced by Black, Indigenous and racialized youth.

For more information and resources, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

In this reflective and personal episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, Prof. Cheryl Thompson of Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Beauty in a Box untangles the wending history of hair relaxers for Black women — and the health risks now linked to them.

For decades, Black women have been using hair relaxers to help them “fit into” global mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them. More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues — and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the makers of these relaxants.

Prof. Thompson and I get into it: including her own relationship to using relaxers as a Black woman, the lawsuits and the wending history and relationship between these relaxants and Black women. We also — for obvious reasons — dip into The Other Black Girl, the novel that is also now a horror-satire streaming series about mind-controlling hair products.

For more information and resource, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

If you don’t pay close attention to news about COVID, you might think the pandemic is nearly over. But for the millions of people worldwide suffering from long COVID, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

And the number of those experiencing long-term symptoms keeps growing: At least one in five of us infected with the virus go on to develop long COVID.

The effects of long COVID are staggering. Researchers say it can lead to: blood clots, heart disease, damage to the blood vessels, neurological issues, cognitive impairment, nerve damage, chronic pain and extreme fatigue.

And there is no treatment for long COVID.

So why don’t we hear more about long COVID? Why haven’t governments warned people about the risks we face with infection?

It might be that this debilitating disease is largely overlooked because of who gets it: Almost 80 per cent of longhaulers are women.

And in the United States, where our guest on this episode is from, many of those suffering from the prevailing conditions of COVID are women of colour, with Black and Latinx people most likely to get the illness.

Our insightful guest for this conversation on long COVID is Margot Gage Witvliet, assistant professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Margot is a social epidemiologist who studies health disparities, including as they relate to long COVID and has presented her research findings to the United States Health Equity Task Force on COVID-19.

Margot is also a Black woman living with long COVID and has created a support and advocacy group for women of colour.

For more information and resources, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT