Out of the Margins? Race, Racism, and Colonialism in Canadian Communication Studies

Abstract

The current conjuncture is marked by a multitude of global crises that include the COVID-19 pandemic;global warming;conflicts in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Palestine;growing global poverty and food scarcity;the exponential increase of forcibly displaced people;the escalating use of incarceration to manage migrants, including children;land conflicts with Indigenous peoples;and the persecution and genocide of religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities around the globe, from the Rohingya to the Uyghurs. In Canada, we nessed the of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children forced to attend residential schools;court rulings in favour of pipelines that violated the constitutional rights of Indigenous peoples;the global mobilization of Black Lives Matters;the escalation of anti-Asian racism;the heightened Islamophobia that resulted in the killing of members of the Afzaal Salman family;attacks on mosques and synagogues;and the ongoing criminalization, incarceration, and violent police murders of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour across the country. The recent occupation of Ottawa and other cities and towns highlights the rise of right-wing extremism that, along with the failure of the state to act swiftly to protect the rule of law, brings up the intersection of misogyny, racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and populism (Karim, 2000;Mirrlees, 2021;Neville & Langlois, 2021). Drawing on their experiences working with the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) as scholar-activists, King and Odartey-Wellington argue that the canon of Canadian communications scholarship must be expanded to include Canada's history of colonialism and discrimination against ra- cialized people.