Learning How to Tailor Programmatic Offerings to Support Low-income, First-generation, and Racially Minoritized Student Success

This study focused on the process of how the staff at the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC), a comprehensive college transition program, tailored the programmatic offerings to meet the needs of low-income, first generation and racialized minority students. Because college students are complex individuals, each of whom faces a unique set of challenges and opportunities, it is reasonable to hypothesize that tailoring support services to the multiple needs of each student may make them more effective. The research identifies a four-part iterative and cyclical process to tailor the programmatic offerings for students – beginning with the individual student and then using information about individual needs to scale to broader group level tailoring. This broadening or scaling process is a new contribution to the literature that has not previously been identified. The tailored approach we identified works at both individual and group levels, which makes it viable as an intervention for large numbers of students. The effort to attend to and learn about individual students ensures that the intervention still meets the needs of individuals, but the testing of these interventions more broadly allows for understanding how these approaches will work for diverse group level tailoring.

Examining Barriers to Municipal Underrepresentation of South Asians in Peel Region

One’s ability to represent the community with which they identify is often determined along racialized lines, where the political exclusion of certain groups causes underrepresentation of racialized minority groups in politics. This study will be examining the particular case of South Asians in Peel Region, where there is significant representation of South Asians at the federal and provincial level, but virtually none at the municipal level. This study will utilize a social inclusion framework to uncover the barriers in place restricting South Asian representation in politics at the municipal level and the steps that can be taken to mitigate these barriers to promote more diverse representation for all individuals in the political sphere.

Examining Barriers to Municipal Underrepresentation of South Asians in Peel Region

One’s ability to represent the community with which they identify is often determined along racialized lines, where the political exclusion of certain groups causes underrepresentation of racialized minority groups in politics. This study will be examining the particular case of South Asians in Peel Region, where there is significant representation of South Asians at the federal and provincial level, but virtually none at the municipal level. This study will utilize a social inclusion framework to uncover the barriers in place restricting South Asian representation in politics at the municipal level and the steps that can be taken to mitigate these barriers to promote more diverse representation for all individuals in the political sphere.

A Geography of Risk: Structural Racism and COVID-19 Mortality in the United States

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is disproportionately burdening racial and ethnic minority groups in the US. Higher risks of infection and mortality among racialized minorities are a consequence of structural racism, reflected in specific policies that date back centuries and persist today. Yet, our surveillance activities do not reflect what we know about how racism structures risk. When measuring racial and ethnic disparities in deaths due to COVID-19, the CDC statistically accounts for the geographic distribution of deaths throughout the US to reflect the fact that deaths are concentrated in areas with different racial and ethnic distributions than that of the larger US. In this commentary, we argue that such an approach misses an important driver of disparities in COVID-19 mortality, namely the historical forces that determine where individuals live, work, and play, and consequently determine their risk of dying from COVID-19. We explain why controlling for geography downplays the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on racialized minority groups in the US. Finally, we offer recommendations for the analysis of surveillance data to estimate racial disparities, including shifting from distribution-based to risk-based measures, to help inform a more effective and equitable public health response to the pandemic.

Crowns and Cages: A Sikh Woman's Reflections of the Sikh Community in Canada

This article adopts a subjective and reflective voice to convey my emotional response (in Boler’s, 1999 terms) to the passing of a recent Bill in Quebec. The article explores the question: How does one reconcile a Sikh identity that is worthy, respected and admirable in Quebec, and by extension in Canada, in light of Quebec’s Bill 21? Further, through the lens of a racialized minority, that of a Sikh woman calling Canada home, and from the perspective of my family who have lived in Canada for several generations, I contest the recent legislation in Quebec’s Bill 21, for having erected a very strong, man-made cage that effectively bars anyone with a Sikh identity from working in the civil service.

Race and Ethnicity in Education History

This chapter examines race and ethnicity in educational history in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil. Differentiation and segregation based on race, religion, gender, ability, and socioeconomic class, were common features in designing school systems to promote a nation’s efforts toward citizenship. In the United States and elsewhere, efforts to inculcate norms of democratic citizenship were equally fraught with means to deculturalize minority, immigrant, and indigenous populations. As such, this chapter focuses primarily on racialized minority populations and limitations of access to public schooling centered on democratic citizenship. It surveys educational policies and practices from the colonial era through the mid-twentieth century, examining the role of religion, immigration, language, countries of origin, and race. It also discusses how schooling systems have prepared future citizenry for diversity.

Representation of Women and Racialized Minorities as Expert Sources in Canadian Public Affairs TV Shows

Background Research shows that women and racialized minorities are misrepresented and underrepresented across popular media. To date, however, limited attention has been given to the representation of these groups as expert news sources within Canadian television.Analysis This study conducts an analysis of three public affairs shows aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Ontario Educational Communications Authority over a four-month period, cataloguing the gender and racialized minority status of 737 on-air guests.Conclusions & implications The findings show that women and racialized minorities are underrepresented, with racialized minority women being particularly disadvantaged.RÉSUMÉ Contexte De nombreuses études démontrent que les femmes et les minorités racialisées sont sous-représentées et aussi faussement représentées par les médias populaires. À ce jour, toutefois, peu d’attention semble avoir été portée à la représentation de ces groupes comme source d’experts.es. invités.es pour analyser l’actualité à la télévision canadienne.Analyse Cette étude a pour objectif d’effectuer une analyse de trois émissions d’affaires publiques diffusées par Radio-Canada (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) et the Ontario Educational Communications Authority sur une période de quatre mois en cataloguant le genre et le statut de minorité racialisée de 737 invités.es en ondes.Conclusions et implications Les conclusions démontrent que les femmes et les minorités racialisées sont sous-représentées et que les femmes issues de groupes raciaux minoritaires sont particulièrement désavantagées.

Queering Asian Canada: Troubling Family, Generation, and Community

This article argues that a queer perspective on Asian Canadian studies can open new inquiries and simultaneously trouble the centrality of family, generation, and community in documenting and examining racialized minority and diasporic groups. By rethinking these analytical concepts through queer possibilities and interventions, research into Asian Canada can become more inclusive and transgressive, and can foreground alternative queer kinships which exceed heteropatriarchal bloodlines, filial relations, and co-ethnic singularities. Putting forth counter-histories of racialized and diasporic sexualities, this article builds upon and complements archival research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Asian Canadians, and turns to artists and cultural workers who offer rich historical and contemporary representations of queer Asian Canada. In particular, it examines the 2015 film It Runs in the Family by Joella Cabalu, the 2016 film Re:Orientations by Richard Fung, and the 2016 exhibition Not a Place on a Map: The Desh Pardesh Project curated by Anna Malla.

AN ELABORATION AND CRITIQUE OF “REASSESSING ‘TOWARD A THEORY OF RACE, CRIME, AND URBAN INEQUALITY’”

In the prior article in this volume, Robert Sampson and colleagues (2018) take theoretical and empirical stock of a framework they presented twenty years ago. They find broad empirical support for its core tenets. Differences in disadvantage explain most, if not all, observed gaps in violent crime between Black and White neighborhoods; disadvantage also operates similarly to foster crime in Black and White areas. The authors also lament the limited research on the key intervening mechanism of community social organization, particularly its cultural and political sources, that links disadvantage to crime. I have two primary goals in commenting on this article. First, in keeping with their assessment, I provide my take on their agenda for extending the framework beyond the Black-White divide, giving greater attention to the political sources of community social organization, and considering reciprocal relationships between crime, race, and disadvantage. Second, I elaborate on how my views differ from Sampson and colleagues’ regarding strategies to empirically validate the racial invariance thesis, the breadth of support for the thesis beyond its core tenets, and the role of culture. I provide these critiques to encourage further work exploring the explanatory power of Sampson and colleagues’ thesis, and, to thereby foster a better understanding of enduring inequities in violent crime between racialized minority populations and Whites. Without their ecologically-based approach, we run the risk of essentializing minorities as criminogenic, like recent work espousing cultural (devoid of structural) and biological (devoid of social) explanations for the race-crime link.

How do marginalized families engage school choice in inequitable urban landscapes? A critical geographic approach

This paper examines the K-12 school choice practices and patterns of marginalized urban families whose relative living conditions have worsened in recent decades with growing income disparities. In particular, the paper draws from critical geography and the sociology of education to examine the significance of habitus, capital, field as well as site as space and place in understanding the choices made by low-income and racialized minority families. We apply an innovative mixed-methods critical geographic approach to better understand marginalized urban families’ phenomenology of school choice, while also analyzing their school choice mobility patterns through a geo-spatial analysis in Vancouver, one of the most rapidly diversifying and polarizing cities in the world.