White Civility

In White Civility Daniel Coleman breaks the long silence in Canadian literary and cultural studies around Canadian whiteness and examines its roots as a literary project of early colonials and nation-builders. He argues that a specific form of whiteness emerged in Canada that was heavily influenced by Britishness. Examining four allegorical figures that recur in a wide range of Canadian writings between 1820 and 1950 - the Loyalist fratricide, the enterprising Scottish orphan, the muscular Christian, and the maturing colonial son - Coleman outlines a genealogy of Canadian whiteness that remains powerfully influential in Canadian thinking to this day. Blending traditional literary analysis with the approaches of cultural studies and critical race theory, White Civility examines canonical literary texts, popular journalism, and mass market bestsellers to trace widespread ideas about Canadian citizenship during the optimistic nation-building years as well as during the years of disillusionment that followed the First World War and the Great Depression. Tracing the consistent project of white civility in Canadian letters, Coleman calls for resistance to this project by transforming whiteness into wry civility, unearthing rather than disavowing the history of racism in Canadian literary culture.

Civility, Free Speech, and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins represents a multidisciplinary approach, deploying different theoretical, methodological, sociological, political, and creative perspectives to articulate the stakes of civility for marginalized faculty within the landscape of higher education. How has the discourse on civility and free speech within academia become a systemic and oppressive form of silencing, suppressing, or eradicating marginal voices? What are some overt and covert ways in which institutions are using the logic of civility to control faculty uprising against the increasingly corporate-controlled landscape of higher education? This collection of essays examines the continuum between the post-9/11 and the post-Trump era backlashes. It details the organized retaliations against those in academia whose views and scholarships articulate their discontents against the U.S.-led "War on Terror." It contests the rise of White supremacy, Trump’s Muslim ban, anti-immigrant and racist government policies and rhetoric, and those who support the Boycott and Divestment Sanctions movements within the corporatized universities. All of these new and original essays shed light and further the debate on the various modes of civility that have become politicized within the U.S. academy. It will have a broad appeal to a cross section of national and international academics, activist scholars, social justice educators and researchers in the field of higher education.

The first history of racial injustice to examine how civility and white supremacy are linked, and a call for citizens who care about social justice to abandon civility and practice civic radicalism The idea and practice of civility has always been wielded to silence dissent, repress political participation, and justify violence upon people of color. Although many progressives today are told that we need to be more polite and thoughtful, less rancorous and angry, when we talk about race in America, civility maintains rather than disrupts racial injustice. Spanning two hundred years, Zamalin’s accessible blend of intellectual history, political biography, and contemporary political criticism shows that civility has never been neutral in its political uses and impacts. The best way to tackle racial inequality is through “civic radicalism,” an alternative to civility found in the actions of Black radical leaders including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde. Civic radicals shock and provoke people. They name injustice and who is responsible for it. They protest, march, strike, boycott, and mobilize collectively rather than form alliances with those who fundamentally oppose them. In Against Civility, citizens who care deeply about racial and socioeconomic equality will see that they need to abandon this concept of discreet politeness when it comes to racial justice and instead more fully support disruptive actions and calls for liberation, which have already begun with movements like #MeToo, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and Black Lives Matter.

Focusing on the work of black, diasporic writers in Canada, particularly Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, and Tessa McWatt, Blackening Canada investigates the manner in which literature can transform conceptions of nation and diaspora. Through a consideration of literary representation, public discourse, and the language of political protest, Paul Barrett argues that Canadian multiculturalism uniquely enables black diasporic writers to transform national literature and identity. These writers seize upon the ambiguities and tensions within Canadian discourses of nation to rewrite the nation from a black, diasporic perspective, converting exclusion from the national discourse into the impetus for their creative endeavours. Within this context, Barrett suggests, debates over who counts as Canadian, the limits of tolerance, and the breaking points of Canadian multiculturalism serve not as signs of multiculturalism’s failure but as proof of both its vitality and of the unique challenges that black writing in Canada poses to multicultural politics and the nation itself.

The first history of racial injustice to examine how civility and white supremacy are linked, and a call for citizens who care about social justice to abandon civility and practice civic radicalism The idea and practice of civility has always been wielded to silence dissent, repress political participation, and justify violence upon people of color. Although many progressives today are told that we need to be more polite and thoughtful, less rancorous and angry, when we talk about race in America, civility maintains rather than disrupts racial injustice. Spanning two hundred years, Zamalin’s accessible blend of intellectual history, political biography, and contemporary political criticism shows that civility has never been neutral in its political uses and impacts. The best way to tackle racial inequality is through “civic radicalism,” an alternative to civility found in the actions of Black radical leaders including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde. Civic radicals shock and provoke people. They name injustice and who is responsible for it. They protest, march, strike, boycott, and mobilize collectively rather than form alliances with those who fundamentally oppose them. In Against Civility, citizens who care deeply about racial and socioeconomic equality will see that they need to abandon this concept of discreet politeness when it comes to racial justice and instead more fully support disruptive actions and calls for liberation, which have already begun with movements like #MeToo, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and Black Lives Matter.

This book brings together the work of several distinguished scholars to chart the uses of civility in American legal and political discourse.

Whiteness and Social Change provides a comparative engagement with whiteness – the unearned and at times unmarked social-structural privilege afforded to some at the expense of others – in contemporary Australia and Canada. Through a detailed examination of high profile community campaigns at Sandon Point (New South Wales, Australia) and the Red Hill Creek valley (Ontario, Canada) – situated alongside an analysis of white interpretations of the 1966 Wave Hill walkout (Northern Territory, Australia) – the actions of broader communities supporting First Peoples struggles expose whiteness as manifesting itself irrespective of intent. Existing scholarship in sociology, science studies, political theory and critical whiteness studies are drawn on to identify means through which whiteness can be destabilised. The outcome is an identification of how collaborative struggle and the politics of experience produce moments of cognitive dissonance amongst white supporters. These moments are transformative, lay foundations for respect and recognition, and the move towards a fair and just society.

J.S. Woodsworth, a founding member and leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) and member of Parliament, was a social policy pioneer who promoted human welfare and rights over interests of property and finance. Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism explores the significance of Woodsworth's thoughts and achievements in the area of human rights in the light of current social welfare objectives and practices. Canadians continue to grapple with the question of how to accommodate and reconcile social diversity and difference while articulating a common interest and advancing human rights, both domestically and internationally. The essays in this volume, by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, address such issues as globalization, labour rights and law, the gendered and racialized dimensions of transnational labour, the relationship between human rights, social programs, and social rights, and the emergent cultural politics of difference. Through engagement with longstanding debates on the ideals and provisions for social justice we have come to associate with Woodsworth, the essays consider the present significance of a human rights frame, and examine the historical and contemporary exclusions to polity that occur around gender, ethnicity, class, and race.