Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 201: Racial Justice, Community Building, and Data — with June Francis
Speakers: Kathy Feng, Am Johal, June Francis
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Kathy Feng 00:03
Hello listeners! I’m Kathy Feng with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by June Francis, a professor and researcher at the Beedie School of Business, the Director of the Institute for Diaspora Research and Engagement at SFU, and the current Chair of Hogan’s Alley Society. They discuss how universities, businesses, and governments sidestep their responsibilities toward equity and racial justice, and how gathering data about marginalized experiences can help create systemic change. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 00:45
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest with us, Dr. June Francis. Welcome, June.
June Francis 00:56
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Am Johal 00:58
Yeah. June I'm wondering if we can start with you introducing yourself a little bit?
June Francis 01:03
Yes, I'm happy to do this, I'll introduce myself and the way I like to introduce myself, which is to first of all situate who I am. Because I think it's important when people hear what you have to say, to have some semblance of where you've come from, what's your context, and I was born the seventh child, to parents who had me in Jamaica. Jamaica, as you know, or may not know, was a slave, a colony of the British Empire. And also what you may not know is the extent to which there was, you know, colonial dispossession of Indigenous peoples' lands. So I was born on the land that was dispossessed, from the Taíno First Nations people who were exterminated upon contact with the Spanish and ultimately the British, and do not exist anymore as a people on Xaymaca, which is the name the Taíno First Nations people gave. I was born in colonial Jamaica, didn't spend a lot of time as a colonial subject, but it's important to situate that. And my parents—my mother was a woman of strong faith, and so was very concerned with ensuring that we understood the legacy that was brought to us, very much concerned that we understood the kinds of enormous, I can't even, I always become speechless to describe what slavery was. But the cost that people bore to deliver me, her and me and my generation to this space by enduring the transatlantic slavery, enduring slavery for many generations in the one of the most brutal territories in the world. Jamaica being one of the most profitable of the British colonies meant that the slaves there were worked to death. So that's who I am a little bit, my father was a journalist and fought the colonial powers. So very much indebted to these people. Today, I immigrated to Canada, as a very young woman, as what I call a neocolonial refugee, because although colonization ended, we didn't realize it at the time, we were so excited about being independent that we hadn't quite understood that we weren't.
And so a variety of global forces meant that I left Jamaica as a neocolonial refugee, and I've been in Canada ever since and at Simon Fraser University, I've been with the Beedie School of Business as a business prof., where I'm an associate professor, I am also the director of what is newly formed—The Institute for the Black and African Diaspora, a refocusing on the Institute for Diasporic Research and Engagement. I'm a co-founder of the Black Caucus. And very importantly, I do a lot of work with the Hogan's Alley Society, and work with the province [of British Columbia] through The Co-Laboratorio Project, which I manage with Dr. Kristina Henriksson. So that's a bit of me, but longer than usual, but that's me.
Am Johal 04:09
Yeah, June, so I'm gonna bring up a number of projects. You're involved, particularly, in working in social justice and anti racism. But I think it's really interesting that you're situated at a business school as well. And wondering if you can speak a little bit to your work there as a professor and how you found yourself at SFU in the business program?
June Francis 04:30
Yes, because you know, we do live in a society where much of the power—because racism is about power, that I've always understood, who has it, who wields it—and in a capitalist society, what happens in the business school, how we train business people, the kinds of frameworks that they're using, have historically been used to oppress. The history of business was part of the capitalist, racial capitalist model. And business schools were integral to racism to racial oppression, globally. And so my interest in the business school was one I understood the power that comes from the business community. So you know, my interests were embedded in these, not students but in research, and in the governance of business schools, an attempt to address oppression of all forms whether its gendered or, you know, the multiple intersecting ways where oppression occurs and racial oppression in particular. And more recently, I started to realize the ways in which universities and businesses sidestep any kind of attempt to really create equality or equity. In terms of who makes the decisions, I did some research looking at who were on the boards of government, because if you don't know who is wielding, as I see recently with Elon Musk, who holds the decision making power, who is behind the whole machinery, and who holds the financial power, then you will never systemically change anything. So some research that I did, which was, the results were much more, oh my goodness, it was life changing for me, when I realized after all these years of talking, there were only 7% at the time (this was about four years ago) 7% of boards were visible minorities. All right, this is in the Lower Mainland, that for most of our cities, are majority visible minorities. So I started to realize that racial oppression had not moved at all. And so in my work at the university, you know, and whether it's in the Institute or starting the Black Caucus, or my work, as a professor in the Indigenous program, where I teach the marketing course, or in terms of my classroom, I try very hard to ensure is that I bring a decolonial lens to it.
Am Johal 07:20
It's interesting, you mentioned the businesses and [inaudible]. I think of Hudson's Bay Company to the British East India Company, to the more contemporary examples where we see very similar rollouts in terms of business practices and lack of diversity. It's interesting, back in the spring, you gave a talk called [Becoming a Decolonial and Anti-Racist University]. And it's great to see you use that language in a very straightforward way, because I first worked at a university back in the 90s. And back then, they used to just use the word diversity, right, and people would come in and talk about the need for diversity, it was all kind of self-selecting, there wasn't really any target set around these things. And literally, you were in the room where people would just roll their eyes when people brought up the term diversity, like it was just so flippant in this time. And so whereas when you see 20-30 years go by, and we're still talking about these things, there is this long duration of institutional inertia, and processes. And you've been, you know, very outspoken in terms of where universities, but also other institutions need to go. And it'd be great to just hear from you, because you've been inside of universities a long time yourself. You've seen the rhetoric doesn't meet the reality, oftentimes. And for some people, they're hearing it for the first time. But I know, for me, this is like 25 years ago, they were talking about this and not much, not much happened.
June Francis 08:49
You're absolutely right. And I applaud us for hanging in there for so long [laughs], because we have heard this go around and around and not much has changed. In fact, what happens is what now we see more clearly, and that is: institutions actually adapt themselves and transform themselves just enough to stifle true systemic change. So what I observed, and what got me even more urgent, is recognizing that not only have we been talking about this for so long, but what universities did, you know, there's a book [called] The Equity Myth that I think is worth looking at, and all the data. We realize that what universities did was look around them, and they noticed something, they've noticed that when we talk about diversity, we have this very long list in it, a very long list: race, you know, gender, sexual orientation, ancestry. And so they pick the one they liked. And what they did was they look for the group of people—and I know this is hard for somebody to hear, but they did—they look for white women, and they decided that the only adjustment they were going to make was to bring, first of all, just diversity meaning different spaces. They were going to leave the structures in place, and then they would invite into those spaces people they felt would fit most closely to the white supremacist structures. And I say this quite intentionally, because universities were always designed to support the idea of white supremacy. It was part of the colonial project globally, in which you've come from a society where the British education, to this day, still imprints itself. But that education was designed to justify colonization, to justify why they were superior, to embed in our brains the idea that every piece of academic and intellectual innovation was a European idea, and that the rest of us were somehow inferior, and to embed that within the scholarship of universities. So universities are fundamentally designed in a secular society like Canada to be racist.
Am Johal 11:27
Absolutely. When I think about my own schooling in high school, there was no mention of residential schools, and I didn't graduate that long ago, you know, 1991, and just the amount that still needs to be reformed and changed in terms of our public systems. In terms of, you know, intervening inside of these structures now, in terms of looking at the kinds of change that are possible at the systemic level, you know, what are some of the things that can be done immediately? And what are more midterm ways of approaching this so that we can actually genuinely move the dial to have a more equitable university that's more welcoming to students coming in and having their own experiences reflected back in a way beyond just a purely pedagogical form?
June Francis 12:19
Yeah, I just think we have such an opportunity here. And this is where I get excited, because I actually think if we truly understand the opportunity in front of us, I think we would all agree that this is a moment, a renaissance moment for us intellectually, in terms of our lives, in terms of how we see the world. And I also can't think of a moment where we need transformation [more than now]. As we think about the multiple big issues facing our planet, for example, it should be now clear that the ideas that have dominated universities and therefore our citizenry, and how we've conducted our society has led us on a one way street to destruction. We have growing global inequality and health crisis after health crisis, there is so much there that I think has come out of us so narrowly defining what we know and how we approach problems, and how we approach each other as communities. And a lot of that rests in the way we got educated, the way in which we have been denied certain ideas. So what do universities need to do? And I'm coming to that, but I do want to point out that your example of the residential school is such a poignant one. You did not not know by accident, right? This was intentional, right? The denialism is part of the project. So that you say you don't know. And this is what universities always do, they start over. So they go, "Oh, Black Lives Matter. George Floyd died. We didn't know. Wow." So what you knew 25 years ago, gets erased. And that's why talk doesn't matter; systemic change matters. And so finally, we have the evidence in front of us.
So one of the things I have come to appreciate, is the need for data and the need for evidence and to have that evidence be forefront. Because what has happened is institutions have been able to hide behind plausible deniability. "We didn't really know students were having this. We didn't know this, this and the other." So I think it is important to start with universities truly auditing themselves. I know that there's a tendency to think of the word audit as not a great one. But to truly understand the depth and breadth of the exclusion, whether it's in research, you know, we know the idea of the whole white research industrial complex, right? It's a whole complex, that means that research money is spent in a certain way in universities, only certain people get access to that. In the classroom, in business schools. If you think about the who is the protagonist as the leading business people that we present—of course in my class, you'll never see one of those people—but in general, those are the cases we look at. And we give the impression that, you know, following the white supremacist strategy of capitalism is going to lead us somewhere positive, when in fact we know it hasn't. So classrooms need to become, you know, really more broad, we need to find spaces to bring our students into the conversation. They come from a number of places. They're young, they're amazing. They bring their own perspectives, that is stifled. If you will see the things I see from talking with students, they just want to get out of here in the end, because they don't see themselves represented, and they don't see a possibility. I remember one Sikh student in my class saying to me, and I always thought it was one of the best things and I probably mentioned it a lot, because he looked at me and he said, "I finally know that I can be a Sikh, and be successful." It was like one of those moments where I thought, if I've done nothing for all these years teaching, if this one student feels this way, I've done enough. Because this is what it's about, so that people step into this classroom.
Student life, you know, is, again, if you look around governance administration, so we need to understand we need to take the time to get data, to audit what's going on, to truly hear, and to center those experiences in hearing. And we need to stop this thing of burdening people with telling their stories over and over. So listen to what has been said over the last three years, pull from that, we know enough has been written, there's enough to go on, but centre that in your audit, not start from this position that you still don't know what's going on. Because that's a way to never do anything. And then of course, the full transparency, creating action plans, widening the circle to make sure people that have been excluded from communities are part of this resurgence. And then to create a renaissance, you really have to then be prepared to spend the money and time to change it. And this is where we get stuck, because we don't actually. We put bandaids on around the corner. And then we don't have the spaces for people to truly reimagine and to change how we execute universities.
Am Johal 17:59
June, you've been involved for a number of years with the Hogan's Alley Society. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to your work there that's ongoing with the City of Vancouver. I know, it started in a particular pace, there's been some movement, but also not enough either. So if you could share a little bit of that.
June Francis 18:17
You know, W. E. B. Du Bois had said, and it always struck me, you know... I share in other spaces that he's the great African American sociologist, and many of us are learning more and more about the contribution he has made that was erased or taken over by others as part of the project of, you know, whitewashing Black scholarship. And so he had said he never got an academic job. But he also said, the reason he didn't is that he couldn't watch people being lynched in the street and not do something about it. And as a member of the academy, I've always recognized that my research as a person from an oppressed group interested in anti-oppression work needed to not just end on some pages somewhere, but the communities needed to see some impact. That was always just in the back of my mind. But as you know, the City of Vancouver made the colossal mistake of coming out with a Northeast False Creek Plan that completely erased the history of the Black community. Hogan's Alley was a place where, you know, Black people thrived in the city as best they could in a segregated city. Vancouver was a segregated city—I say that a second time. And we know that because there's still covenants in North Vancouver, and other places, saying Asians can't live there, et cetera. So we need to understand that Vancouver had the headquarter of the Ku Klux Klan in the city. So this is not a place that welcomes Black people. Black people have never been welcomed in Canada in any particular way. There was a lot of strife. And so people formed this community, not only Black people, but there was a multi-racial community where people were actually trading with each other, but sharing this common experience of exclusion. And the Black community's epicenter was around, where we now called the Hogan's Alley block where Nora Hendrix, the grandmother of Jimi Hendrix was an elder in the church, just to paint a picture of the community, and 800 people were on the roll of that church, and when you listen to firsthand accounts, people said this is the only place they found community.
Of course Vancouver, as part of the urban renewal, and this happened across North America, slated the Black community for displacement, and the other communities as well. Chinatown was also going to go. And they did that through, you know, the classic ways of making it unlivable to make it look like a red light district to say it's full of crime, all the rhetoric that we know that they use, and the Black community was displaced with the Georgia viaduct. And that was the specific implementation of the urban renewal here, it was stopped by Chinatown, because the Chinese community was able to mount a stronger defense at that spot, with their numbers and their clout. And that's why we still have a Chinatown, and that's why we have this road to nowhere. And the city recognized that it was unstable and it was voted in 2015 to bring down the viaduct. The viaduct is still sitting there. And I noticed they're still talking about keeping it. It's incredible to me because it was destructive. It doesn't go anywhere, and it's unsafe. So there's a lot of reasons. So Hogan's Alley Society emerged to remind the city that in fact, a Black community was there, and worked with the city to come up with a cultural redress strategy, and in fact, wrote that piece on the Northeast False Creek Plan. And the commitment there was to work with us to provide stewardship of one block that's there to redress. And this is important is it's to redress the wrong that was done, which is left Vancouver without a Black community. And that has had an impact on the Black community here. And it's been deleterious to us from a political and economic [perspective], and people lost their money and lots of reasons why cultural communities are important. So we work with the city, we became a society emerging out of that. They needed an organization with a legal entity to work with, we formed the Hogan's Alley Society. And guess what? Finally, after years and years and years, the mayor has supported us, the city council supported us. And then the City Council voted to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Hogan's Alley Society to begin the lease negotiations around ensuring that this block is stewarded by the Black community.
Am Johal 23:25
Oh, that's amazing to hear, after so much work, and in probably taking so much time just to get to the table with them, and be taken seriously at the planning and political level. It's a remarkable story to share. You've been involved a lot more recently as Co-Chair of the Province of BC's Anti-Racism Data initiative. I'm wondering if you could share a little bit of that work. I know, it's quite recent, and probably just getting started. But in terms of what the intent of that work is.
June Francis 23:58
Yes. So again, incredible movement. And if you want to know where optimism comes from, it's things like finally getting that MOU and because it implements it, it entrenches it in the system. But the data legislation, I'm the chair of the committee, and this came out of a lot of work by racialized communities across British Columbia, who worked and were on town halls and met with ministries and eventually did their own consultation. And this was the first time any government to my knowledge, did in fact, commit to and implement a series of engagements with communities led by communities, which led to a clear voice saying that if you want to create equity as a government for racialized and Indigenous communities, then you absolutely need to know you can't run blind anymore. Remember this thing I said about plausible deniability. We need the data because every time we were asked to prove that there was you know, racism in public safety, or racism in education, or racism in health care, they would say, "how do you know that?" And we said, "we know. But you're calling our knowledge anecdotal. So we need a mechanism for you, the government, to have the data to not only track the racial equity gap, to understand where it's showing up, and to be able to track your progress against that." So we know we're making progress. And emerging out of that was the Anti-Racism Data legislation which I was in Victoria to talk to. I applauded the government for the process. And I applauded the government for finally implementing this piece of legislation. It has the potential to be game changing. And this is a committee that's working with the government to the data standards to bring a community and also not just a community, but we have to deal with data. So we're bringing both our understanding of anti-racism and the goals of this, plus our understanding of the ways in which data has not been collected in ways that have been helpful to ensure that we start to collect the data in the right way, and to also move forward. And it's also part of the government's commitment on DRIPA. And its commitment to Indigenous people. So in that case, there's a commitment to data sovereignty as well. So we're working to implement this kind of data, but this data will have no impact if the government doesn't turn those into action plans. And that's the kind of thing we're working in—what is the data we're going to collect, where we're gonna do that first, and how we're going to monitor [it] so that we hold the government accountable.
Am Johal 27:03
June, you mentioned formerly what was called the Institute for Diaspora Research and Engagement, but it has relaunched with a new name, wondering if you can share a little bit about some of the work that's happening there.
June Francis 27:14
So for the last 10 years, we have been an important center for bringing together diasporic communities. Diasporic communities are really important to Canada. By that I mean that the South Asian community, [for example], I'm just trying to make sure it's practical, because sometimes people don't understand that word "diaspora." Diasporic communities, we know historically, have been very important in creating connections for people within Canada to thrive, creating a sense of belonging, acting as a political voice, etc. But also, they connect us back internationally, and are critically important in development as well, if you want to use that term, in ensuring that they spend more money on their communities, they commit to more altruistic and sometimes philanthropic work. So they're very important. Over the last three years, though, it has been a struggle to maintain this very broad base institute. We noticed that many of the communities that are larger were finding their way into their own institutes, doing the work, kind of taking it over and focusing on this. But we understood as well, that one of the communities that was really left behind in every measure across Canada, and certainly every measure at SFU indicated that, was the people of African descent. Black people across the country were not faring well. And within SFU, we're not faring well—students, researchers—and [we're] not connected to African communities internationally. And since this is the decade of people of African descent— the United Nations decade for people of African descent, this was declared and Canada signed up but has not done much. One of the things in this declaration was to ensure recognition, but also to create these kinds of institutes and other things, to try and pull together the small numbers we have into resources. So it's morphed itself now. So it's gone from the Institute of Diaspora Research and Engagement, to now, the Institute of the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement. And the intent is to connect the communities in British Columbia in particular, that are of African descent, whether that's academic or non-academic communities, business, and other things, but to also connect to the national and global hubs. And the reason for that is that we're such small numbers that it seemed like the right time to provide at least a mechanism. And the other thing at this time is we also started the Black Caucus at SFU. Again, to pull together our small numbers into something of a critical mass, so that we could have a common voice to the extent we can.
Am Johal 30:20
We have a number of people who listen to our podcast who are undergraduate or graduate students, and I love to hear people's stories about how they first got involved in political and social activism. What were some of your inspirations and role models, what books influenced you? I always like to hear that story about how we all get the social justice, social change, bug, and you're clearly so engaged on so many fronts and an inspiration to so many people, it would just be great to hear from your own perspective how you first got involved and how you've stayed involved and sustained this energy for this work.
June Francis 31:05
So I have to start with my mother, because my mother was one of these mothers who made sure from the time you were born that you understood, and this is very Jamaican, she used to say to us, "any gift you have is not for you." So if I come home from school, and I'm all excited, she says, "Great, now you can help others. Your voice is not your own. This is not why you're on this earth, whatever gifts you have, you need to look at the people who you can pull up with you." And till [her] last day, she died at 95, that was always her message. "You need to use this talent and the time you have on this earth, for others that are around you. And they'll have different talents. And that's their call as well. So you're not particularly amazing. Whatever your gifts are, that's what you're supposed to do." My father would you know, I bring him up because I realized most of his life, he was trying to throw off oppression. When I came to Canada I, like everybody, thought it was multiracial, multicultural, Kumbaya and everything was gonna be fine. And then I started to look around me. And there were times when it was really difficult. And it was when I became a parent, I really understood because you see, I thought that by the time my children were growing up, this would all be a historical fact. Right? When I graduated, I thought it was over. I honestly did. I thought we're independent, the Black Power movement had happened, you know what I mean? I thought, you know, they have civil rights legislation everywhere. We were like, "Oh, it's over. We don't need to think about that stuff. Now, we just have to think about how we're gonna, you know, be people in this world." I thought that's all we were gonna do. And so I heard my children and I started to see the experience. And I started to particularly look at what was happening in this society with some specific groups. I saw racialized boys, South Asians, Black young men being pulled, because of a lack of belonging. That was my read—that my sons, David and Joshua's friends, their parents were all proficient parents, they sent them to everything. They were good parents, they'd come to Canada as the first or second generation, and yet some of their sons found no belonging. And we're seeing them in the statistics, now. We're seeing them in all kinds of ways. You know, I bring up those two communities, because those are the ones that get thrown up all the time, to us. But the facts are that the children brought me to this. I decided that I had wasted time thinking that it was going to be okay. And I did not want... I saw my daughter coming home from school trying to draw her hair as a blonde because she felt that only blonde women were beautiful. It just goes on and on. My son being told when he did a project that, you know, Black history is not Canadian history. And I could no longer stay calm. I decided that I had to. Yeah, I had to get involved. So the next generation, we have to break the cycle.
Am Johal 34:38
Yeah, I had the good fortune of having your son Joshua as a student in a Semester in Dialogue many years ago. He's a social justice activist and hip hop star in his own right. And off to doing, I'm sure many interesting things. That's where I first met you. In fact, was at his graduation?
June Francis 34:58
Ah right, yes! I didn't even put those two together. And I don't know if you know, but he curated the first Black history exhibit we've ever had led by the Black population in Victoria last year. And it was something it was a moment. Yeah,
Am Johal 35:15
Nice! June, is there anything you'd like to add?
June Francis 35:19
The thing I'd like to add to listeners is that we need everybody to understand that this is not about us only. It is about the society that we all want to be in. It is a society where we all thrive and that can't be anything but a richer society that is better equipped to address some of the big issues that we're facing. We're facing catastrophic crisis. And I think it's important for all of us to realize that, whether you are privileged because of belonging to the dominant group or you're on a different trajectory, we need everybody as part of this movement. Because the tendency is to think it's about the people who are disenfranchised—of course, we're the ones most directly affected. But if you're listening to this podcast, take it as a privilege that you can learn about anti-racism and racism without experiencing it. And when you learn, you have an obligation to do something, whether that's in your interpersonal sphere, who are your friends, who are you making connections with? What do you do when you see a racialized person? Are you creating belonging? What about in your institutions where you work? And what how you vote? How do you create political will? We all have a responsibility here. And I would just encourage us all to see this as a great moment for Canada and for British Columbia and for Vancouver, I think it's an incredible time for us, but only if we take advantage of the time.
Am Johal 37:00
June, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. And thank you so much for the wonderful work you do. You're a joy and inspiration to so many people!
June Francis 37:12
And thank you Am because I know you're working at the same things. And you've been one of the people that have watched and admired so, thank you, Am, for the work you do and for this podcast.
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Kathy Feng 37:30
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to this conversation with June Francis. Check out the show notes below to find resources related to the episode discussion. Thank you for listening, and tune in next time for a new episode of Below the Radar. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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