Black Lives Matter is a 365 Days a Year Initiative

Covid-19 and the U.S. election chaos both have been major news topics throughout 2020. Another massive topic was the Black Lives Matter movement, prompted by the murder of George Floyd this summer.

While the BLM movement gained a lot of awareness after Floyd’s death, the movement was not newly established in 2020 and issues of anti-Black racism are not limited to the major news headlines of Floyd or Breonna Taylor. Anti-Black racism is a major problem that can be found in  school systems, workplaces, entertainment, media, social media and within communities. Anti-black racism is also not only an American issue but very prominent in Canada and specifically, in Windsor.

In April of this year, the #ExposeUWindsor Instagram page published their first post (www.instagram.com/exposinguwindsor) outlining in detail and with evidence, the experiences Black students on campus have had with racism with fellow students, cohorts, staff, professors and the administration at the University of Windsor. The Instagram page outlines in detail stats that illustrate the injustices faced by Black students on campus and ways students can get involved in the campaign as well as steps the staff and administration can take to acknowledge and remedy the anti-Blackness that is currently occurring on campus.

Last month, the University of Windsor witnessed yet another instance of anti-Black racism when one of its professors, Ashley Glassburn-Falzetti, a non-Black person, used the N-word in a content warning given to her class. The N-word is highly offensive, triggering, damaging and violent to Black people and is not for non-Black people to use. Josh Lamers, a University of Windsor JD Law student and well known activist and writer in the community, publicly spoke out about Glassburn Falzetti’s use of the N-word in a recent CBC article: Some students and faculty outraged after UWindsor prof uses N-word during class.

Lamers has and is currently facing anti-Black racism, sanism and homophobic harassment by his fellow students at the University of Windsor Law School. Lamers has outlined each instance, his responses and the University of Windsor’s responses in detail on his public Twitter page:

Tweets by Josh_Lamers

We should not need more headlines of Black people being murdered to be prompted to dismantle oppressive systems that directly harm Black people in our schools, workplaces and communities. We should not need extensive receipts and countless hours of work done by Black students to prompt non-Black students to speak up and fight against anti-Black racism in our post-secondary institutions. But it is still Black members of the community who are doing most of the labour to fight these injustices.