Black Lives Matter

• CHICAGO, March 28, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Basis Technologies ( https://basis.com ), a global provider of programmatic advertising and media automation solutions, today announced survey results showing that 64% of U.S opinion leaders feel that the country is on the wrong track.
• Additional findings from Basis Technologies’ custom research on the 2024 elections show that:
  60% of key opinion leaders are worried about the upcoming U.S. elections.
• Top issues for opinion leaders are inflation, jobs, health care and climate change – all of which were chosen by 55% or more by respondents.
• Key opinion leaders are senior business leaders, or those who work in media or journalism, or those aged 35+ with $100k+ annual household income.

• Beyond traditional HR reporting, Emtrain Analytics measures social dynamics as they are happening.
• “Emtrain analytics helps us identify workforce behavior risks early on and take proactive steps to address before they have a negative impact on the workplace,” said Christina Hall, CHRO at Instacart.
• Emtrain data is now available to benchmark workplace culture and create workforce risk “heat maps.” Emtrain Analytics includes C-level and Board reporting that summarizes workforce social dynamics in the workplace.
• Emtrain Analytics makes workplace training more effective by accurately measuring workplace social dynamics based on a set of behavioral skills and competencies.

• Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.
• As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress.
• Back then, the word was used as a warning to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.

The early days of wokeness

• Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper.
• Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement.
• In a 1904 editorial in the Baltimore Afro-American, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.
• Wake up Africa!” At around the same time, blues singers were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs.

A miscarriage of justice

On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, falsely accused a group of
several Black young men of rape.
Based on their words, the nine Black men – ages 12 to 19 years old – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death.

• All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
• In its 1932 Powell v. Alabama decision, the court overturned the verdicts in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial.
• But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again.

How woke became a four-letter word

• Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of staying woke.
• Two years later, a documentary on the group was called “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”

• When asked to define the term in June 2023, DeSantis explained: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism.
• Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.

Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Piecing together some of the public details about his background and activities paints a picture that helps us appreciate the textured landscape of Black Canada today.
• Abel was born in Toronto to Ethiopian immigrant parents and raised in Scarborough — a neighbourhood with diverse Black communities.
• When we zoom in to individual stories like Abel’s, we can appreciate the multifaceted nature of Black Canada and the connections between contemporary and historical processes and events.

Black Canadian histories

• Black Studies scholars Peter James Hudson and Aaron Kamugisha remind us that “despite Black Canada’s apparent marginality,” it exists and matters as it relates to our histories, cultures, ideas and politics as a country.
• The new edited volume Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History by history professors Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi underscores this point and demonstrates that we can trace Black people to every corner in Canada, across both space and time.
• There are many historic Black communities in Canada established by people brought by, fleeing and descended from the transatlantic slave trade, including Africville, a Black settlement in Nova Scotia.

New waves of immigration

• Demographics have shifted considerably, owing in large part to new waves and patterns in immigration trends.
• This is also shifting broader national demographics, as Africa is now the second largest source continent representing recent immigrants in Canada.

These migration patterns are more than footnotes in Black Canadian history. This diversity intersects with vastly different migration pathways and immigration statuses, class differences, unique cultural and linguistic influences, a multitude of religious traditions, as well as a variety of local and transnational social and political practices.

Diversity of Black experiences

• For example, experiences and insights coming from the Somali diaspora community in Etobicoke are likely different than long-established Black communities in Halifax.
• If we care to make Black communities more visible and amplify their voices and demands for change and belonging, it is critical we also tune into these diversity of experiences and perspectives.
• From an academic perspective, Black Studies in Canada also needs to make note of and engage with this diversity of experience.

Alpha Abebe has received funding from the the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for previous research that has informed this article.