ABSTRACT
The structures of racisms make oral histories a key tool for antiracism education. Since as Goldberg (2009) reminds us racisms are exclusions, antiracisms must create inclusions. Racist exclusions structure the social experience not only of the excluded, but also of the excluders. In effect, racisms work because the dominant do not need to engage with the realities of the excluded (Ahmed 2012; Hall 1980). Over time dominance can come to be seen by the dominant as normal and by even some of the excluded themselves as “just the way the world is.” Indeed, constructing such dominance is the very point of racisms (Stanley 2009, 2011). Critical Race Theorists have long advocated the development of counter-narratives to assist people in coming to terms with racial stratification (e.g., Ladson-Billings 1998). In this context, directly engaging the transformative effects of people’s own narratives can lead to transformation of understanding, provided those stories are collected by people who themselves understand exclusion and their consequences. This chapter argues that the structure of racisms works against antiracist education for the dominant, except through direct engagement with the narrative of those who are racialized and excluded. It explores the challenges of fostering antiracist understanding and transformation in the university classroom and builds on the historical examples of three redress movements in Canadian contexts: the Japanese Canadian Redress Movement, the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Movement, and the importance of the narratives of residential school survivors in the case of First Nations People.
