First Year Law Guide

The African Canadian Legal Odyssey explores the history of African Canadians and the law from the era of slavery until the early twenty-first century. ;This collection demonstrates that the social history of Blacks in Canada has always been inextricably bound to questions of law, and that the role of the law in shaping Black life was often ambiguous and shifted over time.Comprised of eleven engaging chapters, organized both thematically and chronologically, it includes a substantive introduction that provides a synthesis and overview of this complex history. This outstanding collection will appeal to both advanced specialists and undergraduate students and makes an important contribution to an emerging field of scholarly inquiry.

The growth of the Critical Race Theory genre began in Canada when scholars of colour in Canada began to articulate a dissatisfaction with the existing Canadian legal discourse which failed to include an analysis of the role that “race” and racism has played in the political and legal structures of Canadian society. This book is about the role that race and racism play in the theory and practice of law. It shows how Canadian Black lawyers and others are beginning to seriously consider the role of race in litigation and to develop critical race litigation strategies to address the issue. The author documents how a growing body of work designed to move us beyond theory to practical application, is being developed to help recognize the complex relationships among race, racism and the law.

White supremacy had a tenacious hold on the historical roots of the Canadian legal system. Backhouse presents convincing case studies to illustrate how early 20th-century law played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial inequality. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the ‘Ku Klux Klan of Kanada!

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines' research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position. This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.