Racial Literacy Practices among Anglophone Caribbean Parents: An Answer to Racism in Montreal Elementary Schools

The author documents Black Anglophone Caribbean parents’ accounts of their experiences in Francophone elementary schools in Montreal. Through the parents’ accounts the author explores the ways that language, race and the continual denial of the history of slavery in Canada intertwine to create conditions of racial injustice in Montreal elementary schooling. The author found that the presence of teachers who were not white did not necessarily counter incidents of racial injustice in schooling. Through the use of narrative episodes for the data analysis, she situates the concept of racial literacy within the theory of New Literacy. The author argues that parents’ racial literacy served as a form of resistance to school injustice experienced in Francophone elementary schools in Montreal. Recent reports from schools in Toronto suggest that systemic racism is affecting student success. Existing quantitative data from Quebec suggest that there are also systemic forces affecting Black Anglophone student success in Montreal. The author's research suggests that racial literacy as a form of New Literacy helps parents to support their children in schools in Montreal, but she concludes that school officials must find productive strategies for engaging these parents and building trust with them.

Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études ethniques au Canada

Vol. 50

no. 1

87-105

January 2018

en