Don’t Call Me Resilient

On Monday, the European Union's foreign policy chief accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war and provoking famine in Gaza.  They were some of the strongest words against Israel we have heard from a western power about the situation in Gaza since October.  They come on the heels of a UN-backed report that warns that more than one million people — half of Gaza’s population — face catas...

On Sunday, nine years after #OscarsSoWhite, millions of us tuned in to the 96th annual Academy Awards — some to simply take in the spectacle. And some to see how much had changed. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started after many people noticed that, for a second year in a row, all nominees for four of five major categories were white. The movement called on Hollywood to do better: to better reflect A...

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Monk is the lead character of the new movie "American Fiction," which is based on the 2001 novel "Erasure" by Percival Everett. Monk is a Black man but never feels 'Black' enough: he graduated from Harvard, his siblings are doctors, he doesn't play basketball and he writes literary novels.  In fact, his last novel got rejected for not being "Black enough."  As a Black man who thinks about race but...

In this episode which we're running in full, host Gemma Ware speaks with Doseline Kiguru, a research associate in cultural and literary production in Africa at the University of Bristol in the UK, who has co-published research on the history of choral music and the role it plays in Kenyan national political culture. The episode originally aired on Dec. 11.  Kenya is marking 60 years since its inde...

You may have noticed that food bank lines have grown exponentially this year.  In Toronto alone, the number of people who use food banks has doubled since last year and nationwide, the numbers using food banks have jumped by 32 percent from last year and 78 per cent since 2019.  And those who are lining up for food defy the stereotypes: many, for example, are employed full-time. In other words, we...

The idea for today's episode started with local Toronto kids, who were reporting experiencing sexist, homophobic and racist attitudes in the classroom, especially  from the boys. The research shows they are not alone; the rise in far right ideologies globally has deeply affected school-age students. Many experts point to Andrew Tate, the far-right social media influencer as one of the culprits.  T...

When a lot of us think about psychedelics, we think about magic mushrooms - and hallucinatory drug trips.  But the concept of psychedelics as a tool in therapy is  making its way into the mainstream. Online stores have popped up selling psilocybin capsules promising to boost focus. And on a more official front, the Canadian Senate recently recommended  fast-tracking research into how psychedelics...

As violence continues to erupt in Gaza, and more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 remain missing, many of us are seeking to better understand the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been raging for decades. Some of us assume that the violence between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians — a majority of whom are Muslim — is a religious conflict, but a closer look at the histo...

Earlier this week, nearly five dozen people appeared in a courthouse outside Atlanta, Georgia to answer criminal racketeering charges brought against them by the state. The charges are related to protests against a planned paramilitary police and fire services training facility nicknamed Cop City. Georgia prosecutors have called the demonstrators “militant anarchists.” But many of those charged sa...

When the Buffy Sainte-Marie news broke last week, people were stunned.  A CBC investigation was accusing the legendary singer-songwriter of lying about her Indigenous roots.  Sainte-Marie had already come out on social media and said she had been claimed by the Piapot Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan - something the Piapot First Nation confirmed. And from earlier conversations about “pretendians”...

It's hard to escape the news coming out of the Middle East. It's everywhere. And it's excruciating to take it all in. First came the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. 1,400 people were viciously attacked and murdered and at least 200 more were kidnapped and taken hostage. Then came the retaliation by the state of Israel. Almost immediately, those living in Gaza, under the leadership of Hamas, were...

Everybody knows it and almost everyone feels it: we’re in the grips of a major housing crisis. Home ownership is out of reach for so many people and for renters, units are hard to find and expensive. It seems everywhere you turn these days, there’s another rent strike. One of the factors driving this affordability crisis has been a shift away from publicly built housing toward large corporate-owne...

For decades, North American Black women have been using hair relaxers  to help them fit into mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them.  More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues - and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the...

The Republican Party in the United States has moved farther right in recent years. And as it has, you would think racialized Americans might be distancing themselves from it and its policies. But at last week’s GOP Primary presidential debates, three of the seven people on stage were candidates of colour. Racialized citizens also have been drawn to far-right politics, including key players in the...

As we approach the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we take you inside the ongoing quest to document the children who died in Canada's Indian Residential Schools system. Vinita speaks to Terri Cardinal, director of Indigenous Initiatives at MacEwan University, about the search she led to uncover the unmarked graves of those who perished at the Blue Quills Residential School in Alberta. I...

Here at Don’t Call Me Resilient, we’re busy prepping new episodes for you … Each week, we’ll be taking our sharply focused anti-racist lens to the news stories unfolding around us. We'll be talking to experts, activists and people living these stories … to bring you a deeply contextual view of what’s happening here in Canada … and around the world. So make sure to follow us on your podcast app. Be...

I love watching a good adventure movie, especially at the start of summer. I have some great memories of eating popcorn in the local suburban movie theatre while we watched aliens take over a spaceship and a group of kids hunt for long-lost treasure in an underground cave. At the same time, even as a kid, I remember thinking how awful some of the racial and gender stereotypes were.   I specificall...

It seems like everyone you talk to has considered taking Ozempic, the drug originally created as a diabetes treatment, but now being used as a weight-loss method. Ever since it arrived in Canada, it’s been in incredibly high demand. While Ozempic may be just the next in a long line of get-thin-quick fads, the drug’s shortages have disproportionate impacts on racialized communities. So do the weigh...

Language, if we are not thinking about it, can be just a way to get from place A to B, a way to order lunch or a way to pass an exam.   But language is much more than a way to communicate with words. This is especially true if you have had your language forcibly removed from you, like the thousands of Indigenous children who survived Canada's colonial assimilation project. Languages hold within th...

On June 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will make his first official state visit to the United States . And if his visits to Australia last month, to Canada in 2015 and to Texas in 2019 are any indication, he’ll be given a rockstar welcome. U.S. President Joe Biden has already joked that he wants Modi’s autograph because so many people want to see the Indian PM while he’s in the United Sta...

This year we’ve seen an aggressive push to implement anti-trans legislation across the United States. There are currently more than 400 active anti-trans bills across the country. Some legislation denies gender-affirming care to youth – and criminalizes those health-care providers that attempt to do so. Other bills block trans students from participating in sports and still others have banned book...

In this episode, author and CUNY professor Ava Chin, a 5th generation Chinese New Yorker, discusses her new book, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming. The book artfully explores themes of exclusion as it relates to all Chinese Americans, plus personally for Chin with her father, a "crown prince" of Chinatown that she didn't meet until adulthood. Chin reveals...

The May long weekend is the unofficial start of summer. And for those of you with home gardens or access to community space, this is the weekend to dust off your gardening tools and visit the garden centre for the growing season ahead. As we approach the start of gardening season, it’s good time to ask some questions about its origins. Whether you plan to get marigolds, plant a vegetable garden or...

Mother’s Day is just a few days away. It can be a complicated day. For some, it could mean a bouquet of flowers or a breakfast in bed. For others, it can mean mourning the loss of a loved one or dealing with a haunted past. And still — for others — like the 66 per cent of incarcerated women in prison who are mothers, it can mean something else entirely. Despite a reduction in crime in the last 20...