Step Forward is a digital communication and podcast series that challenges anti-Black racism within Ontario’s community-based HIV response.
Each month, we’re sharing tools, conversations, and resources that will spark dialogue and help our members to strengthen the HIV response by embedding Black liberation work in their agencies.
Throughout the podcast series, we'll be speaking with Black leaders from diverse professional and personal backgrounds.
The Ontario AIDS Network (OAN) formally declares anti-Black racism a public health crisis within the HIV sector.
This crisis continues to impede equitable delivery of the community-based HIV response across the province and obstructs the health and wellbeing of African, Caribbean, Black Latinx,and Black (ACB) people living in Ontario. Further, the OAN declares its commitment to compel health systems officials, local and provincial government, and leaders within the province’s health units, boards, and systems to take this step forward and join the OAN in formally declaring anti-Black racism a public health crisis.
EPISODE TWO: Amanuel Melles In this episode of Step Forward, Amanuel Melles speaks about social ecosystems, allyship, redifining the role of leaders, the importance of holding space, and how we can co-create a better future by shifting to our collective focus.
Amanuel Melles (Aman) is the Executive Director of the Network for Advancement of Black Communities (NABC) at York University. He is the Principal of Aman Consulting and has over 25 years of senior management experience and expertise in settlement and immigration, community health, community development, community peacebuilding, funding and philanthropy.
For more information about the topics covered in this podcast, review Amanuel's PowerPoint slide.
This series, hosted by Kondwani Mwaseis a collaboration spearheaded by the Ontario AIDS Network, produced by 54Lights podcast.
"Why do our attempts to deal with the challenges of our time so often fail? The cause of our collective failure is that we are blind to the deeper dimension of leadership and transformational change. This “blind spot” exists not only in our collective leadership but also in our everyday social interactions. We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social action come into being.
We know a great deal about what leaders do and how they do it. But we know very little about the inner place, the source from which they operate."
Key Tool
The Seven Leadership Capacities (Figure 3, Pg 6)
Article: The Dawn of System Leadership By Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, & John Kania
Appeared in Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), Winter 2015
Excerpt
"The deep changes necessary to accelerate progress against society's most intractable problems require a unique type of leader--the system leaders, a person who catalyzes collective leadership.
The purpose of this article is to share what we are learning about the system leaders needed to foster collective leadership. We hope to demystify what it means to be a system leader and to continue to grow as one."
Key Content
Core Capabilities of System Leaders (Pg 4)
Gateways to becoming a system leaders (Pg 5)
WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?
The term Intersectionality helps us understand the complex realities of individual and group experiences. But what is intersectionality? And, how can we locate ourselves (and others) within simultaneously occuring factors including, gender, race, ability, class, age, immigration status, education, language, and others?
In this article, Dr. Roberta Timothy, B.A., M.A., M.Ed., PhD., explores and discusses some of the factors that comprise identity, and defines one of intersectionality's most critical concepts: (self) location.
Dr. Roberta Timothy is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto's, Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her research aims to address key areas of concern in anti-colonial, anti-oppression and community-based health promotion, policy, and practice, and applies a transnational (global) intersectional human rights approach to social determinants of health affecting African/Black and Indigenous communities. She speaks and presents regularly to leaders, workers and researchers in Ontario's HIV sector and beyond.
CITYLINE: REAL ON RACE
Cityline host Tracy Moore leads honest discussions about race, privilege, and how to achieve systemic change. Panelists include historians, academics, activists and young leaders, whose focus on Anti-Black racism in Canada begins with an overview of how we got to where we are today by understanding our country's deep-rooted and longstanding racism towards the Black community.
Key Discussion items:
The history of two-centuries of slavery in Canada
Canada's history of anti-Black migration policies
How anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity sit at the root of white supremacy and white dominant systems in Canada
ARTICLES
Three Signs your HIV/AIDS organization has a Racism Problem Tokenism is simply a form of covert racism. Racism requires white people to maintain their power by exercising social, economic, and/or political muscle against people of color (POC). Tokenism achieves the same while giving those in power the appearance of being anti-racist and even champions of diversity because they recruit and use POC as racialized props.
Practical Ideas for Improving Equity and Inclusion at Nonprofits "The journey toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion has no fixed endpoint, but here are a few places to start. Acknowledging intersectionality—the reality that we live within a system of overlapping and interdependent privileges and disadvantages—is a first step toward truly addressing DEI. But how can we make acknowledging intersectionality a practice, and not just a conversation? We can start by making relatively simple changes that center our work at the intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, ableism, and implicit bias."
TOOLS
Anti-Black Racism Analysis Tool for Radically Equitable COVID-19 Response The COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on many Black communities and pervasive anti-Black racism not only exacerbates long-standing issues people of African descent face in society, it also makes responding to the needs of the Black community during the pandemic more difcult. To support community stakeholders in this regard, the City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit has prepared this resource.
Dismantling Anti-Black Bias In Democratic Workplaces: A Toolkit Our goal in creating this packet is to equip democratic workplaces with tools to see and address anti-Black racism when it happens, as well as creating systems and practices that undermine anti-Black racism. When we participate in a democratic workplace or collective, we take on the incredible responsibility of shaping an institution—and we therefore have incredible power to resist the harmful cultures, practices, and policies that reinforce anti-Black racism in mainstream institutions. But the persistent messages that we receive that reinforce anti-Blackness can just as easily infiltrate our workplaces if we’re not dedicated to building a shared vision for collective liberation that centers Black liberation and self-determination.
RECOMMENDED READING
The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer A useful pocket guide for practitioners that distills all of the research and materials found in Otto Scharmer's seminal texts Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future. The new developments into a short handbook that focuses on three essential components; the core principles of Theory U, the give movements that makes the process of Theory U, and social applications. The work presents the basic principles of Theory U and its usage in a compact format to be used as a simple introductory work to the field of presencing.
White Fragility: Why it's so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
"Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves."
The Step Forward series is delivered in service to our 40+ member organizations and to Ontario’s African, Caribbean, Black Latinx, and Black people living with and affected by HIV. This series is created by the Ontario AIDS Network in collaboration with Breakfast Culture, 54Lights podcast and our featured guest speakers.
The OAN's Step Forward newsletter is released on the first monday of each month. It is intended for Members, Affiliates and friends of the Ontario AIDS Network who are interested in learning about and addressing anti-Black racism in the HIV sector.
