States of race

What is a Canadian critical race feminism?

As the contributors to this book note, the interventions of Canadian critical race feminists work to explicitly engage the Canadian state as a white settler society. The collection examines Indigenous peoples within the Canadian settler state and Indigenous women within feminism; the challenges posed by the settler state for women of colour and Indigenous women; and the possibilities and limits of an anti-colonial praxis.

Critical race feminism, like critical race theory more broadly, interrogates questions about race and gender through an emancipatory lens, posing fundamental questions about the persistence if not magnification of race and the "colour line" in the twenty-first century. The writers of these articles  whether exploring campus politics around issues of equity, the medias circulation of ideas about a tolerant multicultural and feminist Canada, security practices that confine people of colour to spaces of exception, Indigenous womens navigation of both nationalism and feminism, Western feminist responses to the War on Terror, or the new forms of whiteness that persist in ideas about a post-racial world or in transnational movements for social justice  insist that we must study racialized power in all its gender and class dimensions.

The contributors are all members of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity. 

Sherene Razack is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, University of Toronto. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics, and Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. Sunera Thobani is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Womens and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia. She is the author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada. Malinda Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, and author of Beyond the ‘African Tragedy’: Discourses on Development and the Global Economy.