Don’t Call Me Resilient

10 Episodes
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By: The Conversation, Vinita Srivastava, Dannielle Piper, Krish Dineshkumar, Jennifer Moroz, Rehmatullah Sheikh, Kikachi Memeh, Ateqah Khaki, Scott White

Host Vinita Srivastava dives into conversations with experts and real people to make sense of the news, from an anti-racist perspective. From The Conversation Canada.

Colonialists used starvation as a tool of oppression
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Yesterday at 1:30 PM

In today's episode, we're continuing the conversation we started last week about using forced famine as a tool to control land, resources and people.  For centuries, starvation has been effectively used by colonial powers to control populations, to acquire land and the wealth that comes with that.  Today, we’re looking at the decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains of North America –.  and the 1943 famine that took three million lives in Bengal, India, which was then under British rule. These are two vastly different populations that were devastated by a complex set of factors. But both populations had a few t...


Starvation is a weapon of war and Gazans are paying the price
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03/21/2024

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 catastrophic starvation conditions. The report goes on to say that without an immediate ceasefire and a major influx of food and to areas cut off by fighting, famine and mass death in...


Nine years after #OscarsSoWhite, a look at what's changed
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03/14/2024

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 America’s demographic realities and also to expand its  depiction of our histories.

The reason: representation in Hollywood matters. What gets put on screens and by whom...


Don't Call Me Resilient Season 7 Trailer
03/07/2024

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'American Fiction,' is a scathing satire that challenges pop-culture stereotypes of Blackness
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12/14/2023

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 also rages against having to talk about it, Monk gets so frustrated that he decides to poke fun of those who uncritically consume what has been sold to them as  "Bla...


The Conversation Weekly: Kenya at 60 -- the patriotic choral music used to present one version of history
12/13/2023

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 independence from British colonial rule on December 12, 1963. Each year, the country celebrates the occasion with a national holiday, Jamhuri Day. And for much of the past 60 years, patriotic choral music has been a...


Dear politicians: To solve our food bank crisis, curb corporate greed and implement basic income
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12/07/2023

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 are in the middle of a major food insecurity crisis.  And as we head into this holiday season - traditionally a time for giving and sharing and gathering around food - the...


Why are school-aged boys so attracted to hateful ideologies?
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11/30/2023

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.  Teachers say he has a big presence in the classroom. On top of that, there's been an exponential rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia in Canada that have also impacted the classroom. Why are boys especially attracted to  these hat...


The potential of psychedelics to heal our racial traumas
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11/23/2023

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 can help veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  But research also suggests psychedelics - including psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") and MDMA - can help heal racial trauma. In today's episode, Vinita speaks to clinical psychologist and...


Palestine was never a ‘land without a people'
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11/16/2023

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 history of the last century reveals that the root of the tension between the two communities is more complicated than that.

At its root, it’s  a conflict between two com...