It’s impossible to look at the events last week in Washington D.C. outside the lens of White Supremacy. Even President-Elect Joe Biden affirmed in a press conference that if the insurrectionists that broke into the Capitol, vandalized, and threatened the lives of elected representatives had been Black, there would have been a lot more arrests, and a lot more than five deaths. Shockingly, 2020 wasn't the end of racism.
This week on the podcast, we're joined by Kevin Sutton, who is an equality and inclusion workshop f...
It’s impossible to look at the events last week in Washington D.C. outside the lens of White Supremacy. Even President-Elect Joe Biden affirmed in a press conference that if the insurrectionists that broke into the Capitol, vandalized, and threatened the lives of elected representatives had been Black, there would have been a lot more arrests, and a lot more than five deaths. Shockingly, 2020 wasn't the end of racism.
This week on the podcast, we're joined by Kevin Sutton, who is an equality and inclusion workshop facilitator, a spoken word performer, workshop facilitator, and a communications professional. If all that isn’t enough, he’s also a radio host, a politico, an activist, and the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Guelph. Sutton joins us for one more look back at 2020, and what we can look forward to in social justice in 2021.
What happened in 2020 may be best summed up by Sutton in an op-ed he wrote for the Guelph Mercury Tribune last August:
“Is it fate that one pandemic has at long last exposed another? Because of COVID-19, many non-racialized people have been able to step back and witness their system of racism in action for the first time. In the COVID-19 response, and in the response to peaceful protest, a multitude of folks born into the systemic dominance of 'whiteness' finally saw the horrors that racialized people had been detailing for generations.”
But is this a moment in time, or is it the beginning of a movement?
This is going to be one of those episodes where we meander from one point to another, and for a topic like this, maybe that’s okay. Sutton will discuss what gives him hope and optimism about the future, and how joy is sometimes an act of rebellion. He will also talk about the difficult necessity of having uncomfortable conversations, and how we can make room for minority voices in the local discourse without making people think it’s just tokenism.
So let's consider the last year and the progress to equality on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can find episodes of Sutton’s show The Great Pause on CFRU’s website. You can find Sutton himself all over social media and links to his writing and engagement all over Google. As you heard, he is also taking up a post at Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition as Community Resilience Co-ordinator. Stay tuned.
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Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
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