THREAD: Systemic racism in academia. The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) @SFU_FHS made an instagram video called "Top 10 Reasons To Study With FHS", featuring a cis-White-woman lecturer. Here are the reasons listed by her:

Reason #10: "Even tho SFU is really big, we have a small study space...."
Reason #9: "At some point, you're going to see a Bear!"
Reason #8: "You have a program that I wanted as an undergrad!"
Reason #7: "Number 6...no..Number 7"...

Reason #6: "Number 6! We have amazing faculty *proceeds to list all white faculty members*";
Reason #5: "We have amazing faculty part 2, here's where I'm going to toot my own horn!!" *proceeds to talk about how she went to three-world-class universities* (one being Harvard)

Reason #4: "We are committed to your health!"
Reason #3: "You will make friends!"
Reason #2: "Our students are change makers!"
Reason #1: "I think there is never going to be a drought of [health diseases that disproportionately affect POC] that you can study!!"

No mention of the Indigenous program, dedication to anti-racism, the wonderful POC faculty, y'know..<anything to make incoming POC students feel safe/needed>..So I left a comment—that this is evidently the view of white-scholars and the video should be redone through a POC lens

Besides being harassed by a white student for this comment, the cis-White-woman Prof responds—and OMG I am shocked—she took my comment about the video as me calling HER RACIST—and starts to list off reasons for why she isn't:

These include:
1) Justifying Reason #6 because the majority of the faculty is white
2) She lectures about racism, citing the specific WEEK she teaches it in
3) We should zoom into the picture showed in Reason #2 to see the "diversity of the students"
4) SHE HAS A BLACK DAUGHTER

This is textbook definition of white centering and implicit bias...I'm shocked and so disappointed. Using your Black daughter as proximity to "diversity" as a justification for not being racist (when no one was saying you were) is WRONG on so many levels.

Please take this seriously. @bubela_tania, @profplum8, @akaida, @HasinanisaH, Here is the link to the video and the comment thread: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCWm2_7gP8T/ 

This is systemic racism—powerful people unable to examine their own contributions to the system. As a POC voice, I was silenced and marginalized by Dr. Rochelle Tucker—who is bent on demonstrating she knows more about my lived experiences than me—the most dangerous kind of racism