On behalf of the faculty of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, Nathan Sanders (faculty) offers this message to the members of our linguistics community:
We are outraged and saddened by the continuing racist violence and abuses of power against racialized groups in the United States, Canada, and throughout the world, especially the long history of police brutality against Black people and Black communities that has once again gained worldwide attention. The faculty of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto declare our explicit support for the Black Lives Matter movement and other networks that are working to end unjust power structures and the racism that drives them.
We believe it is also important to recognize our department's shortcomings on these issues and the need to redress them. The small number of Black scholars and students in the field of linguistics is a pervasive problem, and we acknowledge that we can do better with Black representation in our department and with fighting anti-Black racism more broadly. We have taken small steps, such as ongoing changes to our curriculum and applying for institutional opportunities such as the Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship for Black and Indigenous scholars, but there is much more uncomfortable work we need to do. As we make plans to put that work into action, we welcome voices from our community and beyond about how we as a department can best enact positive change.
Please consider joining some of the upcoming events sponsored by the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office to help further much needed discussion and action: https://antiracism.utoronto.ca/reflect-restore-action/
For more information and resources on the important role of linguistics in racial justice, see the following statement from the Linguistic Society of America: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2020/06/03/lsa-issues-statement-racial-justice
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