ISSUE INTRODUCTION
BEYOND THE BLACK SQUARES Dismantling Your Innate White Museum, Arts, and Heritage Spaces
Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed by white police officers in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These two watershed moments, as part of a consistent, persistent and ongoing pattern of murder, violence, hate, and anti-Blackness, triggered a worldwide response and resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter.
range of spaces have had their hidden and silenced seams opened publicly to the racism within their structures: sports organizations, media channels, universities, municipalities, provincial and territorial governments, the federal government, corporations, the RCMP, the local police, and yes, museums, art galleries and spaces of culture. Many may be asking ‘why now?’ Why in THIS given moment and with the incredible force at which the conversations have been made public?
In an immediate response, no individual, no institution, no system, no one is left untouched in the ripple effects of a mass call to dismantle racism and its perpetuation around us. In the Canadian context, because - let me tell you, racism is just as relevant, prevalent and persistent here - a wide
From my own experiences as a person of colour (PoC) over the past few months, I can tell you that this movement has triggered BIPoC/IBPoC racism, aggression, dismissal, and condescension in the spaces we live in, work in, play in, eat in, and breathe in. We have been suffocated day in and
