Growing up in Scarborough, Stephanie Fearon was raised in a community with a rich tradition of Black matriarchal storytelling.

Through oration, folk tales, music, dance and even cooking, mothers have continued to impart cultural knowledge across generations.

It’s no surprise then, that as the inaugural assistant professor of Black thriving and education at �첥��Ƶ, Fearon wanted to explore the ways Black mothers come together with their children to cultivate leadership and literacy skills within education systems and beyond.

Inspired by her grandmother and grandaunts, who came to Canada from Jamaica in the 1960s with limited access to educational opportunities, Fearon’s research studies how Black mothers use storytelling in community-based literacy programs. 

With an understanding of the barriers these women face in academic research spaces, Fearon was careful to develop a collaborative approach where Black mothers feel valued.

“They’ve complained, lamented, about the extractive nature of the research process,” she says. “And when we look at the histories and the current relationships between researchers in academia and Black communities, it's not positive.”

Fearon centres Black mothers as partners in the research process, grounding her work in respect and co-creation. To honour the cultural significance of storytelling, she uses an arts-informed approach that allows her to reimagine educational research as collaborative and cultural.

Read the full article in the February 6, 2026 issue of Yfile

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Carl James holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education and Distinguished Research Professor at �첥��Ƶ. His work focuses on how social systems shape the educational experiences and outcomes of Black and other racialized youth — and how those systems can be transformed. Through research, advocacy, public scholarship, and policy advising, he works in close collaboration with his community to advance more equitable education systems designed for all students to succeed.

Seeing youth success beyond the classroom

In his first summer after entering university, Carl began working as a youth worker in downtown Toronto, where he saw firsthand how young people’s lives beyond school — family responsibilities, housing conditions, and economic realities — shaped their educational paths and future opportunities.

He initially turned to social psychology to understand what motivates students, particularly Black students, to succeed. Over time, however, he realized that success could not be understood in isolation. Family, community, and the school system itself play a critical role in shaping outcomes. This realization led him to sociology — a discipline that allowed him to keep community at the centre of his work.

One early interaction continues to shape his approach. A fellow student once challenged him by asking, “What is sociology actually going to do for us?” That question sharpened Carl’s commitment to ensuring that research does more than describe inequity — it helps to change it.

Rather than placing responsibility solely on students to “work harder,” Carl argues that meaningful equity requires society to work harder — by addressing the structural barriers that limit opportunities outside of the classroom.

COVID-19 as a lens on inequity

In 2021, Carl became Co-Chair of the . The role built on his long-standing research into education and inequity and offered a stark reminder of how crises expose and deepen existing disparities.

His findings were clear. Black and other racialized students were disproportionately affected by the pandemic — not because of individual choices, but because of the social and economic conditions shaping their lives.

Many lived in high-density housing, relied on public transportation, and had parents working in frontline jobs that could not move online. These realities increased exposure to the virus while reinforcing harmful narratives that framed racialized communities as inherently “high-risk,” rather than structurally vulnerable.

School closures further strained families. Parents were suddenly expected to support learning at home while juggling work, caregiving responsibilities, and financial stress. The loss of school-based food programs increased food insecurity, while limited access to computers and reliable internet left some students disconnected from school altogether — raising the risk of disengagement and dropout.

At the postsecondary level, the effects carried forward. Many students entered university already feeling behind. Remote learning limited opportunities to build relationships, access support, and develop a sense of belonging. Some delayed or withdrew from their studies entirely, compounding financial pressures on themselves and their families.

As Carl emphasizes, COVID-19 revealed how racism intersects with class, language, gender, and immigration status — and how the consequences of disruption extend well beyond the height of the pandemic.

“COVID-19 highlighted that racism is not just simply racism.”

The inequalities shaping the lives of Black and other racialized youth existed long before the pandemic. COVID-19 simply made them more visible — and more severe.

When recommendations meet resistant systems

As part of the task force, Carl authored Racial Inequity, COVID-19 and the Education of Black and Other Marginalized Students, which outlines nine recommendations for addressing educational inequities. These include reforming education policy, strengthening partnerships between schools and community organizations, engaging parents without shifting teaching responsibilities onto them, improving curriculum accessibility, collecting and using data to advance equity, and better preparing educators to support student well-being.

Yet Carl is realistic about the limits of recommendations when systems themselves resist change.

“We can always make recommendations, but if the system is not ready for that big change — if those systemic issues are not dealt with — then the recommendations become just simply that: recommendations.”

Although COVID-19 has faded from everyday conversation, its effects continue to shape students’ educational and career paths. As Carl notes, we must continue to take into account the long-term impacts of the pandemic and the ongoing role of racism in shaping young people’s trajectories.

Black History Month — and the importance of systems

For Carl, Black History Month is not only about commemoration — it is an opportunity to examine the systems that shape present-day realities. He emphasizes the importance of understanding Canada’s racial history, including colonialism, the experiences of Indigenous peoples, and the fact that Black people are not recent immigrants, but were originally brought to Canada through enslavement, not immigration.

These histories are not peripheral. They are central to understanding how race operates in Canadian institutions today, including schools.

“We need to think of the social, political, and cultural situation of Black people beyond just a month — and beyond just Black people. If we’re thinking of Black people, we should also be thinking of other racialized groups, and how race operates more widely in our society.”

A path toward change

When asked to describe his work in one word, Carl offers two — change and path. Change speaks to the possibility of transformation. Path speaks to movement — how people navigate shifting conditions that shape opportunities, risks, and possibilities over time.

“People are constantly moving and travelling. You can be travelling along a path, but the weather might change — it might be icy and –10 degrees, or it might be sunny and warm. What matters is that we pay attention to these changes and adapt as we continue to walk our paths.”

Carl’s work makes one thing clear — to understand the path, we must understand the systems that shape it. And for real change to occur, those systems must be ready to change as well.

“How we deal with change is important — but so is paying attention to the context of that change.”

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Report on the series of 11 murals honouring Black Torontonians who have had a positive impact on the City. The murals were unveiled on Saturday as part of a Subway tour from �첥��Ƶ to Union Station. Carl James, a Distinguished Research Professor of Education and Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community, and Diaspora at �첥��Ƶ, comments on the project. James says it's a way African Canadians can educate Torontonians and the rest of the world about the Black presence in Canada.

For more information on each of the 11 remarkable individuals being honoured, visit the .

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Now a prominent academic, York's Faculty of Education Jean Augustine Chair reflects on experiences of Black community in 1970s Toronto

It was at the now-closed Brockton High School near the new Dufferin Mall on what was then called Awde Street, where a young Carl James met with other community organizers on a September Saturday. That morning they launched the Caribbean Alliance Council (CAC) and that evening they celebrated with dinner and dance at the Soul Palace Restaurant, just north of what is now Sankofa Square.

Like other Black immigrants of his generation from Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean islands, James came to Canada in the post-1967 period after the state had removed race-based immigration restrictions.

While pursuing his education, James engaged in youth work, volunteering with organizations such as the Black Education Project. Located just north of Davenport on Bathurst, James describes the organization as “central” to the education experiences of Black parents and students at the time. He also worked with Harriet Tubman Centre at St. Clair and Oakwood, which still operates today as the Harriet Tubman Community Centre close to Don Mills subway.

“I was at the time going through school, volunteering and working with the other volunteers – an adolescent working with younger Black adolescents,” recalls James. “I came to the work that I do through working on issues of Black life. The situation that I was observing and trying to understand with regard to Black youth informed my work.”

Later, he worked in Regent Park, a neighbourhood located in Toronto’s east downtown that’s now a mix of condominiums and social housing. Back then it was exclusively a public housing project – Canada’s first and largest. Many of the youth with whom James worked saw their participation in sports as the key to their future success and were not often going into academic areas because of streaming practices in their schools. 

This inspired his early research at �첥��Ƶ. Today, James is a prominent academic who has dedicated his career to studying some of the very issues he first observed and experienced four decades earlier.

“I'd been noticing that the education and schooling system had not been as helpful in educating or schooling Black immigrant students as we would have expected,” recalls James. “That happens today; and happened then. So, I'm very interested in, well, ‘How can this change? If over and over again, we keep finding and seeing the same thing, what have we not been doing to change the situation?’”

In addition to being a professor in �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Education and an author of many books on race, education and immigration, James currently serves as the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora.

His 2017 report highlighted the systemic racism Black students face in GTA schools. This work helped to bring about an end to academic and applied streaming for Grade 9 students in Ontario, a decision that was announced in 2020.

Current include community outreach, such as the Day at York programming that helps Black high-school students see themselves in post-secondary, the Jean Augustine Mentorship program that pairs Black students at York with those entering the university, and Word, Sound, Power, a free annual event that takes place during Black History Month with dance, music and spoken word performances. It also includes partnerships with Black researchers across Canada that will serve to create better data on race and education, and collaborations with health science researchers looking at the health conditions and needs of Black individuals.

James is also a frequent figure in the media, commenting on recent news headlines from the renaming of Dundas Square, to new rules banning the N-word from use in the Toronto District School Board system, diversity in the city’s emergency services, and the provincial government mandating Black history in the Ontario curriculum.

However, it is not about him, James insists, nor the research, but working in the interest of community and using advocacy work to address and bring about the wider changes needed.

“It is not about research for research’s sake, but to inform action,” says James. “Community is often a central feature for those who have been marginalized. Of course, I think you can’t think of someone independent of their communities. And I'm thinking of communities not only in geographic terms, but as ethnic communities, gendered communities, class communities, and how all these might be operating in individuals’ lives.”

I'd been noticing that the education and schooling system had not been as helpful in educating or schooling Black immigrant students as we would have expected. That happens today; and happened then."

— Professor Carl James, commenting on his early experiences working with youth in Regent Park

James adds that community is often a central construct of how Black youth imagine their future lives.

“You might find them highly represented in social services, social sciences, and education because they are ‘giving back’ to community,” he says. “They feel an obligation to respond to the needs of the community that has supported them. So, it's understandable that Jean would think that community is central to the work that’s been done through the Chair and for the Chair to engage community.

“Essentially, the idea is for us to work with community, and invite them to do the needed education work together.”

One of his current research projects looks at how individuals’ social capital ⁠–⁠ racialized individuals in particular ⁠–⁠ mediates access to employment, careers and occupational mobility once they land a job. Like much of James’s other work, the study follows research participants over a number of years, with a particular focus on periods of transition.

“I'm very interested in the differences between transitioning through high school to college and/or university, or from university to college, and to work,” says James. “All those permutations are very useful to look into in order to capture the ways in which young people are navigating life and negotiating the world around them.”

The Chairship is of course named after Jean Augustine, Canada’s first Black woman Member of Parliament, who made the motion that was unanimously passed in the House of Commons in 1995 for Black History Month to be officially recognized in Canada. She later established the Chair in her name at �첥��Ƶ. James became the second Chair after the role was restructured and reimagined from the original framing of ‘Education in the New Urban Environment,’ which was held by . Thanks to a combination of a $1.5 million gift from the federal government and grassroots funding, the Chair is now fully endowed. (Her actual, physical chair, that she once sat in as an MP, now sits in the Dean’s Office at the Faculty of Education). 

James’ initial connections with Augustine go back to his early years in Toronto and their mutual involvement in community organizations such as the CAC.

Some documentation of this can be found in the Jean Augustine collection hosted through the at �첥��Ƶ’s Scott Library, such as a letter regarding the founding meeting, written and signed off by James on behalf of Augustine, then the secretary of the CAC. At that meeting, James asked the group about working with high school students and recommended a summer research project looking into the experiences of immigrant children from local communities.

James is being celebrated in two pieces of art this Black History Month – one by York alumni Robert Small as part of the Legacy Collection, and the other by Mya Salau as part of this year’s Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) Black History Month campaign, Salau’s mural can be seen on an oversized mural at the �첥��Ƶ TTC subway station, a wrap on Bus #3349 that operates on various lines deployed from the Queensway Garage, and on subways across the city.

A lot has transpired in the decades since James began his work, but it was in those early experiences with Black communities in Toronto that set him on his life path.

“I always say, suppose I never worked with those downtown youth. Would I have been able to think of the questions I have today?” he reflects. “Suppose they never answered my questions, or even sat with me for half an hour to share their experiences.

“So, while I look earnestly at the people who have worked with me, and given me mentorship, I have to also remember the research participants or even those who just simply entertained my conversations and my questions to think through more of what I might want to eventually contribute to life.”

Join James, mural artists, other honourees and their family members and youth from the TDSB this Saturday, Feb. 24 at 10 a.m. at �첥��Ƶ subway station for the kickoff of a TTC . The tour will then make five more stops down the line and end at Union Station. James is not the only member of the York community to be celebrated by the TTC as part of Black History Month. Honorary Doctor of Laws degree recipient Itah Sadu, who is helping to organize Saturday’s event, is featured in a mural at Bathurst station.

Jean Augustine's story teaches us about Canada's domestic workers’ scheme

Augustine had come to Canada as a domestic worker from Grenada during a time of political upheaval in her home country, with Grenada achieving independence in 1974. These early days are documented in the hosted through the Clara Thomas Archives at �첥��Ƶ’s Scott Library located at Keele Campus.

The first item in the archive is a pamphlet entitled Advice to West Indian Women Recruited for Work in Canada as Household Helps. A lot of the space in the pamphlet is devoted to advice on what behaviour is expected: Be truthful, courteous and polite at all times in your dealings with your employer and their children; unmarried women who get pregnant in their first year could be deported and may never be able to return.

“The women who have been sent to Canada in previous years have not let down West Indian womanhood and it is confidently expected that you will do the same,” a passage reads.

The pamphlet also contains practical advice on life in Canada: While it is easy to get credit, it is also easy to get in trouble with it if you can’t keep up with payments; bring warm clothes, but no more than is needed as it will be cheaper to purchase winter clothes after you arrive; if your lips get chapped, try Vaseline or Camphor Ice.

There are warnings of “useless correspondence courses,” especially in nursing, that will take large sums of money, but won’t be of any use either in Canada or back home.

Canada needed more immigrants in the post WWII period when Europeans were staying home, and it was in that context that the Canadian government allowed workers from certain territories in the West Indies entry to Canada beginning in 1955, and the total lifting of race-based immigration restrictions in 1967. Caribbean domestics came to Canada to take care of other people’s children so those people could go to work, explains James. And people like Augustine who were teachers back home, not only provided domestic duties, but also the socialization of Canadian children.

“Beyond simply thinking of Jean coming here and becoming a Parliamentarian, what does Jean's story also tell us about Canada? To me, it's a big or national story,” reflects James.

“Her story represents Canada’s relationship with the Caribbean, and Caribbean women’s, and people’s contributions to the social, cultural, economic and political development of Canada. Her story is important; and there are many things we can learn from it.”

Members of the �첥��Ƶ community and public can access the Jean Augustine collection by appointment by contacting the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at archives@yorku.ca.

This story was republished with permission from News at York

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Members of the �첥��Ƶ community are invited to celebrate Black artistic talent during a showcase of performances on Feb. 7, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., when the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora presents Word, Sound, Power: An Annual Celebration of Black Artistic Expression.

The annual event celebrates the rich and diverse world of Black aritistic expression, promising to be a vibrant showcase of talent, creativity and cultural pride.

The event is open to the community and is free to attend. It begins at 5:30 p.m. with a welcome reception in the CIBC Lobby, Accolade East Building at the Keele Campus, and performances will run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Tribute communities Recital Hall, Accolade East Building.

The event’s land acknowledgement will be provided by Carrington Christmas, a York alumna, who is an Indigenous anti-racist educator and self-described “Aunty Extraordinaire” with Black Scotian-Mi’kmaw and German ancestry.

The ceremony will then be closed with an Afro-Indigenous blessing from Isaac Crosby, an agricultural expert of Ojibwe of Anderdon heritage.

Hosting and providing opening remarks will be Andrea Davis, a professor in the Department of Humanities, who in recognition of her work advancing equity, access and justice in post-secondary education.

Also providing remarks before the performances begin will be Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada; Samia Hashi, Ontario regional director of Unifor, which sponsors the event; and Robert Savage, dean of the Faculty of Education.

Among the featured performances this year are:

• solo performances, including song and instruments, dance and spoken word, from students from Greater Toronto Area school boards;
• a performance from the Oscar Peterson Jazz Ensemble;
• a performance from the �첥��Ƶ R&B Ensemble;
• a spotlight artistic performance of the evening from Ian Kamau, an artist and designer;
• a performance from the �첥��Ƶ Gospel Choir; and
• an Afro-Caribbean dance performance by students from James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School in the CIBC Lobby during the welcome reception.

This year’s Word, Sound, Power event is put on in partnership with the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, with primary sponsorship from Unifor. York’s Division of Equity, People & Culture has also provided funding support. The Faculty of Education – home to the Jean Augustine Chair – and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, through faculty member Davis, also play a critical role in the event.

Anika Forde, research project manager for the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community & Diaspora, and Karen Burke, Chair of Music, were co-conveners of the event this year.

Those interested in attending can .

Article originally posted in the February 2, 2024 issue of

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Ph.D. candidate Nicola Dove, co-authored an opinion piece about structures of continuing dehumanization and devaluation of Black lives in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. "Living within often-contradictory sets of circumstances speaks to our experiences and those of our extended communities, so we offer paradox and the questions it raises... as a means of wayfinding," said Dove and co-authors.

One year ago, the three of us delivered a presentation entitled . Since then, we have moved through the two-year mark of the murder of George Floyd and witnessed another set of with its attendant promise of an(other) awakening and call to change. We have also witnessed the recent loss of and other previous deaths – some of which are covered by the media and others are not. Those violent losses, especially intensified as we move through the global pandemic, have shone a light on structures of continuing dehumanization and devaluation of Black lives in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. The repeating calls to action reveal the deep paradox that in order to be heard, and to initiate a movement for what calls “,” more souls have had to be lost. The lives and experiences of Black people are rife with such paradoxes in this, .

Read the full article on the .

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