AS TOLD TO ELAINE COBURN...
What does it mean to be a scholar-activist? One answer is that I have had no choice. “I have had to fight every day, and struggle every day,” Dr. Crichlow observes, “to be recognized as human in a world where human rights and the legality of freedom do not exist”, especially for those constructed as Black and marginalized as Others. “Black freedom is not something that is given,” he argues, “it must be fought for”.
What does it mean to be a scholar activist? One answer is that I have had no choice. I have had to fight every day…to be recognized as human, to be free in a world where human rights do not exist…. Black freedom is not something that is given, it must be fought for.
A second answer goes back to my undergraduate degree, in Sociology and Socio-Legal Studies at York University. While at York, I encountered two formative teachers, Professors Livy Visano, who works in critical criminology, among other areas of study, and the late Evelyn Kallen, a Distinguished Professor of Human Rights who fought against anti-Semitism and other hatreds. They impressed me as being very practical in their approach to social justice, so their example of balancing scholarship and community activism helped me to understand that there was a place for me in the university – a space to learn and to do my community work.
Photo of Professor Wesley Crichlow
York University Professors Livy Visano… and the late Evelyn Kallen…impressed me as being very practical in their approach to social justice praxis, so their example of balancing scholarship and community activism helped me to understand that there was a place for me in the university.
Later, I did my Masters in Education, in the 1980s, when, quite unusually for the times, I was interested in rap music and how it might be used to support pedagogy. I was volunteer teaching at Lord Dufferin public school in Regent park, and students were dealing with a lot in their lives. To me, it was obvious that we could learn a lot from Tupac Shakur. He asks, “Did you hear about the rose that grew/from a crack in the concrete?”. Shakur (1999) refers to young people, who, despite social stressors and structural barriers, are “roses that grow” from concrete. He reminds us to dream, to thrive – especially for those who, without nurturing supports for growth, still bloom.
When [Tupac Shakur] asks, ‘Did you hear about the rose that grew/from a crack in the concrete?”… [h]e reminds us to dream, to thrive-- especially for those who, without nurturing supports for growth, still bloom.
“In focussing my Masters in Education on rap music,” Dr. Crichlow observes, “I was bringing in anti-racism and critical pedagogy through progressive forms of the rap genre. In the classroom, rap helped to make sense of social issues that students were raising about the particularity of challenges that they faced.” I realized that I could do scholarship and teach in ways that made sense to me and to my students. I could bring in Black experience and reinvent what critical Black pedagogy meant so that it was relevant to our lives. At the same time, I realized that teaching was not just about learning lessons with students. “I learned” Dr. Crichlow remarks, “that teaching was a calling, a vocation.”
After finishing my Masters, I completed my PhD at the Ontario Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. My thesis became the first-ever study of Black men who love and have sexual relationships with other men. This was published as a book, Buller Men and Batty Bwoys: Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities, in 2004. “Implicitly, it was a critique of white Eurocentric LGBTQ politics,” Dr. Crichlow explains.
“It was Black gay research that restored Caribbean and diasporic Caribbean indigenous terms; these terms represent relationships.” As indigenous terms, Dr. Crichlow argues, Buller Men and Batty Bwoy locate men within social relationships that enact a definition of the culture and community of Caribbean people. Their identifications are imparted through the language and culture, including distinctive body gestures, that privilege, maintain and occasionally contest values central to Caribbean culture. This remains an important intervention, since far too often whiteness overdetermines queerness, while Blackness, by default, overdetermines compulsory heterosexuality.
As indigenous terms, Dr. Crichlow argues, Buller Men and Batty Bwoy locate men within social relationships that enact a definition of the culture and community of Caribbean people. Their identifications are imparted through the language and culture, including distinctive body gestures, that privilege, maintain and occasionally contest values central to Caribbean culture.
Alongside my scholarship, I took other initiatives. “I never wanted simply to publish about people’s oppression” Dr. Crichlow observes, “because that seemed to me unethical. I was writing about oppression to bring about change.” I established A Different Booklist, while still a PhD student, because I wanted to create a Black LGBTQ cultural center and bookstore where you could read Caribbean and African Canadian literature, from both small and big presses.
Later, I was part of the efforts to advance the African Canadian legal clinic, one of the specialist legal clinics serving specific community needs in Ontario. This was started in the aftermath of what were called “riots” but were better described as disturbances on Yonge Street, in the aftermath of the Rodney King murder by police office, in the United States in 1991 and the rash of anti-Blackness impacting Black in education, criminal justice, mental health and employment sectors. The African Canadian legal clinic started to take up some of these test cases, all the way to the Supreme Court. This was a way, very practically, of challenging the normalcy of anti-Black racism employing critical race theory, legal storytelling, and critical race litigation to achieve racial equality and eradicate antiblackness.
Police brutality [is] just as much a problem in Canada [as it is in the United States], so the African legal clinic started to take up these cases, all the way to the Supreme Court.
Today, I am pursuing a project very near to my heart. “I put forward the same project for funding for many years” Dr. Crichlow observes. “It was finally funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2022”. The funding supported a survey and interviews with Black gay, bisexual, and trans men who had been incarcerated.
A major outcome of that project is our current effort, including with my esteemed York University faculty colleague -- and friend -- Dr. Elaine Coburn who is equally committed to the project, alongside many others. Together, we are creating a Black LGBTQ Justice national non-profit. As Dr. Crichlow explains, “Black LGBTQ Justice will advocate for and support Black LGBTQ people who have been impacted by the justice system.” Too often, this community is totally invisible within supportive organizations meant to help those negatively, often violently, impacted by their encounters with the justice system.
“What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be free? And how can I describe human life with enough clarity, to begin to speak to our yearning for emancipation and freedom?” This is the driving concern for my scholarship and for my activism.
“This is the kind of work that I find meaningful as a scholar-activist,” Dr. Crichlow concludes. “It is work that asks: How do I do more than document and publish oppression? In other words, how do I not steal people’s pain and suffering? How do we centre the voices of those who are otherwise marginalized?” But most of all, Dr. Crichlow argues, this work asks of each of us: “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be free? And how can I describe human life with enough clarity, to begin to speak to our yearning for emancipation and freedom?” This is the driving concern for my scholarship and for my activism. I have tried to live out these commitments in my academic commitments and in responding to community needs, at the intersection of our lives.
Dr. Crichlow, York University alumni and Ontario Tech faculty member, was hosted by the Research Centre for Public Sociology and the Graduate Programme in Sociology on March 10, 2025.