A dedicated acknowledgement for black students, staff and faculty urging them “be unapologetically Black” is being added to some email signatures at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
As reported by Quillette journalist Jonathan Kay, the ‘Black acknowledgement’ comes in addition to an Indigenous land acknowledgement.
“To Our Black Students, Staff and Faculty: You are seen, you belong, you are beautiful, you are building a legacy, your history matters, be unapologetically Black, your existence matters, you are resilient, you are valued, your presence on campus matters, you are creative, you are innovative, you are brilliant, you matter,” reads the email signature of a UBC academic officer.
When asked about the matter, UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey told True North that “faculty, staff and students are free to include acknowledgements of their choosing in their email signatures” and that “there is no directive from the university to include them or not.”
The university’s email signature generator lists acknowledgements, as well as First Nations territories and gender pronouns as non-mandatory fields.
As pointed out by Kay, the phrase used by UBC faculty to acknowledge Black people in email signatures is seen in the “Blackness” section of the President’s “Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence” Final Report, which was released in January 2022.
In the same report, UBC’s Blackness Committee recommended the creation of designated spaces for black students, race-based preferential hiring of black scholars, a definition for “racist microaggressions” and an “anti-racism” office.
The committee noted that it recognized and acknowledged “its positionality and privilege as uninvited guests” on Indigenous territories, amid it “trying to understand what it means to embark on the work of addressing anti-Black racism while located on stolen lands.”
It also said that discussions “were triggering and raw as committee members recounted deeply personal experiences of anti-Blackness, of navigating daily microaggressions, and of anti-Black racism and the ensuing trauma.”
In addition to publishing the “Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence” Final Report in 2022, UBC published a communications style guide that says the term “Black” needs to be capitalized when referring to black people or culture, but “white” needs to be lowercase when referring to white people or culture.
The latter is in line with the Associated Press (AP) style guide. The organization notes that “white people, in general, have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin colour.”
“White people’s skin colour plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems,” adds AP. “Capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
