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This racist stuff is being put in the mail boxes of people who live in Kitchener-Waterloo, which is the community I spent most of my time in while I got my PhD at the University of Waterloo. Canada.
In folks think I am surprised by this, the answer is no. I heard racial slurs in KW that even Americans don’t use anymore and I only knew from literature. I was called a mulatto regularly and when trying to find a hair salon “can I put a comb through *that*?” #BlackInAstro
And Perimeter Institute is still not ready to reckon with the traumatic levels of sexism and racism I witnessed and experienced while I was a PhD student there. Right up to and including the former director who is all about saving Africans from white supremacy.
Being told “you Black people are always complaining about slavery” and then having to switch research fields entirely because I didn’t want to work with the guy who said that — people complained openly that I overreacted because I *looked* mad.
My PhD advisor said I was trying to persecute the guy when I asked him — as one of the most distinguished men in the field — to speak to the man who made those comments to me.
My other PhD advisor, after I graduated, told me I’d never make it as a researcher and cut me off on social media and sent me a nasty email telling me I was a horrible unlikable person after I pointed to Justin Trudeau’s racism.
Then there was the time I invited the director to give a cosmology talk at the National Society of Black Physicists and he responded that he would give a talk at a different time on physics in Africa, in a session he was not invited to.
Will never forget the lunch where someone told me “oh my wife is a mulatto like you.” 
And we haven’t gotten to the part where babies were banned from the building after a woman postdoc had a very quiet baby that she kept in her office — meanwhile a senior male researcher had his toddler running around the building screaming and almost throwing herself down stairs.
Or the fact that the only woman faculty member had to skype into my phd defense because she was in the middle of suing the institute for gender discrimination — when they implemented tenure, it was given to all of the men. But not her. She was more senior than several.
The woman postdoc, by the way, had an advisor who told her he trusted her not to be stupid enough to have a 2nd baby. People knew this stuff was happening. No one did anything.
She’s a PhD from one of the top theory programs and a stay at home mom now.
https://twitter.com/ibjiyongi/status/1275788344262373376?s=21 https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1275788344262373376
She’s a PhD from one of the top theory programs and a stay at home mom now.
https://twitter.com/ibjiyongi/status/1275788344262373376?s=21 https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1275788344262373376
Kitchener-Waterloo is no haven. Canada is no haven. KW is the kind of place where my landlord (a Taiwanese Canadian) threatened to call immigration on me if I didn’t move out before my lease was up.
KW is the kind of place where people yelled “fucking Arab” at me when I was taking a manual driving lesson.
KW is the kind of place where I was literally the spook who sat by the door — while I was getting my oil changed, a white guy (despite his girlfriend’s attempts to shush him), kept going on about how he hates spooks. “I don’t care if she hears me,” he said.
I told all of this to a reporter for the Globe and Mail when he interviewed me for a profile — an interview setup by a conference I was keynoting.
Somehow the article never made its way to press.
Somehow the article never made its way to press.
So yeah, I’m not even a little bit surprised that people in KW are being racist shits.
People also regularly physically assaulted my queer friends. Punches in the face outside the gay club, a beating on the street complete with multiple rib fractures.
Oh and
People also regularly physically assaulted my queer friends. Punches in the face outside the gay club, a beating on the street complete with multiple rib fractures.
Oh and
The professor who asked me how I felt about dick when he found out I had a girlfriend and the postdoc who asked if my wife and I would do a foursome with him and his girlfriend. The professor who was handsy with me during my visit as a prospective student. He’s in the US now.
I was also the first Black person to complete a degree under Perimeter Institute’s roof, maybe the first Black PhD in physics at University of Waterloo, likely the first Black woman, and no one tracked this information or gave a fuck about it
The PhD advisor who responded poorly to the “you Black people” comment has, since, in his own way, apologized. But the whole thing doesn’t fall at his feet.
The other one ... can barely bring himself to acknowledge my existence when we are in the same room.
The other one ... can barely bring himself to acknowledge my existence when we are in the same room.
Perimeter Institute taught me the importance of Black queer feminism by showing me what happens without it.
To the reporters in my inbox: I don’t live in KW anymore. Black people there are the ones most affected by this flier. Talk to them.
A note on racism not directed to Black people: I figured out within a month or two of arrival that any time Indigenous people came up, 100% guarantee within 10 minutes, a white Canadian would say something racist. Always. Something about homelessness, alcohol, or crime.
