This article explores the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, a 2007-8 government consultation that was established in Québec to study interculturalism, secularism and national identity, in response to what had become known as the 'reasonable accommodation debates' on the extent to which minority and immigrant cultural practices could be accommodated. The focus of this exploration is on two aspects of the Commission: the citizens' forums that were a part of its deliberative process; and the ways in which it responded to the idea of crisis. Through an analysis of aspects of the Commission's final report, the ways in which the Commission was structured and the media representations of the Commission, this article argues that, despite the spirit of equality and fairness to which the commissioners were committed and the praise it received from some members of immigrant and minority groups, the Commission ended up reinforcing the racialised hierarchies and exclusions that it wanted to redress.

On 29 January 2017, a twenty-seven-year-old white man named Alexandre Bissonette entered a mosque in a suburb of Québec City and opened fire, killing six people. Focusing on Canadian media reports, this article examines two seemingly incongruent responses to this heinous massacre. First, despite Bissonnette’s unambiguous and purposeful targeting of Muslims, the public and the courts still debated whether this massacre was racially motivated. Second, when members of the Muslim community commented on the massacre and the impact that it had had on them, there appeared to be a type of restraint in the ways in which they expressed their fears and frustrations and in the ways in which they addressed the issue of anti-Muslim racism. How do we understand these incongruences? This article draws upon Sherene Razack’s seminal scholarship on public grief, national mythologies, and anti-Muslim racism in Canada, alongside studies on public expressions of emotions to make sense of the role that race played in the responses by the Muslim community, the politicians, the courts, and the accused.

This article explores the racialized dimensions of the witnessing, documenting and reporting practices of White/Western activists. Drawing from indepth interviews conducted with Canadian activists who have travelled mainly to Palestine and Iraq to report on the effects of military violence, it considers how racialized power is (re)produced through their practices. The article weaves postcolonial feminist theory, scholarship on citizenship journalism and narrative data. It explores several pitfalls that activists encounter in their representational practices, showing how easily and frequently they slide into a position of dominance. It asserts the need for an ongoing critique of the taken-for-granted virtues of "alternative" or "independent" media practices by nonprofessional or "citizen" journalists. Specifically, it challenges the prevalent notion that citizen journalism is a sure means to subvert power relations. Keywords:The politics of voice; Whiteness; Race & representational practices; North-South; Postcolonial theory Résumé : Cet article explore les dimensions raciales des témoignages, documentations et reportages provenant de militants blancs/occidentaux. Se fondant sur des entrevues en profondeur avec des militants canadiens qui ont voyagé principalement en Palestine et en Iraq pour rendre compte des effets de la violence militaire, il évalue la manière dont leurs pratiques (re)produisent le pouvoir racial. Pour ce faire, l'article combine la théorie féministe postcoloniale, la recherche sur le journalisme citoyen, et des données narratives. Il explore plusieurs déficiences apparaissant dans les pratiques représentationnelles des militants, montrant combien il est facile et commun pour ceux-ci d'adopter une position de prédominance par rapport à leurs sujets. Il met l'accent sur le besoin d'une critique en continu des pratiques médiatiques « alternatives » ou « indépendantes » propres aux journalistes citoyens ou non professionnels. Plus précisément, il met en question l'idée conventionnelle que le journalisme citoyen soit une manière sûre de subvertir les rapports de pouvoir.

This article examines a Canadian transnational solidarity activist's efforts to publicize human suffering through visual documentation. The objectives are to examine some of the ways activists negotiate ethical dilemmas about spectatorship and a white/Western gaze, and to consider the potential of the uses of visual documentation as a tool/tactic for subverting global white hegemony. The analysis focuses an one activists' attempts to capture and narrate experiences of suffering in the light of racialized relations of domination and subordination. The article argues that the strategies used to document and display photographs constituted the photographer and the viewers' understandings of themselves in ways that reinforce rather than subvert power. The article concludes by considering the implications of white/Westerners as mediators of the Other's suffering.

No abstract