Sports and Standing up for Justice — Impact of the Professional Sport Strike/Boycott

Event Description

Professional athletes in basketball, football, hockey, baseball and soccer are striking/boycotting to speak out against systemic racism. This session will explore the impact of the professional sport strike on the Black Lives Matter movement. Join to learn about how this collective action is helping push for social change and draw attention to social injustice.

Darrell is an equity, diversity and inclusion social justice educator with over twenty-five years of experience working in higher education. He is skilled in program development and delivery in non-profit organizations, including career development, coaching, and diversity and social justice education and awareness. Throughout his career, Darrell has made significant contributions to the Black community, highlighted the issues of First Nation communities, and championed for greater accessibility for persons with disabilities.

Savanna Hamilton is a Host and Producer at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. In front of the camera, she hosts a weekly Raptors show, Raptors Today, and is a featured host on the show NBA XL aired on NBA TV Canada. Digitally, she created a series called "Hold Space" that celebrates game-changers on and off the court which features diverse stories ranging from communities within the Leafs, TFC and Raptors. She has a background in basketball as a former varsity player as well as a degree in Radio & Television Sports Media from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Nicole Neverson is an associate professor in Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She began teaching Sociology of Sport courses in 2006 and has been doing so at Toronto Metropolitan University since 2009.  Her current research interests are grounded in the areas of the mediated representation of marginalized groups, sports culture, and critical pedagogies. Her most recent publication examines how winter sports culture in Canada offers us the opportunity to understand whiteness, race and white supremacy via seemingly benign and ritualistic cultural practices. Her collaborative work, Inhabiting Critical Spaces: Teaching and Learning from the Margins at Toronto Metropolitan University, highlights the lived realities of racism and resistance to critical knowledge that instructors and students in the classroom, and wider campus, navigate across academic disciplines and programs.

Richard Norman is a researcher + lecturer + futurist + strategic consultant who works with people to affect change towards a more socially just, sustainable, and resilient future. His work is focused on the lived experiences of peoples who have been marginalized in our society. Richard’s doctoral research at the University of Waterloo explored the intertwining of “race,” whiteness, and colonialism in the sport of curling, and the deconstruction of dominance within sporting cultures. The research privileges the use of narrative forms aligning with oral traditions held by First Peoples around the world, to explore new ways of knowing and understanding. Richard's research is committed to approaches that can open up dialogue and discourses towards a more humane and morally driven worldview. His commitment to research continues now with the “Sport, Diversity, & Race Project” as a post-doctoral fellowship in the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.