Wendell Adjetey: Black Activism, History, and Reconciliation in Canada

The Canadian state’s surveillance of Black activism should be grasped through the prism of anxiety surrounding Black activism south of the border. This is one of the conclusions reached by 2014 Foundation scholar Wendell Adjetey in his comparative and historical analysis of black citizenship in the US and Canada. In a CBC Ideas episode, “The Resistance of Black Canada: State Surveillance and Suppression,” produced on 27 February 2018, Wendell showed how his and others’ work in the social sciences and humanities ultimately serves a broader purpose: reconciliation. In an inspirational statement, he asserted that history as a discipline, practice, and art is no less than “a process of reconciling things of the past with things of the present, and hopefully with things of the future.”

Wendell Adjetey is a 2014 Foundation scholar and a doctoral candidate in history and African-American studies at Yale University.

Listen to the episode here (Wendell Adjetey’s interventions from 2:45 to 8:20, 22:00 to 27:30, 31:30 to 33:00, and 47:15 to 52:30).