Our Mission Statement
Queen’s Coalition against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination strives to be an anti-oppressive non-hierarchical coalition of students, staff and faculty that work to create an anti-racist climate on the Queen’s University campus. QCRED works towards community wellness for historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Through education, community organizing and commitment to struggle across differences, we seek to responsibly reflect, represent and serve our various communities.
QCRED achieves this mission by:
- Fostering an anti-racist perspective and motivation in an environment where subtle and overt everyday racism contributes to a broader climate of exclusion at Queen’s
- Supporting, collaborating and creating actions that address racism at Queen’s
- Acknowledging the importance of working with those willing to engage in anti-racism
- Providing feedback to administrative bodies at Queen’s to build on their mission of excellence and recommended initiatives towards equity and diversity
- By being reflective of the ways power and privilege manifest
- Striving to serve historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups by addressing their lived experiences rather than focusing on white guilt and privilege
- Fostering a safe space for historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups that is reflective of the ways in which power dynamics manifest and operate
- Striving to be an anti-oppressive non-hierarchal organization and recognizes that this is an ongoing process
- Engaging with the University community and where appropriate and possible seeks to educate people about anti-oppressive politics and experiences of historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups
Guiding Principles
The principles guiding the work and development of QCRED as an anti-racist coalition are as follows:
- Recognizing the full diversity of lived experience and intersecting oppressions of historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups
- Respecting and learning from the collective her/histories of struggle against racial and ethnic discrimination and other forms of oppression that can be used to organize, support and advocate for our diverse communities
- Working with organizations and communities across difference of race/ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability and life experiences (e.g. class, immigration status, HIV serostatus, etc.) to develop and implement effective programs and services
- Seeking to support and promote the work of historically marginalized racial and ethnic individuals and organizations in order to value their skills and expertise within our event organizing and volunteer opportunities
- Promoting multi-racial coalition-building, advocacy and community organizing activities amongst historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups and with allies in struggles for equality and liberation
- Fostering an understanding that services and organizing efforts are most successful when they are executed by the communities that are implicated and impacted
- Creating and supporting decision-making/organization structures that are representative of our communities*
- Understanding the historic role of white privilege and white supremacy+, and recognizing that Peoples of Colour and Aboriginal Peoples leadership continues to be marginalized even within anti-racist movements, the QCRED board will be comprised of at least 2/3 of people who self identify as being from an historically marginalized racial and ethnic group(s)
*By “our communities” we mean ethnic and racial communities that have historically been marginalized.
+hooks, b. 1995a. Killing rage: Ending racism. New York: Holt, pp. 185-188.
