BlackTalk Podcast

BlackTalk Podcast

Ethnic, modern, inclusive and informative, BlackTalk leaves listeners with new perspectives about anti-Black racism and Black achievement. BlackTalk is a podcast about the personal experiences of global Black experts and Black Canadians contextualized within the historical experience of being Black. Ethnic, modern, inclusive and informative, BlackTalk leaves listeners with new perspectives about anti-Black racism and Black achievement. The show is conversational, not judgmental. It provides a unique take on the Black experience to help people of all backgrounds open their eyes, reflect and challenge their thinking.

  1. Episode 24 - Monetta Bailey

    6h ago

    Episode 24 - Monetta Bailey

    In this episode of BlackTalk, Dr. Andy Knight and Samira Schultz are joined by Dr. Monetta Bailey for a conversation about race, ethnicity, immigrant status, crime, Critical Race Theory, public discourse, and institutional systems. The episode focuses on how Black, racialized, and immigrant youth are governed, represented, and positioned within institutions such as criminal justice, education, immigration, public policy, and Canadian society more broadly. Dr. Bailey’s work helps frame racism not only as individual prejudice, but as something built into language, social knowledge, institutional assumptions, policies, and everyday practices. The conversation also explores her forthcoming book, The Violence of Words: The Conditions, Construction and Consequences of Racist Public Discourse, and asks how racist public discourse can shape harm, fear, belonging, punishment, and the ways young people come to understand themselves. Dr. Monetta Bailey is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Ambrose University. Her research examines race, ethnicity, immigrant status, crime, Critical Race Theory, racist public discourse, youth criminalization, and institutional systems. Her scholarship focuses especially on how racialized and immigrant youth are represented, governed, and treated within systems such as criminal justice, education, immigration, and public policy. Dr. Bailey’s work also examines how racist language and public narratives produce real social and institutional consequences, including shaping who is seen as innocent, threatening, deserving, criminal, or belonging. Her forthcoming book, The Violence of Words: The Conditions, Construction and Consequences of Racist Public Discourse, further develops this work by examining how racist public discourse causes harm and how Canada understands racism, hate speech, and institutional accountability.

    58 min
  2. Episode 23 - Siv Ngesi

    6h ago

    Episode 23 - Siv Ngesi

    In this episode of BlackTalk, Dr. Andy Knight and Samira Schultz speak with Siv Ngesi about creativity, identity, visibility, and what it means to build a life and career in post-apartheid South Africa. The conversation explores how Siv’s work across acting, comedy, presenting, producing, performance, and public life reflects larger questions about overcoming, representation, and building something from scratch in systems that were not designed equally for Black people. Through Siv’s story, the episode considers what Black Canadian youth can learn from South African experiences of resilience, self-making, humour, cultural confidence, and public visibility. It also asks how creativity can become a way of claiming space, challenging limits, and imagining futures beyond the barriers that young Black people inherit. Sivuyile “Siv” Ngesi is a South African actor, comedian, television presenter, producer, MC, performer, and public personality. He has built a wide-ranging career across film, television, theatre, comedy, live performance, and media. Siv has appeared in productions including Invictus, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and The Woman King, and is also known for his work as a presenter and entertainer in South Africa. His career reflects a broad creative range, from comedy and acting to producing and public engagement. Across his work, Siv brings a strong perspective on representation, resilience, masculinity, identity, and the role of creativity in opening space for Black stories and Black possibility.

    43 min
  3. Episode 21 - Bukola Salami

    6h ago

    Episode 21 - Bukola Salami

    In this episode of BlackTalk, Dr. Andy Knight and Samira Schultz speak with Dr. Bukola Salami, who is leading major national work on Black child and youth well-being, including the SSHRC-funded Transforming Black Lives partnership project, which focuses on how systems such as education, health, justice, child welfare, and immigration and settlement shape the lives of Black children and youth in Canada. Dr. Salami’s research has made major contributions to the study of Black health, migrant and refugee well-being, Black youth mental health, and the structural conditions that shape access to care, opportunity, and belonging. Professor Bukola Salami is a Registered Nurse, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black and Racialized People’s Health, and a Full Professor at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on the well-being of Black, immigrant, and racialized groups, with involvement in over 90 funded studies worth $230 million. Salami founded the African Child and Youth Migration Network and the Black Youth Mentorship and Leadership Program, aimed at empowering Black high school students in Western Canada. She has contributed to the creation of the first mental health clinic for Black Canadians in the region and has trained over 100 students, many now in academic roles. Salami is Vice President of the Canadian Nurses Association and serves on multiple boards, including the Black Opportunity Fund and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    43 min
  4. BlackTalk Special Episode - Andy Knight and Brandon Wint

    02/05/2024

    BlackTalk Special Episode - Andy Knight and Brandon Wint

    BlackTalk producer Nicolás Arnáez chats with Dr. Andy Knight, creator and usual host of the BlackTalk podcast, and with multidisciplinary storyteller Brandon Wint, about the new Black Studies microcourse they have developed, "Black Canadians: History, Presence, and Anti-Racist Futures", soon to be available for the public to attend through Coursera. More course information will be found at the end of the month here: https://www.ualberta.ca/admissions-programs/online-learning.html Brandon Wint is an Ontario born poet and spoken word artist who uses poetry to attend to the joy and devastation and inequity associated with this era of human and ecological history. Increasingly, his work on the page and in performance casts a tender but robust attention toward the movements and impacts of colonial, capitalist logic, and how they might be undone. In this way, Brandon Wint is devoted to a poetics of world making, world altering and world breaking. For Brandon, the written and spoken word is a tool for examining and enacting his sense of justice, and imagining less violence futures for himself and the world he has inherited. W. Andy Knight is Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department, University of Alberta, and past Chair of the Department. He is Provost Fellow for Black Leadership and Excellence. He is the former Director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR), The University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad & Tobago, and co-founder and the former head of the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean (DAOC). Professor Knight serves as Co-editor in Chief of both African Security journal and International Journal -- two globally prestigious peer-reviewed academic publications. During his secondment in the Caribbean, Knight established the Caribbean Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy and he was co-editor of a highly regarded and award-winning journal -- Global Governance from 2000 to 2005.

    46 min

About

Ethnic, modern, inclusive and informative, BlackTalk leaves listeners with new perspectives about anti-Black racism and Black achievement. BlackTalk is a podcast about the personal experiences of global Black experts and Black Canadians contextualized within the historical experience of being Black. Ethnic, modern, inclusive and informative, BlackTalk leaves listeners with new perspectives about anti-Black racism and Black achievement. The show is conversational, not judgmental. It provides a unique take on the Black experience to help people of all backgrounds open their eyes, reflect and challenge their thinking.