Rinaldo Walcott

Who is Rinaldo Walcott?

Rinaldo Walcott is a Black Canadian academic and writer, employed as an associate professor at OISE/University of Toronto in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. He was an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at York University in 2000. Walcott's work focuses on Black Studies, Canadian Studies, Cultural Studies, Queer Theory and Gender Theory, and Diaspora Studies. He is the Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies.

Walcott's work recognizes that "articulating Canadian blackness is difficult not because of the small number of us trying to take the tentative steps towards writing it, but rather because of the ways in which so many of us are nearly always preoccupied with elsewhere and very seldom with here". In this comment, Walcott highlights the dearth of Black Canadians writing about Black Canadian experiences and expressions, and points to his further assertion that a belief that "something important happens here [in Canada]" is a necessary precursor to increasing the scholarly engagement with Black Canadian experiences and expressions.