Y’all remember that infamous speech Papa Pope gave Olivia in Season 3 of Scandal? "You have to be…twice as good as them to get half of what they have."

How can we forget, right? It’s SO real in the black community.

Photo: GIPHY

Well, the University of Toronto is formally acknowledging the racial barriers that their black students face by holding a ceremony for students earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Like the black graduation at Harvard, this ceremony is a separate event meant to serve as a “complement” to the traditional convocation commencement ceremony.

Per HuffPost, the event was organized by two students, and will be fully supported by Canada’s largest university, both spiritually and financially, with the event taking place on campus.

The ceremony will celebrate and honor 80 black graduates for overcoming the systemic and social obstacles placed in front of them as a black student seeking higher education.

"We wanted to take a moment because of the different forms of adversity that they've had to face while at university and kind of congratulate them for making it to the finish line," said co-organizer Jessica Kirk about the event, which will be the first of its kind in Canada.

She went on to confirm that black students are often subject to challenges such as classroom racism and little to no access to black faculty members for supportive guidance. According to Kirk, the microaggressions are real: whether it’s “being talked over or interrupted” in class or finding that you only have one black professor or teaching assistant to talk to about your unique grievances or look to for motivation.

As such, Kirk and her friend Nasma Ahmed decided to submit an event proposal to U of T, which was welcomed with open arms within a few days.

"The goal is to create a strong pipeline of people who want to make U of T a place to study and encouraging those students to come to U of T and look at U of T as an option, a space where they can come and learn and feel very comfortable and contribute to that community," said U of T’s Vice President Hannah-Moffat said, who also noted that the university is open to similar proposals from other racialized groups.

U of T’s monumental event is definitely gaining attention and admiration from Canada’s education sector for its efforts to support inclusion. "It sends an important message that you can actually have a commitment to valuing diversity and a commitment to excellence at the same time," said Malinda Smith, political science professor at the University of Alberta. "It also sends a message to the students in the university that the university values them." Smith is among the miniscule 2-3 black women teaching her subject across the entire country.

Kirk will be starting her masters studies program at U of T this September and certainly hopes that this is a step in the right direction toward further inclusive initiatives. "Yes, we're happy that we got the support and we're definitely thanking them for that, but we think that the conversation does need to continue beyond the event."

Jessica Kirk

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