Reckoning: Creating Positive Change Through Radical Empathy

Anti-racist movements have continued to grow worldwide after the death of George Floyd in 2020. Following the BLM protests, many promises were made to deal with the impact of structural discrimination. While this led to more talk than action, there has also been meaningful change, some of which has gone under the radar. The US media focused primarily on the backlash that resulted in book bans and laws against having DEI offices in universities.

In contrast, this book, a follow-up to Terri E. Givens’s bestselling book Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides, highlights the promises that were delivered. It focuses on hope and taking action and creating a positive environment including the use of the radical empathy approach to empower ongoing change.

Terri E. Givens is a political scientist and a consultant to corporations and educational institutions. She is currently a Professor of Political Science at McGill University and from July 2024 she will be Professor of Politics at University of British Columbia.

A sought-after expert and speaker, she has lectured and served on panels at international and national conferences on topics as diverse as immigration politics, the radical right, minorities, the globalization of public policy and how to manage life in academia.

Dr Givens is a popular writer, blogger and social media enthusiast and can be found online, on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Destiny Kirumira is a Ph.D. student at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University. Destiny received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Alberta in 2018 and completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Calgary in 2021. Her research documents the architecture of Black settlements forming the Black prairie landscape in Canada. Destiny is an inaugural IBET scholar for McGill’s Faculty of Engineering.

Destiny is also a visual artist who has used her artwork to address questions surrounding race, Blackness, identity, and politics, collaborated with local Black organizations such as Pink Flamingo and been recognized by TIME through the TIMEPieces initiative.