Toronto the Good?

At a time when race and racism sculpt the fractious contours of political and economic life, and from a city known all over the world as the capital of diversity, Toronto the Good? is both high stakes and deeply rewarding. Shana Almeida skilfully interrogates 'diversity' as a means and signifier of struggle and offers prescient insights for a different way forward. - Deborah Cowen, Professor of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto In Toronto the Good?, Shana Almeida offers a rare inside-outside perspective on municipal multiculturalism. Focused on City employees who do the 'diversity work' that sustains the City of Toronto's motto Diversity our Strength, Almeida analyzes how routinized discourses of ethno-racial diversity reproduce rather than challenge racism and racialization. This is a must-read for all those interested in understanding the contradictions of diversity as institutional practice in Big City politics. - Stefan Kipfer, Associate Professor, Environmental and Urban Change, York University Shana Almeida's meticulously researched and accessibly written book on the politics of diversity in Toronto has crucial implications far beyond the city limits. Almeida moves critical thinking on race forward by showing how the inclusion of racially minoritized people within public and private institutions paradoxically underwrites a white vision of 'good diversity' and contributes to further compounding the abjection of those whose otherness remains unassimilable in the racial colonial state. - Alana Lentin, Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University This book's most important contribution is that it enables us to see how a liberal logic of reform is a part of routine racial governance. Highlighting the role that people of colour can play in diversity discourses, Toronto the Good? shows that diversity policies provide the City with ways to claim that it has transcended its racist past even as little concrete change results. In these times, when many believe that we are finally in an age of redress and reconciliation, Shana Almeida invites us to consider how spaces of raciality persist where we least expect it. This is a critical lesson for our times as we are prompted by movements, such as Black Lives Matter to distinguish between reform and abolition. - Sherene H. Razack, Distinguished Professor and Penny Kanner Endowed Chair, Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles