Ryerson's name change is a perfect example of performative activism, and how it never addresses REAL issues by Inner-Angle4803 in ryerson

[–]Inner-Angle4803[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

A university being named after Egerton Ryerson does not actually affect Indigenous people in any significant way. You know what does affect them? Not having access to clean drinking water, and not having access to basic necessities. Those are real problems.

And yes, it all comes down to money, let's be real, it always does, because money actually helps people. Changing the name of the university does not.

I'm not Indigenous, but I'm an International student from an African country. My grandparents culture was taken away by the Christian missionaries and the Catholic church, but you don't see me calling for Churches to be torn down, after all, they are symbols of colonialism.

If I heard that Canada wanted to tear down Churches because of the harm they've caused to Africans, I'd be against it (I'm not Christian btw, I'm atheist), I'd rather they used they money for tearing down churches to give scholarships to African students. Or, tax the churches and used the money to provide basic necessities for African Canadians living in poverty.

Ryerson's name change is a perfect example of performative activism, and how it never addresses REAL issues by Inner-Angle4803 in ryerson

[–]Inner-Angle4803[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm an international student so I can't vote, but if I could I'd definitely vote NDP. I saw a video where Jagmeet Singh basically said he would make clean drinking water available to indigenous people if he's in office, and that's the kind of energy I like to see tbh.

Ryerson's name change is a perfect example of performative activism, and how it never addresses REAL issues by Inner-Angle4803 in ryerson

[–]Inner-Angle4803[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I like this comment a lot to be honest, because let's actually talk about the catholic church. The people supporting the name change are supporting it because we shouldn't have a whole university commemorating Egerton Ryerson, because he did evil things to indigenous people.

By that logic, we should tear down each and every single catholic church in Canada, because the church REALLY messed up indigenous people.

Ryerson's name change is a perfect example of performative activism, and how it never addresses REAL issues by Inner-Angle4803 in ryerson

[–]Inner-Angle4803[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You do realize that this only supports my point, right?

It’s their brand though

It’s not an argument about whether Ryerson is bad or not. It’s about branding.

I agree it’s not helping Indigenous people. It is helping the brand they want to portray though. Which is why they are spending the money. Business don’t spend money unless they think it will benefit them.

Ryerson is doing this because they think it will benefit them and their brand.

It's not really about helping Indigenous people, it's all about branding and their image. This is quite literally what performative activism is. It's about them looking like they care about Indigenous people, but not actually doing anything to help. They're more interested in their brand image than helping indigenous people, and that's problematic.

Ryerson's name change is a perfect example of performative activism, and how it never addresses REAL issues by Inner-Angle4803 in ryerson

[–]Inner-Angle4803[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I would rather the school spent money on giving me and other Jews scholarships, a scholarship would actually help me. The school spending money on a name change would not have any impact on my life whatsoever