Ontario NDP Candidate Drops Out Over: ‘I Want to Be a Black Woman’ Comment

With one week to go before Ontarians cast their ballots, a white Ontario NDP candidate has dropped out of the race over comments she made at a conference last year in which she expresses a secret desire “to be a Black woman.”

Amanda Zavitz, a sociology professor at Western University running in the riding of Elgin-Middlesex-London, announced in a Facebook post that she was resigning her candidacy.

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The controversy began when Progressive Conservatives highlighted a YouTube video of Zavitz speaking at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women conference in New York City last March. CBC News captured a copy of the video, which has now been removed.

Zavitz, speaking at a podium at the New York conference, recalls an exercise she and participants did at a Toronto conference 10 years prior called “post secret.” Zavitz said participants were asked to write down their deep-rooted secrets. {snip}

In relaying this to the audience at the New York event, Zavitz revealed her secret.

“My secret is that I want to be a Black woman,” she said. {snip}

In the video of her speech, Zavtiz goes on to tell the New York audience she’s often criticized as being a “Karen” because she’s a white women who advocates for equality. {snip}

“The easy answer is that I want to lead the fifth wave of feminism and that when you look like I do and people call you a Karen, it’s difficult to be taken seriously as a leader of the fifth wave of feminism,” Zavitz tells the New York audience.

“The more complicated answer is that I want to know all that I know, I want to be a sociologist and a women’s studies professor. I want to be an expert in inequality with lived experiences of poverty and living in addiction and alcoholism. I want to be able to share my ideas without the barrier of looking the way that I do.”

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Nicole Kaniki, a founder and director of Senomi Solutions Inc., said Zavitz’s decision to stop her campaign was the right one in the wake of the comments. Kaniki’s firm specializes in equity, diversity and inclusion.

“She wants to be a Black woman to be a better advocate and ally, which really just demonstrates her lack of understanding about the Black woman experience,” said Kaniki. “It objectifies us further, as if our race and gender is something that we can put on and take off and that she can put on.”

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