Racial Terror in Toronto's Gay Village: A Critical Race analysis of the Bruce McArthur case and police inclusion in Toronto Pride

• Author / Creator

  Semaan, David

• This thesis undertakes a parallel reading of the Bruce McArthur serial killings of predominantly racialized, queer men in the Toronto gay village and debates about police participation in Toronto Pride. This reading illuminates a homonationalist, state-making project that reasserts white dominance in LGBT social movements. My comparative analysis demonstrates how these cases, when read together, echo racial divisions and political whitewashing of queer and homophile social movements in earlier as well as contemporary mobilizations. I then conduct a parallel analysis of the 2016 conflict between Pride Toronto and Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO), that has permanently shaped debates on the intersections of race and queer identity in Canada. Analysing this case alongside that of McArthur’s engages with the politics of racial exclusion that has normalized Pride’s agenda of institutional inclusion as representative of queer identity formation in Canada. Reading these cases together provides critical insight into processes of whiteness and homonationalist politics that dominate the LGBTQ2IA+ political stage. The thesis engages with the history of Canadian multiculturalism that displaces critical inquiries into questions of race, and the persistent importance of colour blindness in shaping national identity through queer tolerance. A critical race analysis of the Bruce McArthur case articulates an alternative narrative of racial violence that moves beyond a single narrative of disturbed pathology to investigate details of police misconduct that fostered inaction. The intent of this analysis is to draw out the historical relevance of McArthur’s murders as part of a longer history of racially motivated predatory violence toward queer people of colour.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Homonationlism
  • Black Lives Matter
  • multiculturalism
  • Bruce McArthur
  • Toronto Pride

• Graduation date

  Spring 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-5tc8-vn43

• License

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