Dr. Dexter Voisin: Race, Class & Place-Based Stigma

Everybody Hates Me: Let's Talk About Stigma

Professor Voisin has served as Dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work since 2019. He holds the Sandra Rotman Chair in Social Work. Prior to his appointment at the University of Toronto, he was Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago for two decades where he was a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Race, Culture, and Politics and the Center for Health and the Social Sciences. A central focus of Voisin’s scholarship is examining the impact of structural, neighborhood and police violence on the life chances and behavioral trajectories of urban youth and the protective factors that protect youth in the presence of such adversities. His latest book is America the Beautiful and Violent: Black Youth and Neighborhood Trauma in Chicago, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. You can find more of Dr. Voisin's work here.
We talk about Dr. Voisin's work on race, class and place-based stigma and the implications for people's lives and wellbeing. We talk about the costs of stigma and how we all pay the price for not addressing social inequalities. Dr. Voisin shares how COVID-19 has laid bare how race, place and class-based inequalities in one area of a city impact a city's wellbeing. We discuss who we pay attention to in situations of police violence toward Black persons, including how women and gender diverse persons' names may be less known to the general public. He talks about how people engage in stigmatizing practices to feel superior, and how how we are all sinners, sufferers and saints when it comes to stigma. Moving forward we need to find true power innate within ourselves, rather than illegitimate forms of power from stigmatizing.
Episode hosted by Dr. Carmen Logie. Supported by funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Canada Research Chairs program. Original music and podcast produced by Jupiter Productions, who have various production services available to support your podcast needs.