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Queer inclusion precludes (Black) queer disruption: media analysis of the Black lives matter Toronto sit-in during Toronto Pride 2016

ABSTRACT During the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade, an annual leisure event which attracts thousands of spectators, the group designated by Pride Toronto as the ‘Honoured Group,’ Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO), held a sit-in to raise attention to what they termed anti-Black racism in both Pride Toronto and the Toronto Police Service. I employ a qualitative content analysis to examine reports in queer and mainstream media. I identify three thematic representations apparent in many reports: a narrative of terrorism, a discourse framing BLM-TO as an aggressor, and language identifying BLM-TO as an outsider to the queer community. The discussion section seeks to examine how media reports removed the action from the context of racism in which BLM-TO asserts the action occurred. I also examine how, through a disavowal of BLM-TO and the sit-in, a sense of Canadian and queer community was reasserted. I also suggest that BLM-TO’s sit-in disrupted the legitimacy of the discourse of Canadian multiculturalism. Finally, I argue that the paucity of reports on the action in queer media outlets suggests that issues of racism come to be relegated to the periphery through a larger process of centring Whiteness within the identity category of ‘queer.’