cliftong@yorku.ca
Clifton Grant is a Graduate Student in the Department of Social Legal Studies at York University and an Executive Member of the Harriet Tubman Institute. His research interests explore the intersectionality of race, education and criminality primarily by exploring the "school to prison pipeline" that disproportionately impacts marginalized and racialized communities. The Canadian mosaic has a "discourse of denial" of discriminatory and racist policies manifested from the discourse of institutionalized racism. This has intentionally created an oppressive pipeline that is characterized by under resourced schools, overuse of suspensions and expulsions aided by the overuse of Police in schools. Clifton's objective is to engage in solution-based discourses that provide methodologies to decrease criminalization of youth, reduce barriers to education and break the generational cycle of incarceration. His research hopes to facilitate the creation a paradigm shift of reform that empowers systematic changes to the punitive system of retributive justice that will manifest into the significant use of the restorative social justice model that emphasizes healing, reconciliation and community involvement. His research also plans to explore the removal of the stigmatization of criminality that will many positive repercussions for Canadian society including the assimilation of individuals who have paid their debt to society facilitating their transformation to becoming productive members of society with the ultimate beneficiary goal of the elimination of criminal recidivism. Clifton's active community engagement and advocacy at York University continues to embolden his academic and civil pursuits as an impactful changemaker.
Keywords: Race, racism, discrimination, oppression, criminality, policing discourse of denial. liberation, freedom, social justice, education, stigmatization, incarceration, recidivism, reconciliation, restorative justice.