Still Invisible : Young Black Working-Class Men in Canada

Still Invisible: Young Black Working-Class Men in Canada challenges the widespread tendency to treat impoverished Black male youth as a single, uniform group. While anti-Black racism shapes all Black lives, this book shows how race, class, and gender intersect to produce distinct and uneven barriers to opportunity.

The book offers a powerful, human-centred account of how young Black men navigate work, institutions, and survival in Canada today. Drawing on research with first- and second-generation Black male youth in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, it examines how participants engage with youth employment training programs (YETPs) while confronting anti-Black racism, gender bias, and class-based exclusion. It situates these programs within a broader neoliberal political-economic context and a colonized nation-state, showing how dominant ideas about Black masculinity shape policy, practice, and service delivery. The analysis traces how informal learning spaces, employment-seeking strategies, and institutional encounters structure young men’s access to work and social mobility.

The central contribution of Still Invisible lies in its refusal to homogenize Black male youth. It demonstrates the diversity of their experiences while exposing how many social services fail to meet their actual needs. By linking lived experience to policy and political economy, this research offers scholars, practitioners, and policymakers a nuanced, original, and urgently needed framework for rethinking employment supports, equity, and Black masculinity in Canada.