In this occasional feature, two Torontoist staffers face off to debate an issue that is important to our city. We invite our readers to join in the debate in the comments section after the post.
Public consultations are currently underway for a controversial plan that would establish Toronto's first black-focused or "afro-centric" alternative school. Supporters of the plan claim that this will help provide black students with a nurturing environment, but a vocal opposition claims that the idea smacks of segregation and goes against long-standing policies of inclusion and equality. Read on as Torontoist has its say on the issue...
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KEN HUNT We learned this week that Dalton McGuinty is "not personally comfortable" with the idea of black-focused schools. He didn't have much more to say about it than that, other than to provide some empty platitudes about how our public schools can bring people together. "Not personally comfortable." I believe that this also the Premier's stance on the issue of boxer shorts. It is also typical of the level of thought that most otherwise liberal and open-minded people are willing to devote to the idea of black-focused schools. This idea is not a new one. It was first suggested in Ontario in 1995 by a Royal Commission on Education as a means of helping to raise the graduation rate of black students. Unfortunately, the moment the idea is raised, something deep within the liberal conscience is tweaked. Though many of us are too young to have any personal memory of it, we share in a collective television-memory that is full of stock footage of the March on Washington. In our minds we carry grainy images of a girl battling her way into a segregated school, and we imagine Martin Luther King rolling in his grave at the mere suggestion of setting up a black-focused school here in Toronto, the paragon of all things multicultural. The problem with our gut-reaction is that we are confusing legal equality with substantive equality. Legal equality is already well established. Even in scary places like the American South, people of every race are supposed to be considered equal before the law. No one can tell you where you can have lunch, sip from a water fountain, or attend school based on the colour of your skin. Unfortunately, this legal equality is cold-comfort in a world where substantive equality, the true equality of opportunity, is still sorely lacking. One type of opportunity that white students enjoy today is the ability to attend school in an environment where they don't feel discriminated against. White students are constantly immersed in an environment that celebrates their cultural heritage and presents them with positive role models with whom they can identify. If you ask many black students and their families if that is the case for them, they will tell you that it is not. These families argue that establishing a black-focused school will create the environment that white students already enjoy. When white people tell blacks that they must go to a black-only school, that's segregation. When black people ask for the right to have a black-focused school, that's empowerment. To deny black families something that many of them believe will help their sons and daughters, just because of our nagging liberal guilt is just plain wrong. It's time to get over the ideas that you are "personally comfortable" with and embrace ideas that, though they might make you a bit uncomfortable, are as ultimately high-minded and forward-thinking as the Civil Rights Movement itself. | THE EXPLOSIVELY TALENTED CHRISTOPHER BIRD Let's begin with what I'm not suggesting: I'm not suggesting that black students in Ontario don't have serious problems (because they obviously do). I'm not suggesting that we do nothing about it (because we obviously have to do something). And I'm not suggesting that the problems at hand don't have their root in racial bias (because they probably do). But that doesn't make provincial funding of segregated schools the answer. Yes, voluntarily-segregated charter schools in the United States have shown some success, on a scale of "very slightly better" to "incredibly dramatic improvement." But that's the result of money being injected into systems that benefit black students. Remember, public school funding in the United States actively works against inner-city schools which contain the majority of black students. Is it really such a newsflash that if you spend money on students and give them attention, they then perform better? And we're emphatically not spending enough on black students, the majority of whom live in Ontario's largest municipalities, most of which have less total funding than they did ten years ago. In one of the most dramatic examples, consider Toronto (which has a large portion of the province's black students)—where school funding per student is lower than it was in 1997, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The CCPA also notes that the current funding formula makes no allowance for "local priorities," which includes addressing the needs of the local culture of a school. These would include things like black-focused school clubs, for example, which most experts agree are needed quite urgently. In the end, however, the problem with black-only schools isn't that they aren't necessarily the best policy answer, but that the philosophy behind them is profoundly anti-Canadian. Ontario is the most diverse province in Canada, and Toronto is the most diverse city on Earth. Some people will tell you that multiculturalism is a policy pushed on Canadians by the government. These people are idiots, because anybody who lives in Toronto knows that multiculturalism isn't just a government policy, but the new reality of living here, and furthermore that it isn't going away any time soon. As a matter of course, we expect Ontarians to be able to handle dealing with people of innumerable cultures, creeds and races on a daily basis, and we hamstring black students' ability to deal with people differing from their cultural norm by segregating them (even by their own choice) at an early age, when we ideally want them to become comfortable with cultural difference as soon possible. We need to address black students' problems within the existing system. This isn't to say that people shouldn't have the right to educate their children in the manner that they see fit, even if that manner means insulating their child from society at large. But that's why private schools exist in the first place; to provide educational initiatives that the province cannot, in good conscience, choose to support. And black-only schools are exactly that type of initiative. |
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"The problem with our gut-reaction is that we are confusing legal equality with substantive equality."
Exactly! You hit the nail on the head, Ken.
"...Toronto is the most diverse city on Earth."
It's certainly one of the most diverse, but the most? That statement is most frequently attributed to the UN, which never made any such claim. Wikipedia even uses it as an example of a factoid.
By the way, who gets the credit for the terrific graphic?
Interesting debate. I heard a discussion about this issue on CBC radio, and was struck by the fact that every black person who called in to the show was in strong support of black-focused schools, while the white people who called in had various reasons to be against the idea. It seems clear to me that as the issue is affecting black students, they know best if this would be a positive step forward.
Ken makes a great argument here, quashing what is sure to be a popular knee-jerk guilt alarm. But it's hard to really blame McGuinty for treading lightly into the issue given Tory's recent fate.
The credit for the graphic, as usual, goes to the incredibly talented Marc Lostracco.
If faith-based schools were against all that was Ontario by reducing diversity and who our children interact with (according to Dalton), then why would this be any different?
That's a good question googles and I'm glad you asked it, because I didn't have the space to tackle that issue in the main piece.
Alternative schools are still public schools. They are run, funded, monitored and answerable to the public. Religious schools operate outside of the public system (though they still have to maintain provincial standards).
Toronto already has 20 alternative high schools. These schools cater to students who, for one reason or another, don't cope well inside of a regular high school. Some have discipline or attendance issues, some are looking for a place that's accepting of gays, lesbians and bisexuals, for example.
Essentially, alternative schools offer a safe haven within the public system for students who might otherwise be at risk of dropping out. A black-focused school would be a haven for students who feel discriminated against in their regular high school.
I would also support the idea of a Muslim-focused alternative school if there was sufficient demand for one. No religion would be taught there, but if Muslim students were finding it difficult to cope in a regular high school because they were being bullied over wearing a niqab, etc., this would be a place where they could feel safe.
Alternative schools aren't a way to separate kids, they're a means of being more sensitive to needs of some of our kids.
Alternative schools don't screen their students by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.
This is an absolutely horrible idea, not empowerment.
As long as it's not mandatory in any way, and meets provincial standards and mirrors what is taught in the rest of the public school system, I don't have a problem with a black alternative school.
Ken, you write that white students are constantly immersed in an environment that celebrates their cultural heritage and presents them with positive role models with whom they can identify.
That's only true to the extent that "white" students identify themselves as such. To assume that students who are Greek or Armenian or Russian or, well, of whatever other "white" ethnicity identify strongly with MacDonald and Cartier is just that -- an assumption -- and it works only if students who are members of these ethnic groups subscribe to the idea that they are part of some sort of "white" culture.
I doubt that that is a safe assumption. I do not know many members of "white" ethnic minorities in Toronto whose identity is that of members of some "white" race or culture. That sort of racialisation is much more advanced in, and perhaps typical of, much of the U.S. (although even there one could argue). But that's not where we live.
Later you write that alternative schools are still public schools. They are run, funded, monitored and answerable to the public. Religious schools operate outside of the public system (though they still have to maintain provincial standards).
Again, I think you're missing the point. The whole debate about faith-based schools was that Tory was proposing to make them part of the public system. Ontarians said no -- we don't want any of that here.
Whether minority rights should, indeed, be the subject of a majority referendum is a separate and, to my mind, very important question that was lost in that debate. But we can't get to it if we don't start by fairly characterizing what the debate was about in the first place.
Christopher, you write that some people will tell you that multiculturalism is a policy pushed on Canadians by the government. These people are idiots, because anybody who lives in Toronto knows that multiculturalism isn't just a government policy, but the new reality of living here, and furthermore that it isn't going away any time soon.
But isn't that missing what exactly the point is? Diversity is, indeed, a reality. (It is certainly not a reality. Many have argued that that kind of assumption is the kind of racist portrayal of history that has no place in a, well, multicultural society. I won't go that far. But I will suggest that you rethink whether there has ever been a time when Toronto's society was not "multicultural".)
But reality, and the policies the government puts in place for addressing that reality, are quite different things. There's diversity, and there's how we manage diversity. The Canadian government put forward, in the 1970s, a policy of multiculturalism -- the most active proponents of which were, I believe, Ukrainian-Canadians. That policy was supposed to be about giving Canadians with an attachment to a particular cultural heritage the resources to retain and foster that cultural heritages, and remain part of mainstream society at the same time.
Many jurisdictions have quite different approaches to managing diversity. Even here in Canada, Quebec has always portrayed its vision of "interculturalism" as different than multiculturalism, insofar as interculturalism emphasizes a "culture of convergence" which is rooted in the majority French-Canadian culture. And more recently in Ontario, of course, voters soundly rejected a "strong" version of multiculturalism in which society would devote resources for minority groups to perpetuate their cultural heritage by teaching it to their kids.
So, sure, diversity is a fact. But that fact has always led to certain consequences -- whether race riots or your everyday assimilation -- and governments have always had the option of intervening to change those consequences. Multiculturalism the name of a policy that reflects one approach. It seems like there is support for a more assimilationist approach today.
The French in Quebec created a school system based on race.
So it was only a matter of time, before the idea came to Toronto. This is one idea that will most likely fly.
I was listening to a talk radio show on the topic the other day. 90% of the white callers were against segregated schools.
And all the black callers were for them.
There's some kind of breech in the levy white people arent't seeing.
Kind of like the opinion polls regarding OJ Simpson. Most white people thought he was guilty. And most black people thought he was innocent.
I'm more against black focused schools than for them on the basis that they relieve mainstream schools of their responsibility of meeting the needs of black pupils. I also believe that many of the initiatives which have proven to positively impact on the attainment of black pupils (ie, high teacher expectations, varied role models, an inclusive curriculum etc) actually benefit all students. Having said that I take issue with most of Christopher Bird's arguements. The issue is not money. There have always been and always will be initiatives running out of derelict basements across various community centres which have genuinely helped raise the achievement of black students. More laughable, however, is the notion that black students might lose the ability to deal with the wider society if they were to attend black focus schools. Ha! As a minority living in a white majority society, being acutely aware of the way the wider white society functions is a survival skill you could never have the luxury of forgetting. Au contraire, white students would acutally stand to lose an opportunity to learn about a different culture if black students were to be relocated en masse to black focus schools.
The other thing to note is that we know where the deficiencies lie, how people fall through the cracks, and what we need to do to fix it. It's just a matter of making both government and community commitments, and sticking with them—which will also mean spending a lot of money in a way that a lot of people aren't gonna be too happy about.
We have theoretical equality under law for all people, but we need to make enough of an investment to ensure that opportunities exist. Understanding the challenges and solving the problems require all colours of people people to interact, share, talk, and to do so with honesty and vision.
I find the idea of any type of segregation misguided and unfortunate...it's often offered as a solution in absence of understanding, or to meet non-mainstream needs, but I think that it's less about black kids having a place tailored to them, and more about the importance of general society giving those kids the opportunities they require—to not only function equally in that society, but to lead. Putting people in insulated boxes does not foster progression.
I guess I'm in the minority on many points. I for one think a black only school is a bad idea, OJ did do it but just had great attorneys.
A blacks only school fails to take several things into consideration. First, is education actually taken seriously in the child's household? Are parents sitting down with their kids and stressing the value of an education? Second is there even that many blacks going into the teaching profession? If not that undermines the point of the school. Last time I checked teaching wasn't really a lucrative profession. If there is not a lot of money to be made in teaching, I doubt people are going to make the effort to get into it.
I agree with #9. You can't paint all whites under one color and say that there culture is celebrated. There are many different groups that fall up under white just like blacks.
How do you decide who's black anyway? Is one black parent sufficient? What about one black grandparent? What about dark-skinned South Asian people? It's one of the many profoundly illogical features of racism that any admixture of non-European blood, however small, makes a person "black", no matter how many "white" ancestors they may have had. I have no doubt that there are many people of colour in this city whose family trees are far more rooted in MacDonald and Cartier than my own.
In Toronto we are not only a multicultural society, but a society that is home to hundreds of thousands of multi-cultural individuals. As this trend progresses, it will be increasingly obvious that the idea of race is a fiction.
For all the friction and racism that still exist, we've made enormous progress in the last 40 years and the ongoing blending of populations will further than process even faster. Black schools would turn back the clock. Segregating students by skin colour prevents kids from learning about and from each other, from recognizing that there is no "them", only "us". Separate schools also teach implicitly that different races can't, or shouldn't, go to school with each other. And no matter what reasons you give, kids are going to draw their own conclusions about why that is.
It is a plain and simple surrender, a tacit acknowledgement that it's easier to build a wall than to fix the foundations.