This post was written in January (barely). I kept telling myself “update your blog”, but I just never got around to it.
A few reflections on various things, I guess:
Today I was reading in the free local newspaper, the Victoria News Daily,that in Toronto right now they are planning to develop a “black-focused” school.
I for one, thought that this sounds like a very hip, very politically-correct way to bring back racial segregation, because that is what is basically happening here.
The article says, and I’m quoting:
” The largest school board in Canada plans to launch a black-focused school to tackle the problem of high dropout rates.
In a vote last Tuesday, the Toronto District School Board decided to move ahead with the project after months of debate over the value of creating an Afro-centric school. About 12 percent students in Toronto schools identify themselves as black, according to data.
’We are committed to providing the extra resources our students need,’ Gerry Connelly, a director of the TDSB, said yesterday. ” - Victoria News Daily, January 31, 2008
Okay, here is my thoughts on that little new snippet:
1. In the first sentence they blatantly imply that black students are drop-outs, or that they have a disproportionately larger rate of drop-out. Numbers, and my persynal experience, would suggest that drop-outs are arguably larger in terms of numbers and percentages on the part of white students. To characterize black students as “drop-outs” is uncalled for stereotyping, because basically now every black Student in Toronto is a “potential drop-out” based on skin pigmentation.
Also ,as with most “feel good, liberal humanitarian” analysis’s, it stops just short of hinting at what the economic and social causes of these drop-outs are ( having to get a job to support the family, drug issues, teenage pregnancy,), instead vaguely insinuating that black students are drop-outs, for unknown predetermined reasons.
2. I audibly scoffed at the term “Afro-centric” school, when I read it. What exactly will be “Afro-centric” about this school, other than the attending student demographic? As if the curriculum would be anything other than Euro-centric, as the alternative would imply teaching Toronto black students about the long history of civilization in Africa, the true brutality of European conquest, and the after-effects of neo-colonialism and imperialism that still linger today in Africa, and the racism and economic-discrimination that persists in North-America to the descendants of slaves. Such a curriculum would be a little too honest in terms of awakening anti-imperialist class consciousness to this “12 %” of Toronto students, and that does not sit well with the folks who print the textbooks.
How can it be expected that the curriculum, in terms of history and language arts, will be anything but Euro-centric? How could it be, anything but assimilation and defeatism, exalting the classics of white writers and culture, downplaying the great civilizations of Africa as “noble savages” at best?
Also, this brings up an amusing point, that what is (undoubtedly) a predominantly Caucasian school board are going to be the ones to decide and ink an “Afro-centric” curriculum.
3. They are cloaking segregation as a perk. I’m not saying that the general public schools are any less of a system of cultural genocide, Canadian chauvinist propaganda or indoctrination. What I’m saying is, under the auspices of humanitarianism, the Toronto school board is creating a division between black and white, between the students and therefore between the developing adult population demographics in that area. Rather than encourage common tutelage of the students, to discourage xenophobia and erase prejudices through close contact and persynal experience, the school is dividing the students of Toronto along the lines of race, to preserve the “mystique” of each race for each other, and therefore the feelings ignorance towards the unknown.
Myself, in Ottawa, I grew up in an incredibly interracial school, mostly with many black classmates and working-class whites. I think this experience helped to demystify the concept of race for me at a young age, so that I could completely expel racial prejudice.
My brother, on the other hand, went to kindergarten in a predominantly white town, had an overwhelmingly white class, and hence preserved all the the suspicion and xenophobic ignorance against other races that eventually was nurtured into full blown racism, from the youngest age.
This is divide and conquer tactics, straight up. It is part of the general trend, perpetuated by Media and entertainment as well, that black and white peoples are incompatible. Whites must fear and discriminate against the black man, blacks must despise and shun the white man. The powers that be, the same people who print our school textbooks and run our prisons simultaneously, don’t want us to get close enough to realize how much we have in common, specifically in terms of goals and social situations.
At my job in Edmonton ,I think what you saw was a beautiful thing: Half of my co-workers were impoverished blacks, half my coworkers were impoverished whites, and we all realized that we were poor, on the factory floor, producing for someone who did absolutely fuck all.
We don’t need 21st Century segregation. We need 21st century congregation, as a precondition to long overdue social change.
Posted by ravenblade
