TDSB Ponders Black-Focused Schools

[unimaginative2]

Ugh don't you know anything? The killers were known neo-Nazis who listened to Death Heavy Metal that promoted white supremacist and rahowa puritanist agendas. Were there more black targets, who's to say what who've happened?

Uhh...listening to Death Metal or Heavy Metal does not make you a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist.

 

[EnviroTO]

Ugh don't you know anything?

More than a few things.

The killers were known neo-Nazis who listened to Death Heavy Metal that promoted white supremacist and rahowa puritanist agendas.

Shouldn't there have only been one black person killed if this was racial? What would be the neo-Nazi point of killing the rest of those people... were the rest Jewish?

Were there more black targets, who's to say what who've happened?

I think more bullets and more targets white or otherwise would have led to more deaths.

Fine then, if this proposal didn't have the words "Afrocentric" or "black-focused" attached to it, whereby anyone could attend, and the majority population of students still turned out to be black would you still think it's a segregatory issue or that some people are just predisposed by circumstance to fail academically?

I would think it is irrelevant what the skin colour, race, or religion of the students are. If it is a school to handle students with low grades or who have shown themselves to have problem following rules then that is great.

I agree, but unlike hunting for terrorists, this is a preventative measure.

I think most supporters of such action would argue that preventing the blowing up of the CBC or airlines is a preventative measure.

There might be underachivevers who'll never do drugs or join gangs/terror cells or kill someone but at the same time merely waste their lives away at minimum wage or breed welfare babies continuing the cycle of abuse, class inequality and impoverished existences. If all blacks see is that out of life, where's the drive to want more? Or worse what if that drive is achieved the wrong way through drugs and violence? Again this isn't a blacks-only problem, but stepping in could be the first step to correct delinquency among underachievers of all ethnicities. The point is we must start somewhere!

But why start with "black" if we are "starting somewhere"? Why not start with people with a real indicator like poor grades, poor attendance, people known to police, etc. Starting with black is like starting with surnames starting with A though F.

In spite of all this tenure, a white or Asian immigrant can arrive fresh off the boat and be set for life within a matter of years while generation after generation of urban poor look on in disbelief.

I don't think that is the case. There are people of all races who live in a cycle. People who arrive in Canada from countries where people are already well off such as Hong Kong arrive with a different reality than those who don't. Korean and Vietnamese immigrants from the 70s and 80s had to start at the bottom and work their way up. Race doesn't seem to be as important as what an individuals parents believe and do.

Anyone whose been here longer than twenty years could've obviously established themselves well enough to achieve financial security. Whites and Asians have for the most part through the vast network of opportunities laid in place for them from unilateral community outreach to sponsorship to antiquated hiring techniques. Lack of bad stereotypes that limit social mobility help too. Whatever the case, there IS a disparaging socioeconomic division between the majority of multigenerational blacks and other ethnic groups within Canada.

The latest study shows 30 percent of families in the city of Toronto are in poverty. The entire black population of the GTA (2001) is 310,500 when the population of the city of Toronto was 2,481,500. If 100% of that black population lived in Toronto and none of them lived in the 905 that would only be 12.5% of the population. If 100% of the black population is in poverty that still leaves 17% of the families as non-black and in poverty. However, the reality is that many black people live in the 905 and it isn't 100% of them that are in poverty... so easily the majority of the people who are in poverty are not black. So why try and turn poverty into a skin colour? It serves no purpose other than to exacerbate the problem by reinforcing stereotypes.

To make my point, a bifurcation must be reached somehow. Sorry if it comes across as a "Us" vs "Them" scenario but if one group of people are associated with a problem while everyone else isn't, it's easier to examine the smaller populus first before further breaking down the larger Eurasian group into subgroups.

People are associated with a problem because people like to create stereotypes. It is complex to look at the actual reasons individuals make decisions or are impacted by various external influences to become what they are so creating a stereotype makes it easy to classify. Statistics might show that bright red cars go faster than cars of other colours on average but it has nothing to do with red, painting a car red will not make it go faster. Statistics don't tell the reasons why and don't allow for individuality. Bright red cars would likely go faster because the cars painted bright red tend to be sports cars like Ferrari's, not because red paint makes cars go fast. The best way to eliminate the stereotypes is to first realize that acting on stereotypes legitimizes them. The more we say there is a problem with "black crime" the more it will make people afraid of black people in general and perhaps create obstacles to black employment and obstacles to blacks being seen in the same light as other groups, just in the same way that a few terrorists have ruined everything for the middle eastern travelling public. Saying there is a "black education" problem requiring a "black school" will cause some youth to not learn because society has just told them that they don't have a chance.

Yes but instead of discrimination, it's rehabilitation. If parents/students are fully aware of potential outcomes, be it good or bad, and make the decision to enrol; it shouldn't be left up to snob appeal mentality that it'll breed segregation that we should be concern about.

So creating "white school" should be fine as well if students and parents know what it may provide. For example to deal with the white homeless problem perhaps we need special white schools to educate people how to avoid homelessness, or to prevent them from being the next Enron CEO style criminal we should have white business school where blacks need not apply.

Visible minority= invisible scholar, valedictorian, doctorate, laureate. If we want to change that statistic, we must be aware those sentiments of inferiority preexist and are compounded by the daily exposure to cliques of overachieving Eurasians. Maybe some students would prefer to not be in a overly competitive, defeatest environment where chances to make honor role or be the teacher's pet are all but squashed by fifth grade. Or at least desire the extra training needed to better integrate with a multicultural classroom beyond high school.

Is the cliche "overachieving Eurasians" or a stereotype of "blacks don't even try"? Isn't the problem such stereotypes existing in the first place?

Sadly when blacks attain that level of success they get brandished Oreos as if to say their ethnicity had nothing to do with it, only their inner 'whiteness'.

Success is almost seen as anti-black by some but not all. I agree that that is sometimes the case but that is what needs to be dealt with, the stigma, the assumptions, the labelling, etc. Stupidly what some define as "black culture" has been defined not by culture passed down from Africa but by culture invented in the USA which is not a positive influence.

Well both those actors had their starts in very stereotyped/racially demeaning roles. In Driving Miss Daisy, Shawshank Redemption, Malcolm X, they played characters abused by the white establishment. When DW finally received his long overdue oscar for Training Day it was as a gangster, not for the many positive roles he protrayed for the years. Now he's typecasted always playing gunmen, forever just an American Gangster not a Titan worth Remembering.

How can you argue both ways. Non-success is a sign of racism, but success is a sign of selling out? Aren't you really buying into the stereotype that blacks can't achieve if you determine that all their successes are selling out or a result of some affirmative action plan? Some movies are about a historical context, it isn't demeaning to the actor to play a role which historically important but a part of a racially divided past and becoming an actor as respected as Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman isn't something that happens by simply playing a part in a film... it is by playing the part well. Denzel is far from typecast... he is a naval officer, a coach, a gangster, an officer, a parent who will do anything for his son, etc. To deny them their successes on their own merit is to fall into the belief that blacks cannot achieve anything.

Again could be anyone, but if one group is failing at a rate disportionate to the student body in entirity, a means of pinpointing the problem is advantageous to the at-risk group not demeaning.

They haven't pinpointed the problem. Pinpointing the problem would also explain those who succeed despite having the same skin colour. Pinpointing the problem would involve being less simplistic in the analysis of statistics.

Think of where all the drug addicts and alcoholics of the world would be if their loved ones continued to live in denial instead of holding an intervention for them?

But this isn't about having an intervention for a loved one. This is not the family and friends of a specific person who is doing poorly at school and hanging with the wrong crowd coming together to get him to smarten up. I would completely support parents and friends of problem individuals taking action to solve a problem with a specific person.

 

[Zephyr]

This thread is re-defining difference of opinion as we had previously known it.

Carry on, by all means ...

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Pinpointing the problem would involve being less simplistic in the analysis of statistics

I rarely post here much anymore, but when I read this, I couldn't help but grin. What you have said here is the very thing government documents and data librarians the world over fume about in private when they see the media completely mangle, exaggerate, misinterpret and do all sorts of other nonsense to data from Statcan, CANSIM, etc, which is then torqued to within an inch of its life by any group with an axe to grind. It just so happens that there is an informal gathering of librarians at the Duke of York tonight, and included therein is the head data librarian of U of T - whose crusade against this sort of innumeracy is legendary in the biz - and the prof I TA for who is among the best government documents librarians there is. I'm sure they'll nod in agreement when I bring this debate up.*







*and despite the stereotype, librarians *are* a hard-drinking bunch who do *not* go around telling people to be quiet, just so you know....

 

[unimaginative2]

'Black focused' schools are not the answer

IKE AWGU

Globe and Mail Update

November 28, 2007 at 10:14 AM EST

Proposals by educators for the creation of â€black focused†schools in parts of Toronto, well intentioned as they may be, are as insulting as they are ridiculous. Such schools would not be in the interests of students, parents or Canadian society at large.

â€Black focused†schools do not recognize or affirm African-Canadian identity; they trivialize it. Instead of contributing to the solution for problems facing segments of Canada's black community, these schools mask those problems and steamroll over the reality of the issues that are holding back segments of our country's population. Broken family structures and a profound lack of racial confidence are the real culprits behind the underperformance of parts of Canada's black population.

Statistical information about the dropout and failure rates of black students in Canadian high schools is useful only insofar as the categories created by those statistics is meaningful. The Canadian system takes everyone identified as â€black†and throws them into the same category, masking the differences between segments of this community. According to statistics collected by the Toronto District School Board, by the age of 16, more than half of all young black males in Toronto public schools have fallen behind and are more likely to drop out. The figures do not distinguish between â€blacks†who are the children of immigrants, â€blacks†from Somalia, â€blacks†from Nigeria or â€blacks†from Scarborough; all are thrown together into the same category. It is politically far easier for many to pretend that underachievement is a â€black†problem than to see it as one concentrated in cultural segments of the black community.

Aggregate data conceals the fact that Canadian-born blacks from specific foreign nationalities are excelling in high school, while others consistently underperform. According to a study conducted by the American Journal of Education earlier this year, immigrants and their children, who make up 13 per cent of the U.S. college-age black population, account for more than 25 per cent of the black students at Ivy League and other elite universities. Black immigrants from Africa averaged the highest educational attainment of any population group in the United States, including whites and Asians. These students are no less subject to racism from educators, biased curriculum or bigotry from society at large than are other American blacks. Cultural differences between these groups go further in explaining their divergence in achievement than does blaming a lack of an â€Afro-centric†curriculum.

We need to try and understand more about the failing ones. Where do they come from? Where do their parents come from? What are their family lives like? What are the differences between them and the other groups who excel? Taking the easy route and saying it's a â€black†problem requiring a separate school system is nothing less than the abandonment of these young people.

If parents are genuinely interested in having their children learn more about Africa, they can send them to after-school programs, like Canadian students with any other heritage. When I was growing up, I attended an Igbo school, where I learned my father's language; one of my best friends attended Chinese school on the weekends. We both learned more about our parents' origins and were stronger Canadians for it. These programs, which give children some sense of racial confidence, are far more sensible than pretending all black students have something culturally in common and starting a separate, unequal and un-Canadian school system.

The message that this school proposal sends to black students is that they need racial segregation in order to excel with confidence. But the world is not a racially segregated â€Afro-centric†public school; it is a diverse place, just as Canada is a diverse country. It is good and well that educators are looking for solutions for their students, but this proposal will serve only to make a bad problem worse. The school board in Toronto and parents who are looking for solutions need to look harder and more candidly. Their children deserve it.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Uhh...listening to Death Metal or Heavy Metal does not make you a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist.

You're right. Music lyrics can be interpreted any way, though I'd like to know who specifically some Metal artists allude to killing?

Shouldn't there have only been one black person killed if this was racial? What would be the neo-Nazi point of killing the rest of those people... were the rest Jewish?

Well we are talking about an ethically homogenous Colorado suburb for the most part, not downtown L.A.

I would think it is irrelevant what the skin colour, race, or religion of the students are.

It most certainly is irrelevant. Ensuring students universally succeed isn't. If the system fails the few while passing the many, provisions should be in place to safeguard the minority that underachieve however such provisions are reached.

But why start with "black" if we are "starting somewhere"? Why not start with people with a real indicator like poor grades, poor attendance, people known to police, etc. Starting with black is like starting with surnames starting with A though F.

What if the statistics collected of those with poor grades, poor attendence and people known to the police just happened to be predominatly uniracial? This controversy would never exist if it were some white teens.

There are people of all races who live in a cycle. People who arrive in Canada from countries where people are already well off such as Hong Kong arrive with a different reality than those who don't.

So we're to blame colonialism then as the Caribbean and Africa were left devastated by the aftermath of it; depletion of natural resources to prevent boost of local economies, trade tariffs to prevent foreign investment and negatively impact import/export of goods, withholding of education during colonialism to keep native populations docile and ignorant, imposition of colonizers' values to trivialize indigenous cultures and challenge one's self-worth, etc. Meanwhile places like South America and East Asia largely through Amero-European investment evolves to near first world status. The dichotomies of life continue.

Race doesn't seem to be as important as what an individuals parents believe and do.

What beliefs? That Canada welcomes all equally and provides financial opportunities and levels of social advancement the homeland cannot? Do? Oh to think of the countless professionals who come here thinking they'll find work in their fields only to scrub floors, raise other's kids and drive around smelly taxis. Native whites? Jackpot or at the very least guaranteed employment as they've passed the color requirement!

The more we say there is a problem with "black crime" the more it will make people afraid of black people in general and perhaps create obstacles to black employment and obstacles to blacks being seen in the same light as other groups, just in the same way that a few terrorists have ruined everything for the middle eastern travelling public. Saying there is a "black education" problem requiring a "black school" will cause some youth to not learn because society has just told them that they don't have a chance.

Stereotyping is fundementally wrong, however you're choosing to view Afrocentric schools in a negative connotation. What's negative about experimenting with an oppurtunity to turn around troubled teens of all stripes. I watched the news recently and saw such classrooms already exist in GTA high schools. The focus was on black culture but there noticably a diaspora of students in attendence: Muslim girls in burkas, some teens with dreadlocks and cornrows, some dressed 'street' while others wore buttoned-up shirts. There were even three white teens in attendence, a parallel to normal Canadian classrooms where it's only 3 black teens with nothing relating them other than their skin complexion. Why should blacks or Asians for that matter always be bombarded with an Eurocentric curricula. My point to you, either reform the current regime or adopt a more pluralist one. Obviously ethnocentric schools won't replace multicultural schools, but the choice should be made available.

So creating "white school" should be fine as well if students and parents know what it may provide.

These already exist. Obviously if private schools are too expensive for single-parent, low-income, first/second generation, new immigrant family households which more often than not aren't white than of course whites can allude pluralist schools. Status and class are the new basis for segregation, not government funded programs for special needs students.

For example to deal with the white homeless problem perhaps we need special white schools to educate people how to avoid homelessness, or to prevent them from being the next Enron CEO style criminal we should have white business school where blacks need not apply.

The white homeless problem is a reflection of the bottom barrel in the social hierarchy. Often the bankrupt, mentally ill, drug addicts and gay teens form the bulk of runaways as they cannot cope with society's pressures. There are black homeless too but as in everything they're less represented.

Stupidly what some define as "black culture" has been defined not by culture passed down from Africa but by culture invented in the USA which is not a positive influence.

Yes rap/hip-hop, gang culture and the imagery of urban projects has forever tarnished the perception of blacks. This is why I feel a school teaching them something of moral and intellectual substance is better than absorbing values infiltrated and promoted by the white-controlled media. Which of course is also watched by their non-black peers/teachers whom after observing similar behaviours from black teens assume the stereotypes are true. This is how blacks are socially stunted. How can we allow that to go on?

Some movies are about a historical context, it isn't demeaning to the actor to play a role which historically important but a part of a racially divided past

Yes but is slavery/Aparteid/racism/segregation something that should be continually mined into for the sake of creating a holiday tearjerker? Something as long-lasting and detrimental as black oppression will never go away if we keep reminding new generations that one race was the slave, the other the master. Again I bring up Jena 6, not to mention Katrina, the L.A. race riots and the frequency of black arrests in the media. The past seems like just yesterday to me.

Denzel is far from typecast... he is a naval officer, a coach, a gangster, an officer, a parent who will do anything for his son, etc.

Yes but in most of those movies he's yeilding a firearm. The association between black men and violence is reinforced if an actor with as much clout as DW cannot get a part that doesn't require brandishing a weapon or being an authoritative figure (stereotype of black men being strict, serious and boisterous all the time).

But this isn't about having an intervention for a loved one. This is not the family and friends of a specific person who is doing poorly at school and hanging with the wrong crowd coming together to get him to smarten up.

It was just an analogy and a good one. It's not good enough for merely family/friends to intervene there must be a social network too that individuals can fall back on. Again without the word "Afrocentric" attached to the proposal there is absolutely no reason to debate against it.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Black immigrants from Africa averaged the highest educational attainment of any population group in the United States, including whites and Asians. These students are no less subject to racism from educators, biased curriculum or bigotry from society at large than are other American blacks.

True but the writer fails to realize African nationals are already well versed in their own cultural history. They don't need a North American reinterpretation. Pan-American blacks however do not come from societies that are over 90% black. Hence their exposure to racism/segragation is surmountably greater and emotionally crippling to the extent defeatism may limit academic achievement. If blacks have to balance their own identity alongside what the pluralist media/ societal viewpoint tells them is their identity it's understandable why some give up or can't compete with their non-black peers. Again grades are based on bell-curves. If the avarage is a class is 60, chances are most students will get a passing grade. However the higher the average the greater the failure rate for the bottom students. Once a certain percentage has passed the others automatically fail. Lessening the playing field for some students increases the likelihood more will graduate.

If parents are genuinely interested in having their children learn more about Africa, they can send them to after-school programs

Wow, like that'll work. Afrocentric values need to be adopted into the everyday school cirricula, not brought up once every February then forgotten.

 

[turdrockfromthesun]

I rarely post here much anymore, but when I read this, I couldn't help but grin. What you have said here is the very thing government documents and data librarians the world over fume about in private when they see the media completely mangle, exaggerate, misinterpret and do all sorts of other nonsense to data from Statcan, CANSIM, etc, which is then torqued to within an inch of its life by any group with an axe to grind. It just so happens that there is an informal gathering of librarians at the Duke of York tonight, and included therein is the head data librarian of U of T - whose crusade against this sort of innumeracy is legendary in the biz - and the prof I TA for who is among the best government documents librarians there is. I'm sure they'll nod in agreement when I bring this debate up.*







*and despite the stereotype, librarians *are* a hard-drinking bunch who do *not* go around telling people to be quiet, just so you know....

two points: Taking stats and screwing them up- or throwing a dart at a board and saying, "See?!?" And in particular, throwing a dart at at dart board, getting some number, then labeling all who disagree racists is part of what being socially progressive is all about! There are all sorts of famous wrong statistics- Anorexia figure was a real whopper - something about 1/3 of all women etc just nuts! Picked by a dart board, in all sorts of textbooks.

RE HARD DRINIKING- It comes easily to me..

 

[Admiral Beez]

True but the writer fails to realize African nationals are already well versed in their own cultural history. They don't need a North American reinterpretation. Pan-American blacks however do not come from societies that are over 90% black.

What?! The vast majority of blacks in Canada come from the Caribbean isles, most of which are majority black societies.

Afrocentric values need to be adopted into the everyday school cirricula, not brought up once every February then forgotten.

Please stop using this word Afrocentric. It donates some sort of pan continental value system, whereas a large part of Africa's population isn't even black. In addition to sub-Saharan blacks, Africa is populated by Arabs, Jews, Ethiopians, etc. Would you use the term Asia-centric to describe the values of Indian's billion people, to the exclusion of other Asian people, such as the Israelis, Persians, Tartars, Chinese, Japanese, Tamils, etc...?

If you want black values, then at least be honest enough to call it that. However, I've already suggested that advancing North American black values is that last thing our black youth need. As I said earlier here "Misogynist hip hop, bling-centric, baby-mamas, absent fathers, idoltry of celebrity (sports and music), 50% of all (US) prison inmates, gangs, drugs, guns, drive-bys, colours....are these the black values that want to integrate into the public system?" Otherwise, what exactly are the positive elements of North American black culture that we wish to integrate into the school system?

 

[lordmandeep]

actually African Blacks are doing well...

Its the Caribbean blacks that are being held back...

Its my own personal opinion and my own observation, so it not 100% true at all.


However, it is true that certain immigrant groups just come to Canada and in a generation are wealthy middle class people, while some groups tend to stay in poverty for generations.


Some groups think there is nothing holding them back while others say the whole world is against them and then never try..

 

[adma]

As I said earlier here "Misogynist hip hop, bling-centric, baby-mamas, absent fathers, idoltry of celebrity (sports and music), 50% of all (US) prison inmates, gangs, drugs, guns, drive-bys, colours....are these the black values that want to integrate into the public system?" Otherwise, what exactly are the positive elements of North American black culture that we wish to integrate into the school system?

Who says that, as a *discussion point* (within a media/cultural studies context), the above can't be a, er, "positive element"? It isn't like the teachers'll be expected to be uncritically espousing all of that; that'd be positively Poochie-lame...

 

[Admiral Beez]

actually African Blacks are doing well...

Its the Caribbean blacks that are being held back...

No one is holding them back, except themselves. African blacks are doing fine in the Canadian education system. This proves that there's isn't an anti-black bias in education.

What African Blacks have going for them, is the same things that many other successful immigrant groups (Jewish, Italians, Irish, etc...) have, such as strong two-parent family cohesion, strong morality, in many cases tied to a religion, strong respect for one's parents and the family reputation, absolute dedication for one's own children, and extremely high demands on children for educational excellence.

What our education system does demonstrate is that if you're coming from a community of broken single-parent families, low morality (defined as you wish, but IMO the positives rules of respect of yourself and others, and hard work parents pass down), no respect for yourself or your family, you will fail from the system. It's colour blind.

 

[lordmandeep]

what you just said simply is just good parenting means better children.

 

[syn]

Caribbean blacks aren't doing badly either.

It's really a small minority giving the entire group a bad name.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

No one is holding them back, except themselves. African blacks are doing fine in the Canadian education system. This proves that there's isn't an anti-black bias in education.

What African Blacks have going for them, is the same things that many other successful immigrant groups (Jewish, Italians, Irish, etc...) have, such as strong two-parent family cohesion, strong morality, in many cases tied to a religion, strong respect for one's parents and the family reputation, absolute dedication for one's own children, and extremely high demands on children for educational excellence.

What our education system does demonstrate is that if you're coming from a community of broken single-parent families, low morality (defined as you wish, but IMO the positives rules of respect of yourself and others, and hard work parents pass down), no respect for yourself or your family, you will fail from the system. It's colour blind.

easy there. compared to atheists & agnostics, per capita there are more people who profess a belief in god that are in the US prison system. people who have a belief in god also have a higher divorce rate compared to atheists & agnostics.

look at all the street gangs in toronto, their symbols & attire and see how much references to jesus you will find in the form of jewelery, tags & tattoos.