To find out about anti-Black racism in schools, join Aug. 3 protest: Vaughan mother

'Black students are disproportionately affected in the education system, and we are tired of asking for changes'

Yorkregion.com
July 28, 2020

Longtime Vaughan parent and activist Charline Grant is helping to organize the #MarchForBlackStudents protest on Aug. 3, starting at Toronto City Hall at 2 p.m. and going to Queen’s Park.

“It's a march for Black students,” said Grant, a runner-up in the 2018 school board election. “Black students are disproportionately affected in the education system, and we are tired of asking for changes, which aren’t happening, or are slow.”

The planned protest is being organized by Parents of Black Children, founded by Grant, and the Vaughan African Canadian Association (VACA). It follows a provincial decision in early July to end streaming in Grade 9, a practice in which high school students have to choose to pursue an "academic" or "applied" course track. Streaming has been criticized for leaving behind a disproportionate number of Black and other racialized students.

On July 17, the Ontario College of Teachers appointed Karen Murray, OCT, to lead the development of its new Additional Qualification (AQ) guideline to address anti-Black racism.

While this sounds like a positive omen for better reforms to come, Grant says it’s not enough. “Based on our experience, (the drawbacks of) streaming starts in SK,” she said.

Grant urged white people to use their “currency and speak up.”

“It is their disease and they need to come up with a vaccine for it – it’s not us who created this. We are living it. We cannot dismantle this by ourselves.”

She urged people to come and join the protest to “learn” and “hear from real victims, from students, from families talking about their experiences.”

On June 13, a Black Lives Matter protest organized by Grade 11 student Sydney Baxter from Markham High School, starting in front of Markville Mall in Markham, saw at least 800 to 1,000 people show up. And it has proved to be a platform for others to learn from.

“A lot of (the attendees) then took away a different perspective, like the Black perspective on certain topics, especially opening people’s eyes on Markham and what has been going on,” Baxter said.

During the protest, said Baxter, there were individuals who shared and recounted their anti-Black racism experiences, including a woman who said she grew up with racism in Markham; once she returned to the city, as a mother, she said she experienced a similar prejudice, but this time through her children.

Some people who attended the rally “didn't really know that this was happening in the school system,” said Baxter. However, “people were a little bit more unified after,” she said.

There has been some positive reaction. Baxter said she "got off of a meeting with the Director of Education and some senior members of the (York Region District School) Board to talk about anti-Black racism in schools and stuff like that,” she said. “The mayor of Markham also asked me to be a part of a new Black liaison committee.”

10-point list of demands

Organizers of the Aug. 3 protest say they have a 10-point list of demands for the Ontario Ministry of Education, surrounding the implementation of fully fledged reforms in the school system.

These demands – a copy of which Grant provided to the Citizen – include reforming the Education Act by giving the right to Black people to have reflective education, where teachers observe and evaluate their methods in case they can be improved or changed for better learning outcomes.

The protest will also be calling to “decolonize the curriculum” by “ensuring Black Canadian experiences are built into all school curriculums,” eliminating all forms of streaming, removing police from schools, addressing teacher bias, conducting random equity audit of school boards, the hiring of more Black teachers, and requiring universities and colleges with faculties of education and early childhood education to make anti-Black racism and anti-oppression in education mandatory.

The list also urges the province to provide funding to support Black-led community groups in hiring fund education system navigators, who can help Black families advocate and navigate the education system and represent students and families when they are faced with anti-Black racism in schools.

The two organizations likewise call for accountable race-based data collection and requiring boards of education to publicly publish the data and act on it: "Create an education data oversight division within the Ministry of Education to rank, monitor and hold school boards accountable."

These demands aren’t coming out of thin air.

In February, the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) warned that anti-Black racism “remains one of the most common types of race and ethnicity-related hate crimes in our society,” citing figures from Statistics Canada.

Like Grant, the YRDSB also said that Black students are “disproportionately being suspended, not graduating and being identified with special education needs.” In April, a principal at Bill Crothers Secondary School in Markham was called the N-word by an unknown individual during an online meeting.

“We have these 10 demands we're asking the government to fulfil. And if they don't, for the next school year, we're going to have different types of additional protests; one could even be a walkout for Black students and our allies,” Grant said.