Last week, the shooting death of a teenage boy at a funeral service in Rexdale brought a new level of obscenity to Toronto’s epidemic of gun violence. As the federal election swings into gear, the question now resting on the shoulders of politicians is how to steer youth away from violence. And it’s no secret that the areas most singled out as violent in Toronto are united by factors of class and race.
According to studies conducted by the Toronto District School Board, many of these are impoverished communities with students of colour who are receiving poor grades in school. Lloyd McKell, the board’s executive officer for Student Community and Equity highlighted this fact earlier this fall, saying the studies reveal students from poor communities who are gay, lesbian, Hispanic, disabled, aboriginal, or black are more likely to underacheive than other students.
McKell has reacted strongly to this data insisting the school board is not doing enough to make students of all backgrounds feel valued, specifically African-Canadian youth. His remarks have sparked a renewed debate on a controversial solution: the creation of black-focused, or black-only schools in Toronto.
McKell created the board’s first Afro-centric program for students from JK to Grade 5, which ran out of the Shorham Public School in the Jane and Finch area this past summer. The pilot project was well attended, with 70 students (15 of whom were not black) showing up.
“[It focused] on the positive experience throughout the world of Africans and was meant to provide learning sources of knowledge to students who are not able to get that in programs in school,” said McKell.
But critics such as OISE professor of sociology George Dei believe these programs are not enough. He has been leading the debate in support of creating black-focused schools in Toronto since the early 1990s.
“[A black-only school] would not be just a dumping ground for kids who have problems,” he said. “It will be about creating a school of learners, [because] students have no sense of who they are, [and these schools] will give them a feeling of hope.
“[Those men involved in recent gun crime] were probably in need of some help, social and material support and spiritual healing,” he said, arguing that this is precisely where education could make a difference.
Mention the idea of a black-only school to most Torontonians, however, and immediately, the daunting word “segregation” comes to mind. But Dei shakes his head at this.
“With segregation they were forced to go to a certain school [and] ride a certain bus. No one will be forcing anyone to go anywhere [if these schools were built]. Segregation was meant to oppress and discriminate against blacks and deny them rights. I’m talking about race in a positive way, in a way that is part of our identity.” Indeed, Canada already has a network of separate schools-for Aboriginal youth, French language immersion, and Catholic students, all funded by the government.
Others are also hesitant to embrace Afro-centric schools because of the belief that these schools will only perpetuate a belief that African-Canadians need “special treatment”-in other words, that they are unable to achieve success within “normal” society’s conventions. Christopher Cochrane, a political science grad student at U of T, says what we should be asking is why black Canadians are experiencing greater socioeconomic disadvantages.
“Whatever the precise explanations for this state of affairs, they are certainly not remedied by taking “at risk” black children and putting them all together in the same schools,” said Cochrane. “What kind of a message does this send?”
But Dei believes the message of black-focused schools would be quite the opposite.
“To say the students risk being stigmatized or marginalized says more about the system than the students themselves,” he said. “If we take the position that by simply continuing to do what we are doing now all will be fine, we will continue to produce failure.”
In fact, McKell suspects Toronto’s fear of black-only schools reveals a lack of awareness of the racism black students face in mostly white schools.
“A black-focused school concept is not a skin pigmentation issue,” he said last month. “This is not the segregation of black-skinned students from white-skinned students. [This is about] how institutional or systemic racism currently operates in our city, its effect upon people, and about how racism acts to preserve inequity among people in our society.”
U of T sociology grad student Kisrene McKenzie agrees racism is a reality that all blacks face and should be the driving force for a black-only school, but she fears that framing black-focused schools for “bad” black youth will create “a juvenile detention centre for black male adolescents.”
“Black people who are not characterized as being “at-risk” such as the middle class, or advanced black students, will have no place, as if they are not also “at-risk” of racial discrimination.”
U of T English professor George Elliot Clarke argues, however, that while it is true that racism plays a key role in the upbringing of black students, their success or failure should also be an issue that is addressed at the level of their homes and communities.
“As a black man, and as a professional black man, I still come back to the question, ‘What are we doing in our community to allow our youth to succeed, even if [there] is a thoroughly racist system?'” asks Clarke.
Fourth-year political science undergraduate Katie Edwards agrees with Clarke.
“A black student coming from a home with supportive parents and a good breakfast each morning would be more likely to succeed than a white student who comes to school hungry and doesn’t have anyone to help him/her with school work at night,” she said.
Clarke also points out that the fact of racism in Toronto’s education system has been a reality for some time, and this gives the black community an added responsibility.
“Black people have been treated as labourers in the Western world, which means [we’ve been taught that] we didn’t deserve to be educated. [The government] didn’t have to worry if Kwame and Leticia were educated because they felt they would be cleaners anyway; they only worried about Mary and John,” says Clarke.
He emphasizes the fact that until there are significant strides in our society, black and other students in minority groups will always have to struggle to succeed.
“One of the problems of having an integrated society is that we have bought in to the illusion and the myth that everybody can ride the subway together or watch the Blue Jays together and therefore we have a multicultural and harmonious society. But we do not,” he said.
“Black people collectively won a battle to get our kids in to the same schools as the other kids, but we forgot to remember that those schools were never there for our kids. We simply can’t send our kids to the public schools and think that’s good enough; no, we have to be fully engaged in those schools. If that means going to the school every day and every week and meeting the principal until you become a nuisance, and meeting with the teachers, then that’s what we will have to do.”
Clarke even suggests that if the black community are truly concerned about the lives of their black youth, they should take matters in to their own hands.
“If we really want black-focused schools, we have to take on the burden to organize them ourselves, because that would really send the message to the government. A lot of other ethnicities have private schools, so why can’t we?
“The fundamental question is: are black schools enough to allow black students to succeed?”
It’s evident that the problems affecting black youth cannot be traced to a single cause, but a web of circumstances. They will similarly not be addressed by a single solution.
What is lacking is a real political forum in which this topic may be addressed. The lack of real discussion at any level of government dealing with the violence plaguing black youth perhaps has more to do with Canada’s own fear of encountering a taboo subject, says Kofi Hope, president of the U of T Black Students’ Association.
“We [don’t] like to admit that there is racial inequality in Canada,” he said. “There is an ugly form of racism [here], but Canadians only want to believe that racism exists south of the border.”
Dei agrees.
“We still haven’t had an honest discussion about the topic, [because] people don’t want to go there. We have this idea that if we don’t talk about it will go away. The fact of the matter is race is a touchy subject and everyone is very afraid to get near it.”
Until politicians realize violence among young African-Canadian males is not just a black problem, but a problem for all Torontonians, dialogue on the issue of race and violence will continue to be stunted. Until we as a community explore all the solutions available to help steer black youth away from violence, including the possibility of black-focused schools, the collection of young black male corpses will continue to grow.
