Include blacks in schools’ race discussions

Community being told its not their place, writes Richard Sharpe.

“We are so proud of how your group has advocated for your community.” This comment, made by an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) superintendent, was directed at me after I had given a presentation on the need for race-based data to support anti-racism initiatives in the school board.

A coalition of black community members had begun interventions at the OCDSB over a year ago to push for direct engagement on equity issues. The official’s comment was a reflection of the board’s response to our demands. I couldn’t help but interpret it as a figurative pat on the head. That’s not what we are looking for.

I became involved in school board issues last year, when my son was added to the long list of black youth suspended from Ottawa schools. His suspension was for challenging an administrator over what he believed to be racial profiling. As I sought community support to deal with the suspension, almost every black family I encountered had similar experiences. It became clear that this was a systemic problem and that we needed hard data to support our stories.

Just a few months later, the Ontario government issued a directive for all provincially regulated institutions to collect disaggregated race-based data to better understand what happens when racialized citizens interface with those institutions.

With this in mind, the coalition came together to demand that school boards start collecting the data immediately, and that black communities be present throughout the process. Through our efforts, we were able to force the issue onto the school board agenda.

But to date, no effort has been made to legitimately engage us on the design and implementation of a process. We are effectively being told this is not our place.

After the end of formalized enslavement of black people in Canada in 1834, human bondage was replaced by Jim Crow laws. The “N” word was replaced by “Negro” but the rules along class and race lines were clear. We were still told “Negro, know your place.”

Though “Negro” isn’t so directly associated with the whips and chains of those earlier years of Canada’s nationhood, what it does most effectively, just like the “N” word, is rob us of our connection to our original language, cultural and geographic origins. For a long time, the term, along with other societal drivers of the state, framed the status of black people as second-class. We had no real voice in the institutions that affected our daily lives.

Speed forward to 2016 where, under the backdrop of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, came a UN review of the state of blacks in Canada. The UN working group provided 42 recommendations to address anti-black racism in federal, provincial and municipal governments and public institutions. The education systems across the country were called out for practices that adversely targeted black children and disenfranchised their families. This reality we share with our Indigenous sistren and brethren. The OCDSB was one of those school boards interviewed by the UN working group.

For decades, black communities in Ottawa have been complaining that our kids are being suspended or expelled for minor offences, or streamed into lower-level programs that deny them access to university, and consequently, higher-paying, more fulfilling careers. Meanwhile, board officials tell us they are doing “diversity and inclusion training.”

Obviously that has not worked for us.

Even after the OCDSB adopted, to much fanfare, a proclamation in support of the International Decade that explicitly speaks to the board’s commitment to engage black communities, we remain sidelined. We were told by the superintendent that evening that the OCDSB would inform us after their consultant has developed the data-collection methodology.

Although the “N” word has never been verbally directed at us in person, we continue to hear the refrain.

Given the systemic failure of Ottawa school boards over the decades to address our concerns, we have very little trust that, if left solely to themselves, the right questions, approaches, and methodologies will be used to collect and analyze data on our children. This is not just an equity and inclusion issue. This is a human rights issue.

A new director of education has been selected to lead the OCDSB, come January. She is from the black community in Durham, where they grappled with and came to understand how to engage our people as key stakeholders in our children’s schooling. We welcome this development. However, will this incoming professional be shackled by a data-collection process that the OCDSB put in place prior to her arrival?

Despite how black folk, as citizens and taxpayers, continue to be treated by school board bureaucracies, “our place” is at the table with these people, charting a collaborative course for the betterment of all our children.

Richard Sharpe is a community activist and co-founder of the 613/819 Black Hub. He can reached by email at richard. sharpe.d@gmail.com.