You know, I refrained from making this same post (oddly, I read it on the exact same website) because I didn't want to pick on the Canadians. I actually thought to myself "You know, Eva is just gonna go off on some long rant."
But seriously.
The "Seperate but Equal" is like communism--good in theory, impossible in practice. Early American legislators (even them "liberal yankee northerners") approved of "separate" facilities because--in theory--it would quell some of the violence. Prior to MLK and other anti-Jim Crow efforts, our leaders thought they were solving the problem by recognizing that there were cultural differences (albeit, in a master-slave kind of way). The problem is that none of those facilities ended up being equal in any way, shape or form. And the isolation ensure that the realms where cultures have to cross become flash points for racial hatred (go ahead--ask about "mixed" relationships when you stop by Savannah, GA--no one can legislate love, but they can lynch it).
You are dead on in highlighting the inherent racism of racially-centric activities. We have to observe a whole month of black history, but heaven help us if someone proposes a "White History Month". How about this: we just celebrate "History"? Would that be so bad?
If you're a 13-year-old it is. But I digress.
Bless Canada and Toronto--the more I read, the more it's like they're a new country, beginning to face all the problems the U.S. dealt with decades ago. Racism isn't about black vs. white, but rather on the dangerous emphasis placed on differences. State grants, separate schools and ebonics programs don't address the underlying issue:
F*^king Hip-Hop.
;)
"I actually thought to myself 'You know, Eva is just gonna go off on some long rant.'"
Am I starting to get predictable, Jacob? :P
I really liked what you said about the 'dangerous emphasis placed on difference' - I completely agree. And I really believe that exposure to those differences is the only cure. I've heard that some schools in South Africa have gone so far as to regulate even the seating in the classrooms - black and white kids alternating desks - to make sure no one has a choice about confronting the humanity of the stranger next to them.
Definitely a touchy subject for many. I agree with you two about the focus being more on the differences.
Likewise with the alternating of students in South Africa, if this wasn't encouraged, would those kids naturally want to learn more or befriend others different from themselves? Not necessarily. Especially within a country that was ravished by apartheid.
My two cents - What people see are the results: the violence, the dropout rates, etc. Results always stem from processes/causes of some sort. For one, if you compare the resources that inner-city schools barely get to those of more affluent regions, its dismal. Then there's the hopelessness that ensues from watching the rich get richer in a capitalist world, etc
Unfortunately, its the age old debate that the US has been battling for years.
Right on, Eva. It makes us all realize how complex of an issue race and ethnicity is. It's not at all an easy question to answer but I agree, we do need to learn about all ethnic groups, especially in diverse countries like the US and Canada. I don't remember learning much about Latino or Asian-American or even Native American history in high school, although the school I attended was very diverse and the faculty did their best to help us appreciate our multicultural environment, which I think promoted a lot of understanding and awareness between students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Of course, it was a private college preparatory school, so we all came from similar economic backgrounds and all of us had a common goal of getting a good education and going to college. Our teachers (and parents) expected a lot out of us, so that kept us focused.
By the way, a good movie to check out (if you haven't already) is Freedom Writers, with Hilary Swank. It takes place in a part of Long Beach not unlike the rough neighborhoods of Toronto you described, where the teachers at a local high school didn't know how to deal with their students aside from letting them fail and drop out. It took a young, idealistic teacher (Erin Gruwell) who wanted to give her students a chance and believed that they could achieve big things to make an impact on their lives. However, there are not enough teachers like Erin Gruwell, so for the most part young people from lower-income, often non-white backgrounds usually face an uphill battle in their eduation.
Eva: Its as guaranteed as taxes--pick on Canada and one will elicit a wordy response from everyone's favorites Canuck. ;) (on a side note, the world doesn't use the word 'Canuck' nearly enough anymore)
Valerie mentioned economics. I think back to Chicago and the incredible racial division there--Korea Town, China Town, Little India (California and Devon...eat @ Tiffin!), Logan's Square, Ukrainian Village etc., are all names for places where lower-middle class people of a given ethnic group were "supposed" to live. The only time people left these neighborhoods were when their financial independence reached a level to which they could move to the racially neutral 'burbs. The only thing these social groups shared about Chicago was "Downtown"...and only the INCREDIBLY wealthy could live there.
Even now, formerly strong racial barriers are being broken down throughout Chicago (Bucktown, Roger's Park), but it's not being broken down by an honest and heartfelt openness to new cultures. Its because property values are rising, and only the rich can afford an apartment in these neighborhoods.
Economics are definitely a weird part of race relations. It makes me wonder which division is truly more damaging--the cultural or the economic? If we thing of South Africa or Chicago's southside, we not only see a large racial discrepancy, but also a significant economic difference as well.
Uber complicated.
Good point, JB. Economics definitely adds another dimension to race. I didn't mention earlier that I know someone who experienced mandatory school bussing when she was in high school in the 70s. She lived in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in LA, and was sent to a school in Malibu-esque Pacific Palisades. Although she's a pretty liberal person, she admits that the concept of forced desegregation was idealistic yet flawed. The result of it was quite the opposite of what the legislators had hoped. Interestingly enough, those that pushed most strongly in favor of it either sent their own children to private schools or paid to have them attend schools in another district. My friend remembers spending about an hour on the bus each way, while those from the "other side" were given the keys to their parents' Mercedes on their 16th birthdays. She didn't even have the opportunity to participate in school activities because the school bus left 20 minutes after school ended, unless she took the public bus in which case the ride would have been even longer. If anything, the experience made her lower-income peers resent the Palisadians even more.
I didn't learn anything about this era in high school but I did take an interesting course on the 1970s in America when I was in college - it gave me a good idea of how the US ended up the way it is now. A lot of the scenes from the school bussing era described in the books I read sounded downright frightening. I can see why so many parents pulled their children out of public schools from then on and put them in private schools instead. A friend of mind who's now a teacher in Southern California teaches at a school that's virtually 100% Latino - 40 years ago that wouldn't have been the case.
But one thing I found interesting (and not too surprising) was that kids of different races from the same neighborhoods - and the same socioeconomic backgrounds - generally got along. That's how economics complicates everything.
My friends and I were just debating this the other night and I agree. I don't think signaling out one particular minority group is going to really help the issue. I do think it is almost more a class based or economic issue then one purely about race.Ideally Canada is a multicultural society and I would like to think that is about learning a bit about everybody's culture, not just your own.
Joined: 08-07-07
Troubling times in Toronto... This week, after a long campaign and a lot of debate, the Toronto District School Board voted to create an 'Afro-centric' school, aimed at tackling the high drop-out rates, gang violence, and other afflictions of the city's Jamaican-Canadian (and other Caribbean-Canadian) youth.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080130.wschool0130/BNStory/National
It's been a heated debate, but one that has been largely contained to Toronto's black community, as outsiders hesitated to weigh in on such a touchy subject. Gun homicides have been spiralling in Toronto's rougher neighbourhoods, and the city's gang problem now approaches that of some major US cities. (In some of the more horrific and highly-publicized incidents, an anti-violence campaigner and father of a shooting victim was killed himself, a young man was shot on the steps of a church as he left a fellow gang member's funeral (also shot), a small boy was accidentally shot in the chest outside his school as he and a friend 'played' with a gun, and, on Boxing Day 2006, a firefight in broad daylight on a busy shopping street left 1 innocent bystander dead and 8 or 9 injured.)
Obviously something needs to be done. And the theory behind the school is that a curriculum tailored to the interests and experiences of these kids will engage them, keep them interested in education, give them something to do and care about besides imitating their favourite gangsta rappers. (Unsurprisingly, the two biggest gangs are called the Bloods and the Crips... How's that for some cultural cross-pollination?)
Proponents of the school have argued that the idea shouldn't be thrown away out of hand simply because of the knee-jerk fear and outrage that is sparked by any reference to Jim Crow and the segregation-era South. And that's fair, I suppose - but putting aside ugly historical precedents, I still see a whole lot of problems with this plan.
For one, meaning no disrespect, but Caribbean-Canadians are only one of a whole host of minority groups, each with problems of their own. Picking one group for special treatment seems guaranteed to create resentment among the rest. For another, I think there are problems inherent in any attempt to design an 'Afro-centric' curriculum: does that mean African history? Caribbean history? African-Canadian history? African-American history? Are they going to learn about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, or Shaka and the Zulus in South Africa? (Neither of which, by the way, has much of anything to do with the life experiences of a teenage son of Jamaican immigrants in a Toronto suburb in the 21st century...) Also, I don't think that the perceived lack of 'Afro-centric' content is necessarily the result of a dominant 'Euro-centric' curriculum - none of us is getting as much literature, history or arts education as we should be. Why not expand Canada's humanities/social sciences curriculum more generally, so that we not only have the time to learn a bit about each of our minority groups, but we even learn about those rich old white men who founded the country? (Currently, Canadian history offerings are shockingly minimal. In fact, 'Afro-centric' content might already be flourishing relative to other areas, thanks to Black History Month. I can remember learning about the Underground Railroad and reading about Harriet Tubman, but I couldn't tell you the names of the 'Fathers of Confederation', the Canadian equivalent of the American men who put together the US Constitution. I also, until I started my current job, couldn't tell you a single thing I learned in school about Canada's aboriginal peoples.)
My point is not that there's too much 'Afro-centric' content already - far from it, although it was a little bizarre watching a 'Black History Month' assembly at my high school, where there weren't enough black kids to fill all the parts and so Asians and Middle Easterners had to fill in...
My point is that we could all do with learning a lot more about each other's history and culture - Anglo-Canadian, French Canadian, Indo-Canadian, First Nations, Jamaican-Canadian, Somali-Canadian, and so on. It doesn't seem to me that separate schools, however equal, are likely to get anywhere near achieving that goal.