Opponents of Toronto Afrocentric School Vent Rage in E-mails
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A shower of passionately negative e-mails flooded the inboxes of Toronto school board trustees following the decision to create an Afrocentric school in Canada’s largest city, according to documents obtained under access to information laws.
The response was raw, reflective and filled with rage.
A woman who grew up in racially segregated Alabama and nearly got expelled from college for drinking out of ‘coloured only’ water fountains said she was crestfallen when she learned of the school board’s decision to go ahead with she believes is a racially exclusive school.
“I am grieved to see Toronto try to turn back the clock to those ignominious times of separation,” wrote Ellen Nichols, who is white and now lives in Toronto.
She was one of 60 people who wrote the school board in January and February of this year. Only five of the e-mails were in favour of the board’s decision. The e-mails were obtained after a request made under Toronto’s access to information law.
The Toronto District School Board voted in favour of the Afrocentric initiative in January. Plans call for a school that will begin with elementary education and run right through high school. Classes will be underway beginning September 2009. The board will be meeting next month to hear recommendations for the location of the school as well as begin the process of hiring teachers and support staff.
Proponents of the program claim it will help combat the 40 per cent dropout rate among Toronto’s black teens by introducing curriculum and staff that better represent this demographic.
The idea for the school was first suggested in 1995 and an impassioned debate has raged around the issue ever since.
E-mails were sent by individuals of all races and included an eclectic mix of professionals, teachers, students and some unexpected characters.
“I certainly have lots of experience on being black in a very homogeneously white school system (Ottawa in the 1970s and early 80s),” wrote Sandra Odendahl, senior director of environmental risk management at CIBC.
“I’d prefer to see my tax dollars devoted to community support, rather than a regressive, racist, segregated educational experiment that needs to have a stake driven through it-quickly.”
Dick Field served in the Second World War with the Royal Canadian Artillery in Europe. He said the idea of a Eurocentric curriculum working against black youth is absurd.
“It is this very ‘Eurocentric’ history and culture, so maligned by these racial advocates that has allowed all our freedoms to flourish,” Field said.
Another author asked, “What’s next, girl focused schools where girls can learn proper girl things like home-ec and nursing?”
E-mails came from all over Canada and included one from Chicago, Ill.
There are more than 100 black-focused or Afrocentric schools in the United States. Studies show black students, especially young males, benefit immensely from such programs.
Gila Gladstone-Martow, an optometrist and advocate for the school, said other segments of Ontario society had their own schools.
“As you are aware, Ontario fully funds: French, French immersion, Roman Catholic, arts-based, sports-based, native schools as well as a gay/lesbian high school,” she wrote.
But she was among a minority of correspondents.
Alvin Stuffels expressed outrage in an initial missive and then tempered his criticism a month later.
“This decision is racist—if a white person suggests an all white school, that person would be called a racist and a Nazi,” he wrote on Jan. 17. “Our society is becoming more and more prejudice against white males, and nobody is questioning it.”
He apologized for his rhetoric in a subsequent e-mail.
“I’m sorry if I vented some of my frustration on you in an earlier e-mail, but I was angry and not thinking straight.”
Stuffels added although he is still against the Afrocentric school, he thinks more can be done within Toronto schools to embrace black youth.
David Tomczak, senior manager of the Toronto District School Board, said the trustees still receive many e-mails on the subject.
(Posted on April 22, 2008)
Comments
Afrocentrism is not new in the schools and colleges of North America. It is novel in Canada, however,because until recently their cities were overwhelmingly white. This is a racial ideology which often goes so far to promote superiority of blacks over whites, usually in biological terms. Then there is falsified history purporting to elevate the self-esteem of victimized minorities, most of it absurd nonsense such as suggesting that the ancient Egyptians were actually black, or that Africans invented the airplane or lawn mower. They do not realized that self-esteem cannot be bestowed on listless, unaccomplished students. Esteem is earned by high performance, good deeds, or other personal achievements, not the other way around. Black sociologists, psychologists, and educators have substituted this unproven curriculum for real education due to the intractable gap in student performance between the races, and perhaps in an effort to keep kids in school. Over half of inner city students do not get high school diplomas in the US, and I assume there is a similar problem in Toronto. As if things aren’t bad enough, Afrocentrism injected into the public schools is a toxic potion for already sick schools with deficient students and teachers alike. The recent rants of Reverend Wright, Obama’s mentor, can be interpreted as a variation of Afrocentric education. Only recently have whites really listened to these messages of hate and deceit which undermine traditional cultural understandings while substituting multiculturalism and black elitism in their place. The academic divide between backs and whites is again growing wider and even the talented 10% will more often fall into the Afrocentric chasm as their education becomes more diluted and less historically accurate.
Dr of Many Things
Posted by Dr of Many Things at 6:03 PM on April 22
Well, we did it here in Seattle, and nobody is really happy with the outcome. The African-American Academy of Seattle was opened by the Seattle Public School District (yes, public schools) in 1991, with the goal of raising achievement and reducing dropout rates among local black kids. Now they are about to shut it down. Test scores have not gone up, the founder and principal resigned under a cloud, dropout rates remain high, “perceived issues with discipline” are a chronic problem, and the school is only half full even as other schools in Seattle are overflowing.
Go figure.
But this is what awaits Toronto.
Riley
PS A link to a Seattle Times story on the school’s troubles: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003855108_aaa22m.html
Posted by Riley DeWiley at 8:18 PM on April 22
I have been going back to school recently and after having observed how some black students were acting up in my classes I came to the conclusion some blacks are just not school material. maybe a dumbed down school where “life skills” and art are taught is what these black kids need. Leave the heavy math and academics to the kids who really want to learn and that usually means whites and asians. I have also heard most blacks do not want to do well in school because it means they have to “act white”.
Posted by Chuck_W at 8:18 PM on April 22
Only one in twelve supports the plan, but as usual, this sort of thing is never put to a vote. Perhaps parents who want their children to reach college age believing in pyramid myths, helicopter fantasies, the Easter Bunny, and Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs to church, perhaps they should be forced to either pay for their children to attend non-tax-funded private schools, or else homeschool them, the way people who want a *good* education for their children must already do.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 8:28 PM on April 22
Canada pre-1967 when it had no blacks was better off in every possible way. Blacks contribute nothing and are a source of violence and crime.
Posted by at 8:42 PM on April 22
On the positive side, IF Blacks can actually make this work, then a truly educated Black will be of benefit to society. On the other hand, if they can’t, at least they have self-ghettoized themselves from non-Blacks, who can go to school in peace…
Posted by at 9:42 PM on April 22
No surprise here. The School Boards in some American cities are trying to by-pass the settled law of “separate can not be equal” with all black and same sex schools. The lesson is that minorities are never happy, their needs always come first and whites should just pay-up and shut-up.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 10:02 PM on April 22
I have absolutely no doubt that my children would get a better education in an all white school. The Tornonto plan sounds like a great precedent to me. Of course I’m sure that the good liberal proponents of Afrocentric schools would be horrified by the thought that someone would want to extend the same logic to white children. I imagine Canada had to work pretty hard to get all those difficult to educate blacks in the first place. How is your grand experiment in diversity paying off? I would laugh if it wasn’t happening in every white nation in the world. God help us all.
Posted by Enough at 10:34 PM on April 22
When are we going to be allowed tax payer funded Eurocentric schools? You know, schools that don’t shove multiculturalism down their student’s throats. That don’t ignore Faraday and Volta and Helmholtz so as to make room for paeans to great black scientists. That don’t live in fear of ACLU lawsuits if they have their choral society sing a Bach cantata. That actually teach the Constitution, and don’t simply dismiss it because it was the product of white males.
Posted by WR the elder at 10:52 PM on April 22
Why are whites objecting to this? Give blacks their own schools and keep ‘em out of ours. Maybe one day we’ll be able to give them their own country and keep them — and everyone else — out of ours.
Posted by Michael T at 11:42 PM on April 22
Up in Canada the government is run by executives tied to executives in the U.S.
Those men want to restrain white thinkin’ because they want to create a black empire of white civlization in order to kill whites off and profit from it to make the world easier to control for themselves in the long run.
When they created their empire they started in the street from the ground up.
I reckon thats what whites will be doing too if their plan is to be stopped.
Posted by Colt at 11:50 PM on April 22
Sandra Odendahl describes herself as ‘black’, but, in her picture at the U of T Department of Chemical Engineering website, one can see she’s half white.
Sandra opposes all-black schools, because she’s passionate about her people. In mixed offspring, it’s always the non-white side that dominates.
Posted by at 12:37 AM on April 23
“Proponents of the program claim it will help combat the 40 per cent dropout rate among Toronto’s black teens by introducing curriculum and staff that better represent this demographic.”
While a dumbed down curriculum, teaching myths and lies, could well improve the black drop out rate, what overall good does it do to get more blacks to receive a diploma they can’t read?
If they had used their heads to begin with, they would have refused admittance to any and all blacks in the beginning. I love it that those out of touch elitist pigs are confronted with a problem of their own making and also that their solution will cause their society to explode in dissension, violence and crime by graduating home-grown insurgents who have been reinforced with the false belief that they can’t succeed because of whites, instead of their own inabilities.
To these self-appointed elitists the solution to a problem is to create more problems. Like the US, Canada is being run by witless trolls who are not only their own worst enemies, but everybody else’s also.
How utterly tragic. The fools have wrecked Western societies.
Posted by ice at 3:27 AM on April 23
“Afrocentrism is not new in the schools and colleges of North America. It is novel in Canada…”
It is NOT new in Canada… Every information purveyor in the world seems to be fixated on this white=bad nonwhite=innocent mentality, even in places where they’ve never been within 500 miles of a white, and especially in white societies.
Posted by LHathaway at 9:29 AM on April 23
Why is there a need for AfroCentric schools anyway, aren’t our schools already AfroCentric enough with the curriculum these days?
Posted by pilot_mkn at 11:18 AM on April 23
There are more than 100 black-focused or Afrocentric schools in the United States. Studies show black students, especially young males, benefit immensely from such programs.
So do white students…
Posted by at 1:38 PM on April 23
Proponents of the program claim it will help combat the 40 per cent dropout rate among Toronto’s black teens by introducing curriculum and staff that better represent this demographic.
Exactly the reason why it will fail. Educating a child only works if the focus is on disseminating information and imparting knowledge. This is true irrespective of race or demographic. They’re operating on the wrong premise.
“It is this very ‘Eurocentric’ history and culture, so maligned by these racial advocates that has allowed all our freedoms to flourish,” Field said.
True, but since these people obviously are not concerned with allowing these freedoms to flourish or in partaking in them, why force them to?
There are more than 100 black-focused or Afrocentric schools in the United States.
Only a hundred? try the entire school systems of every major American city.
“As you are aware, Ontario fully funds…a gay/lesbian high school,” she wrote.
Well, I suppose that’s one school where at least teen pregnancy isn’t a problem.
Posted by BW Sam at 2:10 PM on April 23
Afrocentric schools, you say? Name one scientific, cultural, medical, social, political, artistic, industrial, or educational advance contributed by Sub-Sahara Africa.
And Canada proposes to import and celebrate this primitive “culture” by teaching it in government-funded schools? I wouldn’t think that the entire curriculum would require more than three or four weeks of study.
Posted by john at 2:27 PM on April 23
So this is the payoff for importing all those black nannies and housekeepers from the Caribbean Islands way back in the early 1970s. The resulting black gene pool did not bode well for future academic achievements amongst their offspring.
From the City of Toronto’s minuscule black population of .04% (or about 7000) in the late 1960s, their numbers exploded to 8.4% (or 208,000) out of a total population of 2,476,000 in the latest census polls.
The census Metropolitan area’s population is 5,072,000 with a continuing decline of the White population.
Posted by at 3:32 PM on April 23
“Ontario fully funds…a gay/lesbian high school.”
To many of us, religious and secular, homosexuality is an abomination. When the State forces us to fund the obscenity of a homosexual high school it is using our own taxes to violate us! Once this has happened, once the normal have been forced to participate in their own rape in praise of perversity, civilizational restraint has been breached and we have entered the realm of barbarism.
Posted by ricpic at 6:57 PM on April 23
“To many of us, religious and secular, homosexuality is an abomination. When the State forces us to fund the obscenity of a homosexual high school it is using our own taxes to violate us! Once this has happened, once the normal have been forced to participate in their own rape in praise of perversity, civilizational restraint has been breached and we have entered the realm of barbarism.”
My son tells me there’s a particular subset of people at his high school that flaunt themselves shamelessly. They’ll swish around and act in a feminine manner. Some of them even wear makeup. Back in the good old days when I went to school you would never see anyone act like that, which leads me to believe that homosexuality is learned. Sending a kid to a gay school only reinforces this behavior and brings it out more.
Posted by at 10:44 PM on April 24
Blacks make nothing but trouble everywhere they go. They have been nothing but trouble since they started arriving in Canada. Is there any country in the world, any neighbourhood in any country that is IMPROVED by the arrival of blacks?
Posted by at 12:49 PM on April 27