Segregation Redux?

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has approved a request for an Afrocentric school in its district for 2009.

If you haven’t been following this, the move has been championed by local black communities to ‘combat’ a 40% drop out rate of black students.  The schools will have be Afrocentric in its style and, presumably, substance.

Martin Luther King’s dream just got tossed under a school bus by members of the Toronto black community.

Note that some of those supporting the school’s establishment claim it is not actually segregationist because they do not specifically disallow white kids or staff.  But let’s look at this with a real world perspective - how many parent of kids of ANY colour will want to send their kids to a school that is designed to take in those most likely to drop out, have behavioural or other troubles and are watched over by ‘activists’.

This quote popped out when I read the story:

"human rights activist Vicky McPhee said an Africentric school "is a right," and the only type of school to which she wants to send her 6-year-old child. She called for these schools in each of the city’s 22 wards. "

In other words, Ms. McPhee wants segregated schools for all of Toronto; and it is likely that activists in other Ontario and Canadian cities will demand the same.  Last night’s decision in Toronto is a very flawed one that seems to have been granted to emotional pleas rather than good sense. 

The price of this folly will be paid by the unfortunate students of this school when they realize that even if they graduate that their futures may still be dimmed by the fact they attended a segregated school - employers may well wonder how well the graduates are prepared to adapt to an integrated workplace.  It is not an irrelevant question when the parents pushing for this school make claims that the students often fail due to the ‘European-centred’ system currently available.

This is civil rights backwards, you can imagine the outcry from the black community if white administrators had proposed this idea to ‘combat’ the high drop out rate amongst black students.  Equally, the fact that this was demanded by black parents for black kids does NOT make it right. 

Pandora’s box is opened in Toronto; the next group to want ‘segregated’ schools will have an easier time of it now a precedent exists.  The children of Toronto are headed for a brave new world of racial tension that had been mostly forgotten in Canada, and is delivered to them by those that should have best cause to remember the value of equal rights.