Afro-Centric Schools: TDSB's Jim Crow

It's ironic on the month that people in the US are celebrating his life, Dr Martin Luther King Jr must be turning in his grave. On Tuesday night, the Toronto District School Board, in an 11-9 vote approved of afro-centric schools. The pilot project will begin with three schools in September 2009. It's ironic that this decision was made by a socialist board that vocally advocated egalitarianism in every other issue.

This whole thing just boggles the mind. So we're going to take black kids out of the regular schools, place them in a school with only black kids, then put them in the real world back with everybody else and hope they do okay? Mind you, the United Stated ran a similar program in the south-east. Unfortunately, the program was ended in the 1960s due to those racist civil rights activists who demanded that black people shouldn't receive special treatment. The difference here is that all kids can go to these schools, in theory. In reality, we know that parents of children of other races will not likely enroll their kids in an afro-centric school.

The message I'm getting from the TDSB is that black kids are indeed inferior to kids of other races. This is why they need special treatment focusing on their special needs. It's almost as it the TDSB is dealing with bunch or retards. This plan reeks of Jim Crow even though it was developed with the best of intentions. As the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not only is this "un-Canadian" in our supposedly multi-cultural society, the big question now is where does it stop? Will we now have to have Asian based schools, or Indian based schools? John Tory was chastised by the Liberals in the last provincial election for wanting to bring public funding to religious schools. Now the TDSB brings public funding to race based schools and the Liberals seem to be okay with it. This once again exposes McGuinty as the weak leader he is. If he truly practiced what he preached in the last election, the province would have shut this plan down as soon as the vote was tallied. McGuinty has said he will not allow these schools to open in any other boards but that does not go nearly far enough.

Once again, the afro-centric schools are a left wing band-aid solution to a major problem. As I have said, the problem I believe with black youth is internal to their own culture. Just ask people like Bill Cosby who has been saying that for years but usually gets ignored or called an "elitist". They've bought into this lie, developed by their own people no less, that they are unable to compete with whites due to systematic racism. These schools only further reinforce such a lie. To not live in the ghetto, poor and uneducated is not the "black way". Afro-centric schools don't help because the real world is not Afro-centric. It doesn't matter if the black person ends up working for a white person, or an Asian, or an Indian. Your culture means squat when you get out into the actual working world. I really don't see how these schools are going to serve these kids, or ensure their success after graduation. They may reduce dropouts, but they're setting them up for unrealistic expectations in the future. Only the black community can solve it's internal problems and these schools are not part of that solution.