All-Black School -[Toronto, Canada]- Options

[Irysa]

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/299106

To summarize in brief, the Toronto District School Board (Canada) has just approved a motion to open an all black school somewhere in downtown Toronto. The school will have only black management, teachers and only accept black students. The thrust of the project is twofold; increase attendance rates and a general interest for staying in school, and provide a more afro-centric curriculum.

This is racist. Why, after so many years of fighting against segregation and racism is something like this allowed to happen? Where are the benefits? I honestly can't think of any. But there are enough downsides to this. Aside from the general massive racism intoned in the project, there are also a number of other problems. For example, what happens when these students graduate and enter the workforce or higher education? If they're only socialized with other people of the same race, how will they react to fellow students or authority figures of different races? There is also debate as to whether or not any students actually asked for such a school to be created, as well as the question of public funding.

I have nothing against the offering of an afro-centric course as part of the curriculum... but why like this? Many people send their children to Jewish/Greek/Chinese/you-name-it (private) schools on Saturdays or Sundays, so that their kids can learn about their own culture and have an appreciation for it. That's wonderful. But why does an all black school receive public approval and funding?

Consider this. If someone now petitions for an all white school (which someone will undoubtedly do) they'll instantly be labelled as a racist. But what's the difference? Why is an all black school tolerable, but an all white school abhorred? Is it some pathetic 200 year old slavery justification that has no bearing on the real world anymore?

I'm interested in getting other viewpoints on this because quite frankly I cannot reconcile myself to the alternative viewpoint. I cannot see this school as being anything but a bad idea. I don't see how it can be anything but racist (at least on some level) and, most of all, I can't fathom how it ever received approval.

[Raij|Away]

Where does that say that the school is "all black"?

Black people are the same as white ones - except with a palette change (or vice-versa).

Depends on what you mean by "the same". They don't have equal footing in the job market, for example (one study in the United States showed that "black" people (i.e. fake people with names that are stereotypically black) without criminal records are AS LIKELY as white people with felonies to get a call back on a job). They don't have equal education opportunities, on average. because they are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods and thus go to schools with terrible learning environments. They get scholarships that people of other races don't (LSAMP gives money to students who are in the fields of math and the natural sciences, for example, but they have to be of an underrepresented minority i.e. not Asian). They're probably not treated the same way by teachers, as well. Being "equal" biologically doesn't make you equal in the world, which is an important consideration when you decide what race you want to be reincarnated into next.

What is wrong with black people?

This is entirely the wrong question to ask. Mostly, it's a circumstance of birth. No one asks to be born into a race which was oppressed for so long that they had to adopt another culture to survive. No one asked to be born into a minority which important people in the majority (i.e. the people with money) would discriminate against.

If you want an analogy, what is wrong with women? There are fewer female academics with prizes in the natural sciences and mathematics than there are males, and the Putnam exam even has a special prize for high female scorers (which isn't even awarded anually), because women have never made up more than two (I believe) of the top 5. The richest people in the world are mostly men, and even the vast majority of the high rankers in the business world are men. There's not a woman who has even been a VICE president of the United States.

Or put another way, what is wrong with atheists? When was the last time you heard of an atheist governor? About 50% of Americans won't even vote for an atheist president, even if you assume that the person has all the qualifications. In fact, people are more likely to vote for a gay President than an atheist president.

It's not a problem inherent in black people. You can't blame them for the rap culture, the drug culture, just because they happen to black people more often. If you walk into a Chinese restaurant (and I mean a real Chinese restaurant), you see Chinese people behind the counter, and maybe some Hispanics as kitchen workers (i.e. behind the scenes). Similarly, if you look at the companies without equal opportunity (affirmative action) policies, you'll see that the proportion of blacks employed would not be consistent with the proportion of qualified blacks in the set of qualified professionals.

Barack Obama is an anecdote.

Anecdotes prove nothing.

However, there was a study done on black students who went to expensive private schools, and they did about as well as their peers in private schools schools. So you're half right, by accident.

Being all by themselves in their own school is the last thing black people need.

That is, without a doubt, the most retarded thing I've heard all week, and I was watching the stupidest game show moments on Youtube last night ("Isn't Europe a country?").

It's like you're saying that whiteness, which in your view is equivalent with success, can "rub off" onto a black person. You sound like a hundred-year-old anthropologist. Do you also subscribe to the view that giraffes have long necks because they stretched a lot and then pass their self-mutated genes to their children?

To get around that (in the USA), white and black people have organized into separate communities.

Usually white people choose not to move into black neighborhoods, while poor black people don't really have much of a choice, do they? Try to understand that economic differences matter more than an individual's race, up to the point where educators don't care and employers discriminate.