Racism

Disguised as a workshop on "inclusion" in the Toronto District School Board, racism emerged victorious.  Sadly, it culminated in the suicide of Richard Bilkszto, an esteemed principal with 24 years' experience.

The late Richard Bilkszto.

Bilkszto, white, was vilified by a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) trainer named Kike Ojo-Thompson:

The woman who led him to kill himself.

She presented a lecture to senior Toronto public-school administrators, instructing them on the virulent racism that (Ojo-Thompson believes) afflicts Canadian society. "Canada," she said, "Is a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism, in which the horrors unleashed by capitalism and sexism regularly lay waste to the lives of non-white and female Canadians."

OMG!

Anyone who lives in Canada knows this to be a preposterous claim. But in the wake of the George Floyd protests, which opportunistic DEI entrepreneurs in Canada treated as a gold rush, such lies have been treated as unfalsifiable. The same is true of the (equally preposterous) claim that Canada’s experience with anti-black racism directly mirrors that of the United States. And so it was expected that Ojo-Thompson’s audience would simply nod politely and keep their mouths shut until her jeremiad had concluded. 

But one audience member refused to submit: Richard Bilkszto, a long-time principal at the Toronto District School Board who’d also once taught at an inner-city school in upstate New York. Having worked on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, he told Ojo-Thompson that her generalizations about the two countries seemed misguided and that denouncing Canada in such a vicious manner would do “an incredible disservice to our learners.”

Bilkszto’s descriptions of Ojo-Thompson’s presentation (a recording of which was verified by at least one Canadian journalist) suggest that she is indeed quite ignorant of both American and Canadian history. Her claim that Canada’s monarchist tradition marks it as more racist than the United States is particularly absurd, given that the British outlawed slavery decades before both Canada’s creation and the U.S. Civil War.

Ojo-Thompson is described to have reacted with vitriol: ‘We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?’

Bilkszto replied that racism is very real and that there’s plenty of room for improvement—but that the facts still show Canada is a fairer place. Another KOJO training facilitator jumped in, telling Bilkszto that "If you want to be an apologist for the U.S. or Canada, this is really not the forum for that." Ojo-Thompson concluded the exchange by telling the class that ‘your job in this work as white people is to believe’—not to question—claims of racism.

She continues to be feted by numerous Canadian organizations and media outlets. In 2022, she served on the board of directors of Parents of Black Children, a Toronto-area lobby group that’s made a name for itself largely by urging school boards to implement the same anti-racism instructional modules that constitute Ojo-Thompson’s own stock-in-trade.

(Her partner Rohan served until recently as Workplace Equity Manager with the Peel District School Board, and the two would appear together on stage to talk about “the Impact of Systemic Racism on K-12 Workplace Well-Being.”) The market for the sort of militant anti-racist diatribes that Ojo-Thompson peddles seems inexhaustible within Canada’s corner offices.

This has got to stop. Wokeism is destroying civilized society. I'm sick of it. Bilkszto never recovered from the pain caused by the damage to his reputation and his soul. On July 13, he ended his life.

DEI -- while raking in hundreds of thousands -- does not achieve its stated goals of inclusion. Instead of making space for all voices, Bilkszto was shut down by Ojo-Thompson because of his race. Purely because of his race.

Instead of focusing on teaching, Canadian schools are focusing on berating staff. Telling a principal that his whiteness is the problem does not help a single Black kid graduate. What it does do is divide, bully and shame.

And sometimes worse.

_____________________________

Marsha Lederman had a column on this in 'The Globe and Mail'. Not as good as mine, in my view. Hers was too politically-correct for a piece on racism.