Black teachers and advocates in Ontario are under attack

BY PAUL JUNOR

As the provincial government works on developing an Ontario-wide equity policies, there has been a disturbing increase in the attacks on BIPOC teachers and advocates. Parents of Black Children (PoBC), an advocacy group, have issued a call on Ontarians to show support for those who are at the front-line of education.

On Wednesday, May 12^th, PoBC released an email titled, “Black Teachers and Advocates in Ontario are under attacks which call for support of these individuals.” The email states, “We are calling on the provincial government to investigate the handling of recent racial violence and threats made against black educators and education advocates in the province of Ontario.”

The email discussed the hate crime incident, which involved York Region District School Board (YRDSB) teacher, Claudette Rutherford. This incident was reported in the Toronto Star (written by Angelyn Francis) on Thursday, April 8^th, 2021.The article mentioned that Claudette Rutherford was informed by the York Regional Police, of a letter that contained hateful comments. She told the Star, “I felt worried, concerned for myself and for my family.”

The fact that she was not told about the letter until a week later was hurtful. She states, “I felt like I should have been notified well before then. It should have been a priority to let me know, especially if you’ve spoken to the police.” PoBC has expressed serious concerns about how YRDSB handled this case. Clearly, there was a massive failure on its part to deal with and assist this case with due diligence.

It has also been reported that hate mail was sent to Toronto District School Board teacher D.Tyler Robinson, who co-authored and served as project lead of a credit course. This Grade 12 university prep course is titled Deconstructing Anti-black Racism in the Canadian and North American Context. In addition to the hate mail that was sent to him, one of his Zoom presentations was bombed with racist overtones.

Another example is with Charline Grant, co-founder of PoBC. She also has been targeted. PoBC reported that during March 2021 there were three specific incidents in which YRDSB’s black were the victims of hate crimes. These incidents are part of a pattern, PoBC observes, ”These incidents are not being treated with the urgency they deserve. We are tired of the inaction and disregard for the safety of black bodies on the part of school boards and cannot count on them to protect their staff and students from racial harm.”

PoBC in conjunction with several black organizations and other community groups have made the following three demands on the province: 

• Engage in a system-wide inquiry into these target racist incidents and provide increased support for educators who have faced such heinous threats.
• Develop a provincially mandated protocol on responses to hate crimes and hate incidents faced by educators to address the inaction and haphazard response by district school boards
• Collect race-specific data to determine the number of race-based hate crimes, hate incidents, and racially motivated incidents of harm reported by black educators across K-12 schools in Ontario

In addition to the three demands, there are specificc demands made on the YRDSB:

• Develop and publicly share policies to address the gaps and clear lack of process within the YRDSB to address hate crimes ahd mail perpetrated against teachers.
• Publicly acknowledge and address the hate mail that has been sent to advocates and black teachers within the board community and apologize to educators who have been harmed by the YRDSB’s neglectful practices.