Steve Paikin's outrageous TVOntario Black-focused school panel discussion glorifies America's Jim Crow era

by Bill Pearson

	Steve Paikin is the host for TVOntario's The Agenda.

The guests on Steve Paikin's show called The Agenda, came together to present what they seem to believe is an innovative approach to redressing the systemized oppression and exclusion of black youth within school systems in the Greater Toronto Area. These self-presented "forward thinking" the guests of the show apparently sought to inspire solving the problems of black youth, by public policy makers re-embracing the good ol' Jim Crow days in places like Mississippi and Alabama during the 1950's and into the 1960's. Steve Paikin's guests also seem to be broadly inspired by the South African apartheid regime's "separate but equal" doctrine.

One of the guests who was presented as some sort of black activist, even tried to present a political mantra, that blacks in the United States were somehow "tricked" into support for the racial desegregation of schools. According to this particular guest, African-Americans, with just a little more money for their schools, would have just preferred to be left in segregated "blacks only" facilities, within a society of broad racial segregation.

Steve Paikan's show romaticized the oppressive and institutionally racist U.S. Jim Crow era, that included racially segegrated schools, and other facilities.

I have never seen such a show of what could be viewed to be Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima "house niggers", taking cover under the political obfuscation of a white show moderator who was acting as an apologist of the institutionally racist system. The guests to the show, engaged in a variety of moderator inspired obfuscations, about the alleged cause of the oppression of exclusion of Toronto black youth.

These black guests, included ex senior Ontario politician Zanana Akande, a professor from York, a parent activist, a couple of teachers, and an appointee of the Toronto Star.

These guests, tried to legitimate the creation of black segregated private schools, based upon such rhetoric as that "they would help foster Afrocentric curriculum" and that "non-blacks would be free to attend such schools." However, Steve Paikin, as an apparent agent of the White Establismentarian provincial government's TVOntario, made sure that the Government of Ontario's complicity in the panel discussion was avoided. The six letter 'r' word in relation to white 'racism' was also avoided in Steve Paikin's The Agenda.

Alarming numbers of black youth ,are not succeeding in Toronto's schools, with corresponding high drop-out rates, arises among other troubling statistics, for one overwhelming pivotal reason. This is because of the fact that since Canada does not have legislation that is equivalent to the U.S. Civil Rights Act, execution of blatant institutionalized racism by largely Anglo-Saxon teachers in the norm. That execution is perpetrated by the racist attitudes of the principals and by other school officials.

No black youth was chosen by the producers of the show to be on Mr. Paikin's panel for the likely reason that these black youth might expose the traumatizing racist perniciousness of Toronto's schools.

I have witnessed and experienced the perniciousness of white racism in Toronto schools. I can therefore tell you that having attended schools in the United States, Toronto school teachers and administrators, get away with blatant techniques of institutonalized racism that schools systems in today's post Civil Rights Act United States, could not get away with without legal reprisal. Indeed, black youth and their parents have been left to fend for themselves in Ontario because the Government of Ontario's preposterously and purposely weak, and token, Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Children in Uno, Virginia, in 1947 attend a segregated school. Segregation along racial lines was common and enshrined in law in the United States until the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s sought to break down barriers through protest, civil disobedience and legislative and judicial efforts.

Toronto teachers' "ethnic cleansing" strategies, seek to demoralize its black victims into a state of low self-esteem and hopelessness. When black youth and their parents complain about racist strategies within the classroom; rest assured, that the student counsellors, vice principals, principals, and school board reps, all the way to the Ministry of Education, will back-up the "appropriateness" of whatever it is that the teacher sis.

Black parents who are not highly educated, and who have developed a corresponding high self-esteem, do not have great odds at being able to defend their children from the highly sophisticated tactics of institutionalized racism that is practiced across the province of Ontario. However, Toronto schools at the various levels, seem to be by far, the most organized in their institutionally racist practices.

	Outspoken black Toronto activists who have fought against racism, and for cross-cultural integration in fulfillment of multiculturalism in Toronto, were systematically excluded from having representation on TVOntario's The Agenda.

White teachers, in the Greater Toronto Area, have been known to systematically inflict their racially prejudiced attitudes in all kinds of ways. These include "streaming" as well as discouraging black youth from pursuing academic excellence, and by spreading discouraging messages to black youth, that they should effectively "know their place" in society. Harassment in Toronto schools also includes discriminatory marking practices; the unequal application of school discipline procedures relative to white students; not providing equitable assistance in the classroom toward the achievement of academic excellence; and a lot more blatant and subtle "ethnic cleansing" tactics.

What a joke, this group panel discussion was. There was not even one black guest on Mr. Paikin's panel, who was against so-called Black-focused Schools. Arguably, Mr. Paikin and his program, show that his producer colleagues under governmental authority sought to manipulate a culturally diverse Ontario audience into believing that blacks who are "with it" support "Black-focused" schools. Correspondingly, producers of The Agenda, apparently sought to present the message that those who do not support black-focused schools are not worthy of representation to an "esteemed panel".

In one most famous American cases: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court strikes rules that racial segregation as practiced in the South and elsewhere at the time violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A group of with youths with a pro-segregation banner during the U.S. Civil Rights Era.

Black youth, and their parents, who seek to reduce drop out rates, and to inspire academic excellence in our multicultural school system, must help lobby for the redressing the racist attitudes, from the white teachers all the way up to the apologists in the Office of the Minister for Education. The Ontario Human Rights Commission must also be rejuvenated into an effective non-apologist organization that can effectively redress and investigate the complaints of black youth and their parents. Teachers and school administration that refuse to comply with the letter and spirit Ontario Human Rights Act, must be suspended and fired if necessary, rather than encouraging black youth to be racially segregated.

Indeed, the highly conservative and racist culture of the Toronto School system specifically, in Ontario, was formed, and in operation, long before a policy of multiculturalism in Canada.

	The Klu Klux Klan also agrees with the idea promoted by Steve Paikin's panel discussion guests that it would be better if blacks were segregated away from whites, and placed in their own schools.

Ontario Human Rights Commission Complaints are currently just allowed to pile-up for years and years, without any instigation and redress. This Commission is intentionally underfunded by a political Establishment that seeks to preserve its claim to 'white-privileged' Ontario, while hypocritically proclaiming 'multiculturalism'. Laws like the Safe Schools Act, have been used by a racist school board system, to ethnically cleanse out the "niggers" under a context of victimization, where black youth and their parents have been deprived of access to affirming human rights laws. The solution to redressing the problems described in Steve Paikin's show does not lie with establishing Jim Crow-like racial segregation; but rather, lay with teachers and school boards being legally required to comply with human rights laws -- starting right now.

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