Woke Toronto moves forward on segregated schools

Toronto, aka the Wormy Apple, aka The City Canadians Love to Hate, aspires to be not just a "world-class" but, under Mayor John Jelly, the Wokest City in the World. Facing stiff competition from London (the other one) and San Francisco, it has had to settle for Wokest City in Canuckistan. But it's trying to improve. 

Today (Agent 3 reports)The Toronto District School Board is unveiling a "Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement". In politically incorrect English (archaic language no longer spoken in Canada), that's a segregated school For Blacks Only.

Unable to justify the cost of building a full-sized standard school building for the few dozen students expected to attend, the TDSB, after a year of delays and "virtual learning" has settled for a wing [left or right? Ed.] in Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in the dreary but integrated Scarborough district, some distance from North York and Etobicoke, where many schools are already segregated, being located in predominantly black neighbourhoods.

According to CBC News, the centre, which the TDSB says is the first of its kind in Canada, "is part of its plan to dismantle anti-Black racism after years of complaints from staff, students and families. It reached a tipping point last year when the board said in its annual report that it had a 'serious racism problem' and anti-Black racism exceeded all other hate incidents by far....

"The ultimate goal is to educate staff and students on anti-Black racism, help affirm the identity of Black students and give them the tools to advocate for themselves when instances of racism do happen, so 'they know how to engage and be responsive'."

Agent 3 questions the boards claim that the new school is the first of its kind.  A short-lived "Afro-Caribbean alternative high school" operated in the mid-1980s. In 1995, a royal commission Report on Learning recommended "black-focused" schools. Some critics it, errr, "segregation", but others said such a school was needed to tackle the 40% dropout rate amongst Toronto’s black yoofs.

The idea of separate schools for blacks and others was even more divisive by the mid-2000s, but the TDSB, dominated by leftist politicos, voted in 2008 to move ahead with a small "Africentric" school. It opened for students in JK to Grade 5 in September of 2009, with 128 kids from across the so-called Greater Toronto Area enrolled. 

Like the new Centre for Excellence &c, the Africentric school had to share a building, and some spaces, with an integrated public school. The Toronto Red Star reports that the library was divided by an imaginary line, with a poster of Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews on one side, and a picture of Nelson Mandela on the other. The latter has books clearly focused on the black experience, while the former is filled with typical children's books. 

Teachers at the Africentric school, most of whom are black, incorporate black history, experiences and contributions into the curriculum. While curriculum from the alternative school was available online following the closure of schools due to the Wuhan flu, Africentric teaching was discontinued.

Agent 3 could not say whether the Africentric school will reopen in September, or whether the new Centre for Excellence &c is intended as a "new and improved" replacement. The Africentric school had challenges right from the get-go. There was no school bus service. Test scores were shaky and enrolment declined to a few dozen in the last year it was open.

The TDSB, "Canada's largest and most diverse school board", has 582 schools, serving 246,000 students, 11% of whom are Black. Statistics show black students have historically performed below average. They're more likely to be labelled as having "special education" needs, suspended and expelled, and streamed into programmes that don’t lead to university or college. Whether they'll do better, now that they don't have to compete with white and (especially) Asian kids, remains to be seen.

Guilty of plagiarism? Princeton profs publish "anti-racism" demands

Seems like just yesterday [It was just yesterday! Ed.] Walt told you about the ridiculous list of demands made by the Faculty Association of California State University (not to be confused with the University of California) to combat the "systemic racism" which exists in their alleged university, as well as American society generally. See "Reverse racism demanded by California State U faculty", WWW 8/7/20.

Many of those demands, including a "dedicated black-only student space" (read: segregated housing) on campus, have started to pop up at universities across the country, including Princeton, which just last month bowed to the anti-racist mob by voting to remove the name of former President (of both Princeton and the USA) Woodrow Wilson from its School of Public Policy and International Affairs.

The Daily Princetonian reports that over 350 faculty members at the once-prestigious Ivy League university have published an open letter charging the school for its alleged "anti-Black racismL, and demanding "anti-racist action" and "diversity in decision-making". But the target is not just Princeton, but the whole world! "Given Princeton's influence," the signatories write, these "principled steps" are designed to "move the dial further toward justice for...the world."

Let's have a look at the 48 "anti-racist" demands. Some of them seem, errr, kind of racist, but you be the judge.

The letter calls for non-white faculty (only) to receive extra sabbaticals, extra pay and extra awards to compensate for the "invisible work" they do. Such as what? The letter states that minority professors are called upon to "chiefly and constantly 'serve' and 'represent' [racial diversity] in the interest of administrative goals."  Back in the `60s some people called that "hiring a niggler to sit beside the door."

The authors complain that just 7% of tenure-track faculty are non-white. How do they know? In South Africa, in the apartheid days, they measured people's lips and checked the texture of their hair. Anyway, the writers suggest giving those oppressed few "a full year of course relief" (meaning no teaching) so they can seek out and recruit more faculty of colour.

More ominously, an "outside committee of academics, law professors, artists, and cultural advisors from communities of color" are to be brought in to make decisions about "race, racism, anti-racism, and racial equity" that will impact the entire campus, while an "internal committee of faculty and students of color" must be appointed to hold the university accountable for carrying out these outsiders' orders.

The university's departments will be rewarded for making diversity hires, but those who don't will be punished! The letter-writers want Princeton to "enforce repercussions" for those departments that "show no progress in appointing faculty of color." Any hiring process that shows "no evidence of a concerted effort to assemble a diverse candidate pool" is to be quashed, and (presumably) the HR people re-educated.

The push for de facto segregation -- let's not beat about the bush here -- includes paying minority students to mentor underclass(wo)men of their own race. Administrators are to hold "semesterly open conversations" only with "students, faculty and staff of color" – no whites allowed!

The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity is ordered to work with individual departments to devise tailored plans for "anti-racist research, teaching, hiring, and retention", to ensure that no discipline can squirm out from under its responsibility to redress centuries-old grievances.

All faculty must undergo anti-bias training, and standardized testing should probably be abolished because it's "strongly correlated with the underrepresentation of people of color on college campuses."

Princeton's website must include a line on its homepage acknowledging that the campus is built on "indigenous land". But wait, there's more....

The letter-writers want a faculty committee -- themselves??? -- tasked with "investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty." Sounds like an Orwellian type of thought police to enforce the parody of tolerance that has become the new normal in academia, the media and liberal politics. See "Noam Chomsky on the 'Crisis of Democracy'", WWW 1/7/20.

But let's give credit where credit is due. The authors of the letter suggest that Princeton "acknowledge, credit, and incentivize anti-racist student activism". To start with, there should be a "formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League" and other sometime students provoking, orchestrating and taking part in the wave of "anti-racist activism" -- complete with riots, vandalism and violence -- that is now sweeping over America's universities, and indeed, the Excited States of America itself.

Further reading: "Now It's Woodrow Wilson's Turn", by Patrick J. buchanan, Taki's Magazine, 30/6/20. "The cultural revolution has come to the Ivy League..."

NOT "Allahu akbar!" - Truth about Colgate U "active shooter"

Brian W. Casey, President of Colgate University, has purchased an industrial-size box of Handiwipes to clean the egg off his face following a lockdown of the entire campus prompted by reports of someone carrying what appeared to be a gun. Several students who were on campus during the lockdown told Global News that the information disseminated by the school -- including emails and social media alerts -- described the suspect as an "active shooter" -- male, black, 6'2", shirtless and armed.

Turns out the suspect was a student carrying... wait for it... a glue gun, which he was using for a school project. No shouts of "Allahu akbar!" were heard, nor is there any truth to the rumor that the student hollered "This is a stick-up!"

President Casey posted a statement yesterday saying a campus safety director is on leave while officials review the lockdown, and the possible role played by "implicit racial bias" during the reporting and response.

A story by Jenny Rodrigues, a "multimedia producer" with Canada's Global News, quotes Colgate student senator Tolu Emokpae as saying, "We received an alert from the school that said 'active shooter' and as you know, the definition of an active shooter is someone who has fired shots. So we were all very worried. It was very unclear from the beginning because there were no [audible] shots in the background, no victims that had been shot, just very unclear. Someone had said there were two shooters and one had killed themselves, someone had said the shooter had gone towards off-campus housing. There was a sort of feeling of mass hysteria among the student populous [sic]."

Jenny Rodrigues is not a graduate of Colgate.

Majority of US college freshmen not ready for higher education

The test results are in, with proof -- if proof is needed -- that when it comes to formal, post-secondary education, the Excited States of America does poorly compared with other developed countries. A disturbingly high percentage of US college graduates can't read, write or do basic math properly. The freshmen are even worse. Many 1000s of American yoofs graduate from high school unable to read their diplomas. GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Just over a year ago, the College Board reported that SAT scores dropped significantly for that year's class of college-bound seniors. All three sections saw declines, with the numbers were down for male and female students alike. At the same time, SAT scores showed continued patterns in which white and Asian students, on average, receive higher scores than do black and Latino students. So don't be calling Walt a white supremacist. I'm just repeating the facts.

Many academics, including Dr. Walter E. Williams*, argue that a very large percentage of all incoming freshmen have no business being admitted to college. According to the College Board's report, the average combined SAT score for white students was 1576 out of a possible 2400. Black student SAT scores, at 1277, were the lowest of the seven reported racial groups. The College Board considers a SAT score of 1550 as the benchmark that indicates a readiness for college-level work.

Only 32% of white students scored at or above "proficient" in math. Only 7% of black students achieved that level. 46% of white test takers, but just 17% of blacks, were considered proficient in reading. Yet because of the reverse racism which is euphemistically called "affirmative action", black students are actually given preference in admission to many US colleges and universities.

Another test used for admission to college is the American College Testing Program (ACT). The ACT test was taken by 2,090,342 students in the high school graduating class of 2016. Just over 13% of the test takers were black. The average composite score for black test takers on the ACT was 17.0 (on a scale of 1 to 36). That was lower than the average score for any other racial or ethnic group including American Indians, Hispanics, and Pacific Islanders. The average composite score for whites was 22.2. The racial gap in ACT test scores has remained relatively stable for decades.

Leaving aside the racial disparity, some truly shocking numbers are revealed in "A Major Crisis in College Readiness for Black Students", a report in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. The majority of students -- white as well as black -- simply are not well-enough educated to be going to college! Only 34% of whites who took the ACT were deemed college-ready in all four areas: English, mathematics, reading and science. For blacks, the figure was just 6%.

Dr Williams* argues that "the most pervasive form of racial discrimination at most colleges is affirmative action. In the name of helping people from groups that have suffered past discrimination, colleges admit black students whose academic preparation differs significantly with that of their white peers. Those differences are not subtle. It should not come as a surprise that the intended beneficiaries of that 'benign' discrimination feel themselves ridiculed, isolated and treated differently. As a result, students who might be successes in a less competitive environment are turned into failures."

Dr Williams goes on to say that the problem of black education begins long before college. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "The Nation's Report Card", shows that in 2015, only 7% percent of black 12th-graders were considered proficient in math, and only 17% in reading. "This suggests that the average black 12th-grader has the academic proficiency of a white 8th- or 9th-grader. Consider the following question: If one admits 1000 randomly selected 8th- and 9th-graders to college and admits 1000 randomly selected 12th-graders, who do you think is going to come out on top? Who would be surprised if the 8th- and 9th-graders felt inferiority, oppression, and insensitivity?

"The academic elite feel righteous seeing blacks on campus, even if they are severely mismatched. Black people must ask: Are we going to sacrifice our youngsters so that white liberals can feel good about themselves?"

* Based on "Cruelty to Black Students", by Walter E. Williams, on the Lew Rockwell blog. Dr Williams is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. And he is black.

Further reading: The chapters on the crisis in American education in War on the Middle Class, by Lou Dobbs (Viking Penguin 2007); Why Johnny Can't Read, by Dr. Rudolf Flesch (latest edition: Buccaneer Books 1998)