PODCAST: Honest and dishonest critiques of anti-racism education
PODCAST: Honest and dishonest critiques of anti-racism education
Desmond Cole
September 6, 2023
***TRANSCRIPT BELOW***
This episode deals with the issue of suicide, and as such it might be triggering or upsetting. If you or someone you know needs support, there are people trained to listen and to offer the support you may need. Click the highlighted links for more web resources.
Talk Suicide Canada is a service that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every single day of the year. You can call 1-833-456-4566. You can also send a text message to 45645 between the hours of 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern Time.
If you’re a young person, you can also call the Kids Help Phone 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year, at 1-800-668-6868, or you can send a text to 686868.
Other resources:
Circle of Care: KUU-US First Nations and Aboriginal Crisis Line Support Available 24 Hrs. Adults 1-800-588-8717, youth 250-723-2040
Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention — Support services directory
A transcript of the audio is below. Some language from the audio may differ slightly from the text. The audio is the definitive version of the text in case of any discrepancies.
Desmond Cole:
This episode deals with the issue of suicide, and as such it might be triggering or upsetting. If you or someone you know needs support, there are people trained to listen and to offer the support you may need.
Talk Suicide Canada is a service that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every single day of the year. You can call 1-833-456-4566. You can also send a text message to 45645 between the hours of 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern Time.
If you’re a young person, you can also call the Kids Help Phone 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year, at 1-800-668-6868, or you can send a text 686868. More resources are available in the show notes of this episode.
* * *
I’m Desmond Cole and this is a podcast for the website Yes, Everything!, which primarily devotes itself to issues of Black struggle in Canada.
In today’s episode: some honest and dishonest critiques of anti-racism education.
Last month, the public learned about the story of a retired school principal named Richard Bilkszto, who died by suicide on July 13, 2023. A chorus of mostly right-wing activists, writers, and publications in Canada have painted a very partisan and simplistic narrative about why Bilkszto ended his life. They are tying Bilkszto’s suicide to his experiences during two anti-racism workshops. More than that, they’re suggesting that anti-racism education in general is a scheme to bully, shame, and silence white people.
Before I get into that: the phenomenon of suicide is extremely complex and personal. It’s not something that we should speculate about, or project our own feelings onto. There are many, many people who deal with thoughts of suicide, and it’s something that people seek and receive support for every single day. To anyone who’s listening to this and needs support for themselves or someone else, just go back to the very beginning of this episode, or to the show notes, for several professional resources. You can get the support you need, there’s always hope, and you don’t have to go through your struggle alone.
Also, I recognize that in speaking about Bilkszto’s life, work and death in this episode, I’m affecting his family, his friends, and many people who he touched during his life. Even though I have strong disagreements with some of the things Bilkszto fought for, and even though I’m going to discuss those disagreements here, I nevertheless want to acknolwdge the significance of his life and his death to all those who cared for him.
I want to talk about Bilkszto, about the very public way his death has been publicized, and used to pursue a pre-existing right-wing political agenda. I also want to talk about a very corporate-friendly kind of anti-racism training that focuses on individuals instead of systems and structures. I’m very invested in anti-racism education, but it isn’t all the same. A lot of it merely comforts people in power instead of undermining racist systems, and we don’t need more of this kind of work. How do we avoid the kind of anti-racism work that keeps things as they are, and instead do work that truly challenges power? I hope to touch on all of this.
Richard Bilkszto, was a 60 year old retired principal with the Toronto District School Board, or TDSB. Although retired, he still took contracts, and that meant he still engaged in professional development with his employer. In April and May of 2021, Bilkszto attended two online workshops on anti-racism. The workshops were delivered by the KOJO Institute, an organization that’s been doing anti-racism work for several years in Ontario, and whose clients include governmental organizations, major banks, police services boards, media organizations, and charitable foundations.
During the first session, Bilkszto and KOJO Institute founder Kike Ojo-Thompson had a discussion about racism, and about whether it was worse in Canada or in the United States. Ojo-Thompson suggested that racism in Canada was as bad if not worse than the U.S. in many ways, while Bilkszto disagreed and argued that was a misrepresentation. Some of the audio of this exchange exists, but to my knowledge it has not been published in full without edits.
The parts that have been published reveal two people having the kind of conversation that anyone who does anti-racism work has heard a thousand times. Bilkszto, a white man, said he’d lived and taught in the United States and saw a comparatively good situation for racialized people in Canada, while Ojo-Thompson, a Black woman, said that the appearance of better outcomes in Canada was not so simple. She added that Bilkszto wasn’t listening to her lived experiences or her expertise as an educator. They had a back-and-forth towards the end of the session, which reportedly ended with Ojo-Thompson calling the exchange “a profound and an appropriate teachable moment.”
The following week, Ojo-Thompson returned for another session with the group, and decided to bring up the exchange between herself and Bilkszto. The principal was reportedly present for this online session too, but it seems he never spoke during it.
Ojo-Thompson introduced this second workshop conversation by saying, “One of the ways that white supremacy is upheld, protected, reproduced, upkept, defended is through resistance.” She continued, “Who would’ve thought my luck would show up so well last week that we got perfect evidence, a wonderful example of resistance that you all got to bear witness to, so we’re going to talk about it, because, I mean, it doesn’t get better than this.”
The “wonderful example of resistance” Ojo-Thompson was speaking about was Bilkszto, and his disagreeing with her about racism in the first session. Ojo-Thompson then invited Bilkszto’s TDSB colleagues to critique his comments from the first session for at least 45 minutes, without ever using his name or acknowledging that he was sitting right there. Instead, Ojo-Thompson, her team, and Bilkszto’s colleagues all referred to him with terms like “this gentleman” or “the speaker,” as if they want to use his name, even though they were all talking about him. Unsurprisingly, Bilkszto didn’t appreciate being spoken about in front of his colleagues in such a demeaning way. He was reportedly very upset that his TDSB employees didn’t defend him or otherwise interrupt the conversation.
In a moment, I’m gonna go deeper into the parts of the two workshop conversations that have been publicized shortly. For now, I think it’s accurate to say Bilkszto felt he was bullied during both conversations. He took a leave of absence from work, and made a claim for workplace harassment to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. That board agreed that Bilkszto had suffered mental stress after his workshop experiences, and awarded him about seven weeks in damages for lost wages. Then, in April of this year, Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the TDSB for failing to defend him during the workshops.
That lawsuit was still in question when Bilkszto ended his life on July 13th. Since that time, Bilkszto’s lawyer and a host of activists and commentators in Canadian media have suggested, in a really dishonest and simplistic way, that Bilkszto ended his life as a direct result of his anguish from the workshops. They’ve targeted Ojo-Thompson as the apparent instigator of Bilkszto’s suicide, and waged a campaign to destroy her career and reputation, as they claim she did to the principal. The irony that they are engaging in bullying while condemning bullying seems lost on them.
But these activists and commentators have gone further, and have called into question anti-racism education in general. They claim it’s all designed to make white people feel guilty and culpable, that it can have fatal consequences, and they’ve questioned whether any such education has a place in Canadian institutions.
At this point, I should say that I’m acquainted with Ojo-Thompson, and worked with her once during an event for Black kids in children’s aid several years ago. To my memory we’ve never socialized in person outside that event, but we’ve interacted on social media and Ojo-Thompson has said many complimentary things about my work. She’s also been critical of work I’ve done that she didn’t approve of. I am truly disgusted by the attacks Ojo-Thompson is facing, and I’ve been personally attacked by many of the same people who are currently coming for her. As you might guess, I have pretty strong feelings of disgust at the attacks against her. At the same time, I’m very worried about people who, in their moves to defend Ojo-Thompson from the unfair attacks, have failed to honestly and thoughtfully taken up her work, and some of the problems with it. I hope to do some of that here.
But first, we have to talk about the people who’ve taken all complexity and individuality out of Bilkszto’s death. Some of the loudest voices writing about him are also racist and dishonest right-wing activists and commentators, These voices have pushed a false narrative that it is normal and understandable for someone to die from suicide because they were bullied at work. The reality, as I’ve already mentioned, is that suicide is far more complex and personal than this. While all of these commentators have expressed sympathy for Bilkszto and his family, none of them have, to my knowledge, talked about suicide prevention, or shared resources for the people who are reading about suicide. Instead, they’ve suggested that the way to prevent suicide is to stop having anti-racism education in Canadian institutions.
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September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day. Every one of us can make a difference in the life of someone who may have thoughts about suicide. This year’s theme in Canada is “Creating Hope Through Action.” I want to share something from the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention about the kind of action we can all take to support people around us.
“If you are worried about someone, it’s best to start by asking general questions about their well-being. Bringing up the conversation can be difficult, try starting with something like: “I know you’ve been going through a lot lately. I want you to know I’m concerned about you.” If the response is worrisome, you can ask: “are you feeling safe?, and “do you think about suicide”? It is a myth that asking or talking about suicide will put the idea in someone’s head.”
So the best way we can address the phenomenon of suicide is actually to use our relationships with people, to check in and express care and concern, and to offer resources like the ones I’ve mentioned to anyone who might need them.
Unfortunately, commentators like Rupa Subramanya, Jonathan Kay, Jamie Sankonak, and Sue-Ann Levy, as well as publications that promote their work, have chosen not to tell their readers this. Instead, they’ve falsely linked Bilkszto’s suicide to an exaggerated version of left-wing ideology that they are already at war with. These people and their publications have a long-documented commitment to upholding, defending, and downplaying white supremacy in Canada. Period. That doesn’t mean everything they produce is wrong or tainted, but it does mean we should consider their body of work when we analyze what they’ve said about Bilkszto, the KOJO Institute, and anti-racism. Here are a few brief examples of their previous work.
Commentator Rupa Subramanya regularly pushes back on the idea that Canada is a racist country, but she has recently described Canada as being “On the brink of woke totalitarianism.” Subramanya seems to hold two very different ideas of her country, depending on the situation. When someone criticizes Canada, she defends the country and its institutions as relatively fair and progressive. But as soon as we’re talking about Canada’s Liberal government, or about a tiny minority of the country’s leftist activists, she argues that Canada and its institutions are controlled a woke mob.
Jonathan Kay was once the editor of Walrus magazine, but resigned in 2017 after he amplified calls for a cultural appropriation prize in Canada, under the premise that non-indigenous writers were being silenced for using indigenous characters and themes. Kay later said the call for a prize was just a joke, but also that it was insensitive to Indigenous people. He’s spent most of his time since then on a reactionary and boring white grievance tour, never owning the racist ideas he pushes, but always framing himself as an advocate for freedom and expression who is just asking questions.
Jamie Sarkonak recently wrote about federal funding specifically for students with disabilities, Black and racialized students, Indigenous people, and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Sarkonak suggested that giving these groups specific funding is itself discriminatory. In the dictionary, discriminate usually means to treat someone unfairly or prejudicially. But in Sarkonak’s argument, the unfairness is happening to the people who belong to historically dominant groups: able-bodied people, white people, and men. In her way of thinking, it’s unfair to specifically help people our systems have held back because of race, gender, ability, class, or other social factors. Fairness would mean hoping they succeed, or pretending to, but never actually doing anything to single them out for support based on historical discrimination. We’ll call this the “All Lives Matter” theory of oppression.
And what about the fourth commentator I mentioned, Sue-Ann Levy? Well, in a 2018 column for the Toronto Sun, Levy amplified a false claim that Black asylum seekers were slaughtering goats in a hotel shelter. Levy’s source was a bogus review from a travel website. In her original column Levy cited the review, saying “Believe me I can’t make this stuff up!” And yes, Levy didn’t make it up, she just amplified the person who did make it up in her newspaper. Hours after the publication of Levy’s piece, someone lit a gasoline canister on one of the floors of the hotel in an attempted arson. Levy wrote another column saying it was unfair of people to link her column to the fire.
And what an interesting point. Levy understood in 2018 that blaming an arson on one thing she’d written in a newspaper was simplistic. She understood that people’s motivations for doing things are far more complex than that. I guess she must have forgotten that idea in the years since.
This is a small sample of the work of some of the loudest voices now attacking Ojo-Thompson, KOJO institute, and anti-racism work in general. They’re been creating a bogeyman out of anti-racism work long before Richard Bilkszto. Their reporting of the interaction between Bilkszto and Ojo-Thompson is peppered with exaggerations and mischaracterizations. All of them use pieces of two anti-racism workshops to make broad generalizations about all anti-racism work. And all of them validate the misleading, simplistic idea that Bilkszto’s suicide can be linked directly to his negative interactions with an anti-racism educator.
If you’re interested in honest critiques of anti-racism work, you won’t likely get any from the writers I’ve just mentioned, or from their publications. All of them regularly use their platforms to attack people whose ideas and actions they disagree with, often with misinformation and personal attacks. They advocate to have people disciplined at work or even fired. And the thousands who read their writing often follow their lead by harassing or threatening the people in their stories.
Yet I’m confident none of them would accept responsibility if any of the people they’ve denounced in their writings died by suicide. I’m sure they’d rightly describe the situation as far more complex and personal, like the can of gasoline in the hotel after Levy’s column. They know exactly what they’re doing, and in this case they’ve done a monumental disservice to the complex issue of suicide, and to the public’s understanding of anti-racism work. These writers and activists were already committed to blaming anti-racism for many of the world’s evils. They’re so committed that they’ve used the death of someone many of them call a friend to target their political enemies. So enough about them for now.
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Many, many people have come to the defence of Ojo-Thompson and KOJO Institute. While I sympathize with these efforts, I also take issue with some of the tactics and political arguments that people have made. I mentioned before that not all anti-racism work is good anti-racism work, and that we have to be willing to make distinctions. Many people have uncritically defended the work of the KOJO Institute in those workshops, perhaps out of fear that this work has been unfairly blamed for Bilkszto’s suicide. While I don’t believe that blame is warranted, I also think we ought to talk honestly about how Bilkszto was treated in those sessions, and ask ourselves if we’d like others to experience what he did, in the name of good anti-racism training.
One thing that really interested me about the conversation between Bilkszto and Ojo-Thompson—about whether Canada is less racist than the United States—is that these kinds of discussions are so common, not just for anti-racism educators, but for anyone who engages with regular conversations with people in Canada about racism. This “not as bad” as the U.S. stuff is so common I used it to frame my book, The Skin We’re In. Let’s consider some of what the principal and the anti-racism trainer each said, in their own words.
At the end of the first TDSB anti-racism workshop being given by the KOJO institute, Bilkszto’s says that in his experience as an educator, Canada’s schools are funded more equitably than those in the U.S. Ojo-Thompson replies that while this is true, it’s not so simple, because not everyone within Canada receives the same education funding, or experiences the same outcomes. Then Bilkszto says, “We have a health-care system here where everyone has access to health care. It is not the same way in the United States. So to sit here and say, in all honesty, we’re talking about facts and figures and to walk into the classroom tomorrow and say Canada is just as bad as the United States, I think we’re doing an incredible disservice to our learners.”
Ojo-Thompson replies “What I’m finding interesting is that this is in the middle of this COVID disaster, where the inequities in this fair and equal health care system have been properly shown to all of us.”
Okay. Most adults in Canada have heard some version of this conversation, if not participated in it directly. And I’d bet that Bilkszto’s view—that Canada is doing better in terms of racial disparities—is the dominant view in Canada. The problem, though, is that this very familiar Canada-U.S. comparison about racism is pretty nonsensical if you think about it.
The economies, cultures, and militaries of these two countries are intertwined. Anti-Blackness and Anti-Indigenous racism didn’t originate in America and seep into Canada. Both countries have contributed, and are still contributing, to the global phenomena of anti-Blackness, Indigenous erasure, settler colonialism and, to quote Saidiya Hartman, slavery and its afterlives.
So even as we insist we aren’t doing what the U.S. is doing to, let’s say, Black people, we have kept up a centuries-old bond of friendship, trade, and mutual praise with the U.S. while it does those things. We directly benefit from all that U.S. racism through our unique and extremely close relationship. We can definintely point to things that manifest differently in the two different countries, but the direct comparisons hide how much our countries need each other to maintain the global conditions for racist oppression and exploitation.
What’s more, Black people who live in Canada, and experience racism, cannot erase what we experience by telling themselves Black people in the U.S. have it worse. Asking us to comfort ourselves because things could be even worse? That’s not a real thing.
Now, in the workshop, Ojo-Thompson chose to indulge Bilkszto’s unhelpful comparison, which might have been better left alone. But what she said next is really worth thinking about.
I’m going to quote her at length: “So we’re 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? Like, is that what you’re doing? Because I think that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure. So I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now.”
Ojo-Thompson then adds, “Part of this work is listening to Black people. Remember, as white people. There’s a whole bunch going on that isn’t your personal experience. … You will never know it to be so. So your job in this work as white people is to believe. And if what you want is clarification, ask for that.”
This is where I question the teaching method, also known as the pedagogy, being used here in the name of anti-racism education. I’ve heard many Black people, and people of all races, make Bilkszto’s argument that since we in Canada have it better than in the U.S. or England or wherever else, we should slow down in talking about racism. People who themselves experience racism make this argument all the time.
So we’re not going to get far by believing Black people, because we are not a monolith with one experience or analysis. Interestingly, Ojo-Thompson made this exact point earlier in the session. So I have to question her highlighting of Bilkszto’s whiteness as the problem, when we know that others in our country regularly reach the same conclusion. Even if we could somehow know that Bilkszto's whiteness was the big reason he made his arguments, it’s still better to talk about the climate our country produces which leads non-white people to the same arguments and conclusions.
I also think even a casual listener can sense that Ojo-Thompson’s “you in your whiteness” remark is leaving the realm of tackling a systemic issue, and is just getting personal. Lots of people in Canada, maybe even a plurality or majority of people, agree with what Bilkszto said in that workshop. Making this about him, and about his whiteness, is ultimately helpful.
What I hear in the “believe Black people” comment from Ojo-Thompson is a person telling someone pushing back against her, “don’t challenge me, just trust my expertise and personal experience.” Again, I don’t think this is good pedagogy for an anti-racism education and training session.
I’ve heard many variations of “just listen to/believe Black people” in my work, and I strongly disagree with them. This argument suggests Black people have an innate wisdom or analysis derived from a common experience. Well, surprise, we don’t, and while it’s really good to listen to people’s individual experiences and analyses, we know white supremacy is bad because of history.
Yes, that history has been animated in part by the genius and resistance of Black people. But we’ve had to fight with and disagree with and debate one another the whole way along, so there’s no coherent “us” to simply listen to and follow. There are, however, Black people with varying forms of conservative politics, liberal politics, fascist and revolutionary politics, and the collapsing of those competing worldviews into “just listen to Black people” can never be enough.
Now I think I know why I haven’t heard many people making the critiques of the KOJO training I’m making here. I’m guessing they don’t want to encourage people whose mission is to harm Ojo-Thompson and de-legitimize anti-racism education. But I know we can and indeed must be nuanced. We can condemn the right-wing assault against Ojo-Thompson, but also express our ideals for the kind of anti-racism work we want to see.
I would argue that we have to do this, or else we play into the game that this one session is representative of ALL anti-racism training, when it isn’t, and that we can draw broad conclusions about anti-racism from this one training, which we shouldn’t.
Whatever my criticisms of the KOJO approach in that first session, I think it’s a totally normal exchange in anti-racism conversations. While I do think an anti-racism instructor saying “you in your whiteness” or “your job is to believe Black people” is unhelpful, I don’t consider it to be abusive. But we have to talk about the second session, which I think raises far more concerns and questions.
Let’s recall that in the second session a week later, Ojo, Thompson encourages participants to review Bilkszto’s remarks from the first session. We understand that Bilkszto is present during this second session but never speaks. Instead, he listens for at least 45 minutes as others speak about him, never using his name, speaking to him directly, or acknoledging that he is there.
I cannot think of a professional context, or any social context where talking about someone in the third person is appropriate. If Bilkszto’s remarks led to “a profound and appropriate teachable moment,” as Ojo-Thompson herself said, then he should have been invited to be part of the follow-up conversation. He should not have been referred to as “this gentleman” or “the speaker” by his colleagues.
That approach strikes me as needlessly passive-aggressive, unprofessional, and cruel. I can understand why any employee who listened to their colleagues talk about them as Bilkszto did would feel they were being bullied, and would want someone to step in to stop it.
Again, I realize that an angry and loud collection of people with awful politics are coming for Ojo-Thompson, and now may seem like the worst time to concede to any of their arguments. But we shouldn't let our political adversaries set the limits of our thinking or discussions.
As my friend Shama Rangwala tweeted recently, “Liberal anti-racism workshops are a problem but we can’t talk about that bc of the fascists.” People are understandably scared that anything other than unquestioned support of Ojo-Thompson and her institute amount to cover for harmful movements, publications, and people. But we can be nuanced. We can talk about better ways of doing this work, without accepting the loaded conclusions of conservative activists.
Let’s remember Ojo-Thompson’s remark at the beginning of session #2 that “One of the ways that white supremacy is upheld, protected, reproduced, upkept, defended is through resistance.” She framed Bilkszto’s resistance to her point of view in this way. I strongly disagree that Bilkszto’s comments in that first session are a shining example of how white supremacy is upheld through resistance.
White supremacy is not primarily upheld by the resistance of individuals, it’s upheld by institutions, especially government institutions, laws, social customs, and norms. By the time someone who was born or raised in Canada is a pre-teen, it’s likely they’ve learned and adopted the exact same ideas that Bilkszto’s expressing here. So we’re making him too important by singling out his resistance, as if it’s some major obstacle to change. We need work that makes demands of institutions and systems, not of individuals who are resisting what we say.
Perhaps another way of thinking about this is to ask ourselves: how would we address a similar situation in the future? Would we, for example, want a teacher to tell a white student who made the “Canada is less racist” argument that their personal whiteness is the problem, or that they should believe what Black people tell them? Would we facilitate a conversation with that student’s classmates, in front of them, to critique their argument, without ever using their name or addressing them directly?
I would hope we have better responses than that. Let’s also remember that the same school board that sponsored this workshop has, for decades now, been suspending and expelling Black students at alarming rates, calling children’s aid on Black families more than most other groups, putting Black children in English as a second language programs even when they already speak English, calling the police on Black students, and on and on and on. The TDSB does land acknowledgements to Indigenous peoples, who have relatively little power to influence the land the schools occupy, or the curriculum and the languages and forms of knowledge that are taught.
Why would one school principal in a workshop be our prime example of resistance? The very same workshops included TDSB executives who are responsible for overseeing systemic harms on the basis of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other power dynamics. They have so much more power than Bilkszto, yet it sounds like they got off relatively easy.
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There is a reason institutions are willing to indulge and pay for this kind of anti-racism work, which is commonly referred to as Equity Diversity and Inclusion work, or EDI. EDI has become a sector, one oriented towards the needs of big institutions and their leaders, instead of oppressed peoples. In this phase of things, cops, corporations and governments are pretending to be invested in EDI, and they are paying for it. They are most likely to pay for work that doesn’t threaten their harmful policies and practices.
We are not fighting to maintain corporate buy-in for EDI, we’re fighting to liberate ourselves from capitalism, white supremacy, and oppression. One day our institutions will decide this phase of the game is over, and they will stop wanting to pay for polite workshops in boardrooms. What will we do then? What happens when the George Floyd dividend has been paid out?
The right-wing exaggerates the influence of EDI so they can discredit all attempts to address racism. But Corporations and governments haven’t gone woke, as some say, they’ve cynically adapted to the moment, and the relatively little money they throw at EDI doesn’t structurally change how they operate. Georgetown University professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò wrote a book about this phenomenon called Elite Capture. Here’s a quote from that book:
“Especially in recent history, more often than not, one form of oppression has been replaced with another, different form that is similar or even more unjust than the one that preceded it. But maybe we want more than to play Whack-A-Mole with injustice. If we want to do more than alter the color of our children's chains, we will have to successfully oppose more than isolated instances of oppression.” Remember that last part about isolated instances about oppression, I’m coming back to it shortly.
Anti-racism education, when done properly, is a necessary tool in the fight to liberate ourselves. But it isn’t a substitute for the basic things oppressed people need to live. I’m talking about living expenses, food, rent, clothing, health care, etc, for people who will never be hired to do an EDI training, and who shouldn’t have to professionalize their knowledge and experiences in order to survive. That’s been a major critique of EDI since it has emerged and grown in popularity. It applies today, and it will apply when the corporate class gets bored of EDI and turns its attention elsewhere.
I also think it’s worth noting that the people targeting Ojo-Thompson and her institute are doing so for very specific reasons, especially because they see her as a leading figure in her industry who has been financially successful at providing EDI education. I think they believe Ojo-Thompson is an easy target because she is a prominent Black woman they can paint as malicious and undeserving. Given this, I completely understand why so many people have publicly come to Ojo-Thompson’s defence. I would add, though, that this phenomenon cuts both ways. The very fact that Ojo-Thompson is a visible well-known, and established figure within institutional circles means people are likely to hear about what she’s going to, and to feel the need to respond and support her.
People say things like, if we let it happen to this one person, they’ll come for all of us. The problem, of course, is we don’t tend to say things like this about people we don’t know or have never heard of. We tend to make these grandiose statements about people we already know, and whom we perceive as having a social status they could lose. Ojo-Thompson is fortunate to have a large community behind her. Hundreds of people joined a zoom in support of her after Bilkszto’s death, when the attacks against her intensified. There have been rallies, petitions, and press conferences to support her.
By contrast, Black kids at the TDSB, who all of this anti-racism work is meant to serve, generally do not have hundreds of people coming to their support when they are harassed or threatened. They do not have the community Ojo-Thompson has. So if we’re going to direct our energies in response to racism, we should centre the needs and demands of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized students who are facing the most barriers, not individuals whose names we already know, and who already have institutional support and communities behind them. I believe this is partly what Táíwò means when he talks about fighting more than isolated instances of oppression.
* * *
Finally, let me address the idea that, in his own way, Richard Bilkszto was a real fighter against racism and discrimination, as I’ve seen so many of his admirers argue. This view is put forth, among other places, in a National Post editorial entitled “Richard Bilkszto cherished merit and equality — Canada should, too.” The editorial praises Bilkszto’s founding of the Toronto chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, or FAIR for short.
Based on FAIR’s own literature and advocacy, the group’s members seem to believe that racism against white students is a grave and growing threat in education. FAIR has complained that the act of giving resources to or even acknowledging historically oppressed peoples based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation is itself a form of discrimination that will only divide students and educators.
FAIR has its roots in conservative acitivist movements in the United States, specifically as a reactionary movement against anti-racism education in U.S. schools. In that country, FAIR activists have mischaracterized a wide variety of anti-racism education as “critical race theory” and sought to have it removed from schools. The group has also joined in the moral panic against trans youth, and sought to limit their rights in the classroom, and to limit broader LGBTQ2SIA+ education.
In Ontario, FAIR chapters have spent their energies fighting against Bill 67, a new piece of anti-racism legislation. A presentation on the groups website misrepresents the contents of the bill, mainly through examples from the U.S., and claims the legislation “endorses racism against white people.” Ontario chapters have also complained about events celebrating Black student achievent and Black alumni. The group’s survey questions for school trustee candidates asks whether “White supremacy is a major systemic issue in Ontario schools today.” This is the kind of advocacy Bilkszto was associated with in his final years, and for which he is now celebrated primarily in conservative Canadian media and activism.
A FAIR Ontario statement on the recent stabbing of a gender studies professor at the University of Waterloo reads in part, “We support respectful disagreement and believe that bad ideas are best confronted with better ideas—never with dehumanization or violence.”
Why would the group mention “Bad ideas” in response to someone stabbing a gender studies professor? What bad ideas are they referring to? The suggestion seems to be that the assailant at University of Waterloo was right to disagree with the so-called “bad ideas” associated with gender studies, but wrong to use violence. The problem for groups like FAIR is that they can’t really distance themselves from the logical conclusions of their obsessive advocacy against oppressed groups. They try hard to brand themselves as liberal and inclusive, but they constantly align themselves with conservative movements, including people who want to eradicate racial, sexual and gender minorities.
This is the kind activism Bilkszto was associated with until his death in July of 2023. Activism that obsesses over white people as an oppressed group, Activism that creates a moral panic about trans children. Activism that observes what kinds of culture war issues conservatives are stirring up in the United States, and replicates those battles in Canada.
This is why Rupa Subramanya’s claim that Canada is not a racist country, but is also on the verge of so-called Woke Totalitarianism, is so helpful. The downplaying of racism by these activists is necessary to advance their real claim, which is that white people are under attack, anti-white racism is the real racism, and that identity politics has taken us so far in the wrong direction that the white, Christian, patriarchal ideals that made Canada great are being erased. They want us to ignore the fact that race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and income continue to serve as fault lines for who succeeds or fails in Canada, particularly regarding the Indigenous peoples who were here millennia before anyone else.
Jonathan Kay, the white grievance columnist I mentioned earlier, also happens to be a member of FAIR’s Board of Advisors. Kay somehow failed to mention his own affiliation with FAIR when writing about Bilkszto in July. But he did take time to address left-wing activism as the real threat to social harmony. He wrote, “while social-justice puritans comprise a small minority at most schools, they are able to exert disproportionate power in their bid to censure, humiliate, or even oust colleagues, such as Bilkszto, who speak up for the silent majority.”
I have a question, though. When has the majority in this country ever been silent about anything? It’s the smaller groups that have to be silent about how we feel, for fear of being crushed by the majority. Kay doesn’t say “white” majority, because he doesn’t need to. About 70% of Canada’s population is white, and rich people, corporate executives, politicians, media figures, and celebrities in this country are still overwhelmingly white, able-bodied, cisgender, and male.
If this majority was silent, I would never have grown up hearing them complaining about tax breaks for Indigenous people, job offerings for Black workers, and school lessons about trans identity. They should try being silent for a minute. But given the safety of being in the power majority, they never have to.
I don’t know what Richard Bilkszto’s was doing before he engaged in this type of work, but the final chapter of his advocacy was decidedly in the service of elitist, white, patriarchal power. The organization he helped to expand will likely continue attacking trans youth and Black educators, while insisting that white men are the ones under siege. That is part of the legacy he’s left us.
And I don't know if Bilkszto would approve of the way conservative activists are portraying him now, but he seems to have trusted them enough in life to work towards a common political agenda. And yes, it’s very possible he would have wished to be portrayed exactly as he has been by the right-wing media: as a martyr, and a victim of the social justice mob. But the truth is almost certainly a lot more complex than that.
If you made it this far, all I can say is thank you very much for listening. And once again, a lot of what I’ve discussed here might be triggering or upsetting to hear. If you or someone you know needs support, there are people trained to listen and to offer the support you may need. Every single day in this country, people seek and receive support when feeling like they can’t go on. If you are listening to this an need that support, I encourage you to seek it out, and I’m going to tell you how once again.
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If you wanna get in touch with me about this episode, you can e-mail me at YesEverythingCA@gmail.com. Until next time.