Bowling for Racism

“Anti-Racism”, a waste of time and money, is foundering at a local teachers union, but any effort to pull the plug would be met with fury

Image from Canada Billiard

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

A few years ago, I described, in all its agonizing detail, the capture of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation District 19 by “anti-racism” activists. This followed on the heels of the takeover of the Peel District School Board by radical far-left activists who were followers of Ibram X Kendi , Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin Diangelo et. al.

These “anti-racists” believe that preferential treatment, in the form of hand-outs, short cuts, lower expectations etc. are the only way black people will achieve “equity” which they define as equal representation according to the population in every facet of society (of course if blacks are over-represented, such as in the NBA, that is okay).

This absurd view has been increasingly challenged by black thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, as well as a whole range of younger black podcasters and sub-stackers like Coleman Hughs. Anti-racism is rejected by most Americans and the stubborn refusal of the Democratic Party to do the same likely played a big role resulting in their recent lamb-basting in the elections stateside.

The takeover of School Boards in Ontario, including the Peel Board, was all part of the “George Floyd moment” which took place in May 2020 in Minneapolis Minnesota USA but reverberated around the world. Floyd was a nasty career criminal who had been reported for passing counterfeit currency while high on fentanyl. His untimely death during an attempt to take him into police custody as he resisted arrest was leveraged by Black Lives Matter and other so-called social justice groups to incite violence on a massive scale resulting in at least 17 deaths and an estimated US$500 million in property damage, much of which was done to black-owned business.

BLM and their ilk had convinced a substantial uncritical proportion of the US population that it was “open season” for blacks and that unarmed, innocent black people were being gunned down by racist cops by the thousands every year. In fact, less than a dozen unarmed blacks have died this way in recent years, and the number of unarmed whites shot by cops far exceeds that, but activists never let facts get in the way. Thus, BLM’s misinformation campaign created a powder keg and the death of George Floyd was the spark that set it off.

In the aftermath, activists like Advocacy Peel and Black Lives Matter Peel jumped into action here in Ontario, opportunistically capitalizing on the outrage felt by people of all races and cultures in response to the killing of Floyd and the systemic racism against blacks in the USA that it supposedly represented. These anti-racist activists knew this was the moment to raise the flag here in Ontario (although only about 5% of the population is black) and thus massively increase their power base. It worked.

Citing unequal outcomes in education between black and non-black students, the activists claimed systemic racism in the PDSB. They disrupted Board meetings and attacked and smeared senior administrators. The Ontario ostensibly “conservative” government, desperate (like all politicians) to be “on the right side of history” and sensing the political winds changing stepped in and called a review of the Board. The review, led by three people who were highly sympathetic to the activists, was a foregone conclusion. It found the Board to be rife with systemic racism and declared it dysfunctional to boot, which was highly ironic since the dysfunction mainly stemmed from the attacks from the activists. There was no real evidence of the claim of systemic racism provided at all, only anecdotes. The fact of disproportionate outcomes was presented as proof of the cause (systemic racism).

Having taken over the Board, the activists set their sights on the Teachers’ Unions, the only other group that could have stood in their way on their campaign to imbue the education system in Peel with their anti-racist ideology. This proved to be very easy: Teachers are not very active in their union. A general meeting will typically draw less than 10% of the membership, so it doesn’t take a lot of teachers to change the constitution and bylaws of the bargaining units. Using their tried-and-true techniques of bullying, harassment, threats, intimidation, and labelling anyone who opposes them as “racist” then attacking and cancelling them, the activists quickly took over.

In the secondary teachers’ union, the bargaining unit levy was quadrupled to fund time-released officers charged with promoting anti-racism. A “dismantling anti-black racism” committee (DABRAC) was formed and robustly funded. But throughout this whole process, exactly what this alleged systemic racism actually looked like never came clearly into focus. Were there bylaws or policies restricting involvement by blacks in any aspect of the union operations? No, of course there weren’t since that would be illegal. Maybe it was “soft racism”, that is to say, blacks were simply not welcomed to union committees or were discouraged to pursue positions of leadership in the organization? No, there was no evidence for that either. So what was it? Blacks were not proportionally represented among union leadership, which, according to anti-racist dogma, proves racism. You can guess what happened if you questioned this conclusion. You would be accused of “causing harm” or even “violence” and subjected to the list of consequences at the end of the previous paragraph.

So the bargaining unit executive was stacked up with these anti-racist officers meanwhile no coherent goal justifying this large allocation of resources was ever presented to the membership. This was, of course, by design. The beauty of not having an objectively identifiable goal is that no one can subject you to any kind of success criteria. Anti-racism consumes about 30% of the bargaining unit’s budget, so one could reasonably ask for evidence of positive outcomes for members. As far as I can see, no one has- out of fear of, well, you know what.

As for those juicy jobs where you get paid more than what a maximum salaried teacher makes for sitting around scrolling on social media all day, they have been a revolving door, mostly leading those who took them on to resource officer jobs at the board office or school vice principalships.

Like most union committees, the DABRAC struggles to get members to show up to its meetings, even though “everyone is welcome” (but you better show up ready to promote anti-racism!). One thing they do is promote race-based (white exclusive) social events, which have proved to be unpopular (see the poster below). The hilarious thing is many of the committee members are sanctimonious whites and they are barred from attending these events. They proudly “allow space” for BIPOC people as a way to acknowledge their white privilege lol!

The OSSTF District 19 in the Peel Region postpones its BIPOC-only bowling night due to low interest.

It is easy to see why there's little interest in this type of event. Most teachers are not racist. They don’t want to take part in activities that exclude anyone. The idea of bitching about imagined “white supremacy” and “white privilege" while bowling or doing anything else is just not appealing.

So why does anti racism remain entrenched in this organization? The levy bargaining unit members pay is about $200 per year, and is tax deductible, not enough money to get very many members to see red and demand change considering the massive blowback they could expect from suggesting these anti-racist positions and committees have been a colossal waste of money for years and should be scaled back or (better yet) eliminated. Opposing anti-racism in the union could very well lead to discipline from the board up to and including dismissal, which goes to show that the board and union are basically two sides of the same coin, and teachers know it.

So, hundreds of thousands of dollars continue to be spent year after year that could be otherwise used to promote teachers, education, students, or any other worthy cause. And this is just one union local bargaining unit. The OSSTF has over 150 bargaining units and an expansive provincial office, and it is but one of four teachers’ unions in Ontario. When you look at all that, you start to get an idea of the amount of money that is getting frittered away on an absurd ideology that has never been shown to do more good than harm anywhere it has been implemented.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read Indigenous Stories Reveal the Fragility of Precontact Life

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