Don't Like Black History Month?

Maybe it's because you're racist. Or maybe not.

Image from Boston University

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; commentator)

It is February, and organisations of all kinds are tripping all over themselves to get on the Black History Month (BHM)j bandwagon. They send out proclamations of solidarity with “black folx” and ask us all to challenge and dismantle anti-black racism wherever we find it (presumably everywhere).

We are told that there is an erased, rich and important history of black Canadians which desperately needs to be told, and that we must take action to remove barriers which are preventing Canadian black people from achieving success in our society.

In our schools, we are told that anti-blackness is baked into our curriculum, so it needs to be “unlearned”. In fact, we apparently need a “black curriculum” to be taught throughout the year. 

Here are some recommendations for action to combat anti-black racism from the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC):

• Create an intersectional national anti-Black racism strategy, including strong employment and pay targets and concrete measures to address systemic labour-market discrimination and disadvantages faced by Black workers;

• Ensure the reform and modernization of the Employment Equity Act includes employer requirements to divulge pay gaps affecting Black workers, and a plan to narrow and eliminate the gender and multigenerational racial pay gap;

• Uphold the human rights of Black workers and redressing the injustices faced by Black federal public service employees via the Black Class Action lawsuit;

• Without further delay, release Canada’s renewed Anti-Racism Strategy, and the National Action Plan on Combating Hate to address the rising tide of racism and hate across Canada

All of this leaves us feeling that the situation in our beloved Canada is indeed grave; that urgent action is needed to give black people a crack at a decent life here in what seems to be a racist cesspool. But is all (or any) of this really true?

Black peoples’ historical contribution to Canada

Let’s start with the idea that there is a rich and important history of black people here in Canada which has been ignored or even erased. Canada’s blacks currently make up about 4% of the total population. The table below shows the number of black people who have lived in Canada since its inception:

While most people probably could not rattle off these numbers, they know that there historically have been few blacks in Canada, thus an accurate telling of Canadian history will not mention them often. Does that say something bad about black people? No. How could they have played a big role in Canada’s past if they did not exist in any significant numbers? 

Thus, spending a whole month focusing on the accomplishments of prominent Canadian black people is really an attempt to portray black people as more significant to our history than they really are. The whole thing is contrived and condescending. We do not need to falsify history in order to insist that people living here today be treated fairly and given equal opportunities. But the idea that black people have been ignored or erased does fit well into the “blacks as victims” narrative.

Obviously, school curriculum should (and actually to a large extent already does) mention noteworthy black people in the context that they existed. There have been notable black people in athletics, the arts, and politics. And of course they figure prominently among social justice activists. But we just don’t need a special month in which to do that. And having a special month seems to imply that not mentioning blacks is fine the rest of the year. 

Do we need affirmative action to “level the playing field” for blacks?

During BHM, we hear demands for various forms of affirmative action from a variety of organisations but especially labour groups. It is a fact that black Canadians earn 75 cents to the dollar compared to whites. For groups like the CLC this fact alone is proof that black are victims of “systemic racism”. They are presumed to be equally able and qualified for all types of work and are simply facing barriers to get into the best jobs.

Here is a list of the best paying jobs in Canada (according to Immigration Canada) along with their base salary. The Canadian average income was $59,300 in 2021:

1. Medical Anesthesiologist $391,568 

2. Cardiologist $386,757 

3. Surgeon $378,634

4. Psychiatrist $333,976

5. Orthodontist $269,126

6. Controller $207,155

7. Cloud architect $147,474

8. Software Engineering Manager $143,044

9. Data scientist $134,960

10. Corporate Lawyer $109,631

As evidenced by the population data in the chart above, black people are mostly recent immigrants to Canada (first or second generation). Does it make sense that a recent immigrant group would be proportionally represented among the highest money earners in Canada? I suppose that depends where those immigrants are coming from and what kind of portable skills they had on arrival. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and African immigrant origin. These are relatively poor countries and people there are not generally well educated. So, what we should be expecting is a gradual increase in the relative number of black people in the higher paid professions over several generations as black youth work their way through the education system. It is noteworthy that university-educated blacks earn 84 cents to the dollar compared to university educated whites. When you adjust for age, you find the gap closes considerably more. Black professionals are younger than whites, and young professionals make less (by as much as 50%) as older ones (starting pay for a teacher in Ontario is about $56 000 but after 10 years that same teacher will be earning over $100 000).

Social justice activists don’t want to wait around for black people to catch up (like every other immigrant group did) and like the CLC they are demanding affirmative action (quota systems). The Americans, with a much higher percentage of black citizens going back centuries, have a lot of experience with affirmative action and the dirty little secret is that these programs don't work and in fact have negative consequences. Renowned black American researcher Thomas Sowell explains how these programs have failed in US higher education, and similar programs have failed in other contexts for similar reasons.

Black History Month has been captured by the far left ideologues

Like (I believe) most Canadians, I am ambivalent about Black History Month. On the one hand I find it interesting to hear about significant Canadians who contributed in some important way to Canada and because of BHM I do get to hear about people I otherwise would not. On the other hand, I find promoting the idea that the major obstacle to black achievement in Canada is racism, against them to be an unfair and inaccurate reflection on our country as a whole.  

As an educator, I have seen first-hand that black students, on average, and especially boys, underperform in school. This is in spite of the disproportionate efforts to help them that they are provided, and the much higher tolerance for poor behaviour that they are extended. The reason Asian kids perform better than white kids (on average) is mainly cultural, and the same can be said for why black boys are doing relatively poorly. All too often, black boys have poor attendance, arrive unprepared, make little effort to complete work, and do not present an attitude commensurate with success.

Here is a story related to me by a colleague. She taught at a high school where there were a lot of recently immigrated Jamaican kids. She learned that, in Jamaica, primary education is free and compulsory until the completion of Grade 6. However, after primary school, students must pass an exam to be admitted to high school. As a result, many Jamaican parents sent their middle-school aged boys to live with a relative in Ontario where they could attend school for free and presumably live a better life. It all makes sense, except that the school environment in Jamaica is totally different than it is in Ontario and these kids often struggled to adapt here.

You see in Jamaica harsh discipline is the rule. School is highly regimented and there is zero tolerance for any kind of poor behaviour. Kids who don’t toe the line are simply kicked out. 

Imagine their shock when these young boys arrive in a Canadian middle school where, in spite of being academically behind their classmates they are essentially left to do whatever they want? Bad behaviour is met with hugs and treats. Many simply go feral. By the time they get to high school they have fallen in with a bad crowd and things just go from bad to worse.  

Rather than try to address these cultural and behavioural issues and design programs to meet the needs of these struggling learners, the school system is making matters much worse by telling these black kids and their parents/guardians that it is not the student’s fault, it is the system which is “colonial” and “Eurocentric”. They’re told the curriculum is too white and because of that the black kids can’t relate to it. Left unexplained is how kids from other non-European cultural groups are excelling and surpassing whites in achievement. Teachers are implored to understand black student “lived experiences”, but what does a white teacher know of the lived experiences of teenage Muslim girls? Yet they, as a group, are doing very well. 

Black History Month is a month-long reminder of how far off track our school system, and our whole society, has gone in addressing our social ills. So no, you don’t have to be a racist not to like it. 

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Western Nations See a Decline in Test Scores for 15-Year-Olds

BREAKING NEWS: James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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