Rallying Support for Anti-Woke Trustee Candidates

The Race for Trustee positions in Hamilton is mired in identity politics

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

This article is written anonymously by a teacher at the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board.

If Hamiltonians are deeply concerned about the “many anti-woke” candidates in the upcoming municipal election, a drive through Ward 15 [Waterdown] or Ward 8 and 14 [West Mountain] belies this sentiment.  People are so terrified of these candidates that large numbers of residents are putting Catherine Kronas and Becky Buck lawn signs up on their front laws. 

Anyone who has met Catherine Kronas can attest to her affability, approachability, sense of humour and understanding of current trends.  The notion that Catherine, Becky Buck or any other candidate in this election is a foaming Nazi full of hate is a leftist trope with no foundation in evidence or ‘lived experience’.

The anti-woke movement is in no way affiliated with Campaign Life Coalition or Parents as First Educators.  The anti-woke movement is a grassroots awakening of civic minded individuals who are fed up with paternalistic leftist policies that seek to divide Canadians into immutable colour spheres based on a fictitious ‘oppressed’ hierarchy of ‘lived experiences’.  Woke mantras and belief systems don’t meet the threshold of a grade 5 science class.  They are a simplistic, facile and juvenile way of compelling people to involuntarily accept unproven historical revisionism.

The anti-woke do not deny the existence of racism.  We know it exists and everyone has to work to eradicate this odious human imperfection.  We deny the existence of systemic racism because Canada is, and has been, one of the most tolerant and accepting multicultural countries on the planet.  For example, the TDSB, HWDSB, HDSB, PDSB and WRDSB all have black Directors of Education. 

For anyone who isn’t submerged in the acrimonious and petty squabbles that originate in our “education centres”, the Director of Education is the highest paid and most important position in the entire board.  How could any country that is steeped in systemic racism overcome this barrier not once but five times?

Have citizens of these municipalities started armed rebellions and staged Canadian “January 6th” events to reassert white power? No. We have accepted that the most qualified people for the job have received an appropriate promotion.  This does not mean that we have to blindly adhere to their leadership for fear of being labeled a racist.     

There is a pattern of behaviour with the woke which reveals their true intentions.  Words like “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” are anything but their denotative derivative.  We are not celebrating diversity when white students cannot play basketball after school with their racialized peers.  We are not ‘inclusive’ when a whole subset of people, originally from Europe, are held accountable for imaginary crimes that occurred hundreds and hundreds of years ago and, as a consequence, the education system starts to refer to these European descendants as “privileged” and “white supremacists”.  Is this meant to be an ‘inclusive’ compliment?  Is it equitable to consistently deny cultural and socio-economic conditions that heavily influence student outcomes?

As research has shown, young people are far more likely to not graduate high school because of family upbringing.  Race is irrelevant.  You can go to any economically depressed area in any board and see white, black, Asian and indigenous students achieving poorer outcomes than their multicultural suburban counterparts.

You can separate all of the racialized students from their white peers and declare ‘systemic racism’ but what about the white students being left behind?  Doesn’t their “failure” within the system mean that all students, mainly based on income, can do poorly?  Wouldn’t any system that practices apartheid have a 100% white graduation rate?  I should never see a white labourer if any of these claims are true. 

CRT’s practitioners are not honest.  History is an evolving discipline subject to a myriad of different interpretations, nuances and revisions.  Herodotus never intended that one person, cause or ideology would get the final say on any historical event.  CRT’s supporters seem to dabble in an infantile world view where only their jaundiced view of history is acceptable.  Even more troubling, they have captured the jury, judge and executioner.  Speaking out against their tyrannized view of history will land someone in a Human Resources nightmare with union representatives tweeting support for the board (Carolyn Burjoski has mentioned that her union rep tweeted support of the board when she was censured and disciplined by the Comintern committee).

Anyone who has read the Huggins report knows that Becky Buck is not racist.  The left, as is their wont, interprets any dissent as ‘racism’.  We are quickly moving into an era where activists will be calling everyone a racist based on ‘unconcious’ or ‘subconcious’ racism.  Thus, anyone operating within the paranoid parameters of modern wokehood would be guilty of racism for feeling sorrow at the loss of the Queen; for standing for O Canada; for applying for a headship within a board because they must learn to, first, “check their privilege” (if they can even manage to navigate the “black” and “white” application process).

Telling the truth about anything can have political and legal repercussions.  Unfortunately, nothing within the confines of CRT is truth.  Racism in both Canada and the US is at all-time lows.  Nearly every Canadian believes that the best person should get a job or be admitted to a post-secondary education.  CRT practitioners would have you believe that a racialized student who makes bad choices is living in some kind of apartheid regime where racialized people can’t vote, own property or attend post-secondary institutions. 

What evidence do we have that students want to “know the wrongs of history…and to repair the harms done”?  Don’t mistake the proselytizing fervor of the woke crowd with students who want to read, write, count and be afforded meaningful economic opportunities. The Progressive left views students as nothing more than a captive audience that must be indoctrinated into the tenets of CRT, extreme gender ideology and any other progressive mantra that wafts up from the United States.

On the candidacy of Sabreina Dahab and Ahona Mehdi, Canadians welcome all participants and candidates in a trustee election.  I will make two observations about both candidates: first, many people, particularly those in education or a public sector job, have no idea what they can and cannot say about these two individuals.  Educators worry about HR repercussions and staged witch-hunts if they should speak out against their positions.  Second, should they win, this board is going to be forever mired in the deconstruction of board governance and procedures.  They will obfuscate, shut down debate, claim “oppression” and launch expensive investigations every time someone looks askance at them.

Are they really committed to transparency?  Will Dahab and Mehdi reveal how much the HWDSB has spent on pointless CRT campaigns?  Will they tell us how much money the board gave ETFO for a CRRP booklet?  In the name of accountability, will they push the board to switch directions on Learn Disrupt Rebuild [CRT] because two-thirds of parents and the community don’t want it?  Or will we forever be told that they want accountability but only in regard to what educators do in their spare time?  How will they deal with white parents who think their son or daughter should have a White Graduation Coach (right…guidance counsellors)?  

The woke DIE campaign epitomizes the metaphor of the Trojan Horse.  Who wouldn’t want a Horse that is the size of an Ancient monument?  On the outside, it was an ancient marvel: beautiful wood that was rare and expensive fused together to make an animal that was a symbol of independence, freedom, hard work and man’s ingenuity. 

DIE operates the same way: who could be opposed to Diversity, Inclusion and Equity?  If Shakespeare was alive today, he’d surely incorporate these words into every play because the words themselves cause no offense.  But like the Trojan Horse, it’s the hidden meaning of these words that should cause alarm.  It’s the basis for which the Progressive left is capturing and compelling people to adhere to their autocratic world view: no dissent, discipline for thinking against the ever-changing rules of the DIE credo and an education system that has silenced moderates and deified Progressive activists.   

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Thanks for reading, for more anonymous accounts from Canadian teachers read - The Peel District School Board’s New Anti-Racism Policy (substack.com)