The Kojo Institute and Antiracism in Canada
Anti-whiteism and the black and indigenous exceptionalism of the north
By
I’m going to give my proposed solution upfront: Canada should cancel all Antiracism and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and training, and instead be honest about racial disparities in education/socio-economic outcomes. Then, redirect the resources that are being wasted on Antiracism and DEI, towards support (ie. academic support in the form of tutors) for all Canadians who are struggling. In schools, lifting up those who are underachieving no matter what race they are will take care of the “feeling” that racism is attached to poor grades and other undesirable outcomes.
It is a huge problem that we are taught to assume racism permeates all aspects of societies with white majorities. The result is a sort of self-fulling prophecy dynamic leading us to the incorrect conclusion that poor outcomes are not due to substandard or misguided performance, but racism (uniquely the racism perpetrated by white and white adjacent people). This is the excuse for anything deemed unfavourable by anyone save for the white bodied, implying the bigoted notion that white people (always the perpetrator, never the victim) are to blame for everything, everywhere, all of the time.
What is the problem with the DEI industry and what they call “Anti-black racism”?
Short answer: Anti-black racism is exaggerated to the point of fallaciousness. Every “study” purporting that anti-black racism is a serious problem focuses on the subjective feelings or perceptions of some black people. But can we rely on subjectivity? Especially when one considers that black people are advantaged by “studies” or surveys that conclude anti-black racism needs to be addressed. Since this often means doling out special privileges and opportunities for black people, it should come as no surprise when an abundance of perceived, albeit invisible anti-black racism supposedly transmitted through the dreaded microaggression, increasingly rears its ugly and opportunistic head.
Schools across Canada now commonly offer all kinds of programs and special opportunities for black students only. One needs only to follow Jon Kay or Chanel Pfahl on Twitter (X, whatever) to see countless receipts of this practice. Rooted in anti-whiteism, the rationale Antiracists give is twofold. 1) subjective surveys have concluded that anti-black racism is a serious problem. 2) racial disparities in education outcomes are assumed to be the result of discrimination.
Not exactly crack investigative work, these conclusions are drawn from logical leaps, assumptions, bias, and of course, anti-whiteism. It seems to me, rampant nation-wide anti-black / anti-indigenous systemic racism - the charge required in order for the Antiracism and DEI industries to thrive - is always the forgone conclusion of those who conduct Antiracism studies. They play a hand in orchestrating the perception of the problem, and the race grifters reap exorbitant profits from providing the solution.
Discussed in these pages, a weak study with an obscenely small sample size was used to determine systemic anti-black racism in the Peel District School Board. And the chain of events, as well as the use of subjective surveys focused on feelings, going as far back as the 1990s, when Bob Rae’s Ontario government first determined that Canadians were abhorrent racists and so implemented the “antiracism and ethnocultural equity policies” agenda, has been analyzed here.
Antiracism and DEI in Canada is a gigantic rip-off!
Why, when Kojo Institute founder, Kike Ojo-Thompson was paid $7500 per hour during the infamous TDSB struggle session, where she was later found by the WSIB to have engaged in vexatious bullying and to have attempted to damage the professional reputation of Richard Bilkszto (beloved TDSB principal who took his life as a result of the distress caused by Ojo-Thompson), is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that the DEI grift is an outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars?
Similarly, why wasn’t it obvious when Antiracist activist Desmond Cole, was paid $16,000 by the TDSB for 4 sessions in September of 2021. The TDSB later apologized for anti-Semitic remarks made by Cole (the racist “anti-racist”) during those sessions. These two particularly egregious examples of wasted time, money and resources on DEI/Antiracism re-education are merely the tip of the iceberg. How much more resources and energy can this movement eat up, and how much more unnecessary damage and tragedy will it cause?
Anti-black and anti-indigenous racism receive more attention than other forms of racism because average education outcomes, and other socio-economic indicators, are less favourable for black and indigenous people. We can all agree that black and indigenous people are disproportionately struggling in a variety of ways, but this cannot be meaningfully addressed by blaming racism and shifting the onus to ameliorate the problem on the white population who have little to do with these issues. Regardless of how successful the various Canadian grievance industries may be at extracting profits from “white guilt.”
Truth Work Safety…yawn
Truth. Work. Safety. Three words that get repeated over and over by Antiracist/DEI types. They think that when they speak, it is the real truth. Obviously, the truth of a black woman, for example, cannot be challenged by whiteness; ever! Richard found this out the hard way.
“Work,” productively deployed in the service of race relations is exactly what doesn’t happen in the critical race theory informed world of Antiracism/DEI. Equity officers and racialized bodies (especially the black and indigenous ones) are constantly burdened with “doing the work,” which as mentioned, is not work at all. Instead, it is pointing a resentful finger at white people - simply because their group education/socio-economic outcomes are on average marginally, but decisively better.
“Safety” - another concept determined by the subjective feelings of racialized or LGBTQ people. Straight white people (especially men and boys) don’t seem to be given the same consideration for their feelings or safety. In fact, most of what Antiracism teaches breeds distrust in the motivations of white people. Indeed DEI types are known to speak of white people in conspiratorial tones.
In 2022 I attended, and wrote about, a Parents of Black Children (PoBC) meeting. There were a number of speakers on this particular occasion - each one of them made it clear that white people are to blame for the poor outcomes of black people. Black people are not responsible for any of it, and suggesting they are, is seen as anti-black racism. One speaker, Charline Grant (co-founder and chief advocacy officer of PoBC), told parents “What we see on a daily basis is that the education system, along with the child welfare system, and along with the criminal justice system, the police, are all in collusion. And they all rally around each other, to support each other, while our children are being abused.”
When Grant told parents that “our history (black people) has not been lying, our history has not been capturing and kidnapping people from other countries and colonizing. That’s not been our history, we’ve always been people of truth,” it was clear that “truth” is just a word routinely invoked, a sound often emanating from the lips of the Antiracist, but lacking the necessary grounding in facts and reality that authentic truth requires. They do not speak the real truth. Antiracist truth is simply anything (true or false) that forwards Antiracism.
During the TDSB struggle session, before insinuating Richard Bilkszto’s “white supremacy”, Ojo-Thompson declared:
“As white people, there's a whole bunch going on that isn't your personal experience. It will never be. You will never know it to be so.
So your job in this work, as white people, is to believe.
Why do we allow non-white people to speak to us this way? In Canada, and other Western democracies, white people are the majority. Why not point this out. Why not push back on the claims of systemic racism by reasoning that non-members of majority populations simply need to accept that whatever ethnic group they are part of, will not be as well represented or as visible as the majority group. That the white majority is well established and thriving in Canada is a function of the long process of their settlement, this in no way equates to white supremacy.
Do white people enjoy equal representation in African countries? What happens if they ask for it? Or demand it like they do in Canada? How about in Japan or China? If a white person travels to Afghanistan, are they treated equally with the native Afghan’s? How about any other middle eastern country? The truth is, white majorities are exceptionally open and tolerant, not exceptionally racist as Antiracists would have us believe.
In Canada we essentially agree that all people of all races absolutely must be treated equally and be afforded equal opportunities without exception, but why should the cultures attached to immigrant groups be exalted to the same level, or higher, than the cultures that founded the nation? Can no special recognition (not rights or opportunities) be given to the cultures (Anglo and French Europeans) who created the place that so many others from around the world wish to live? Why is it that virtually all countries without white majorities can celebrate their cultural and ancestral origins without anyone batting an eye, but this cannot be a thing practiced in the West without leftists, Antiracists and DEI types losing their minds?
Since it is obvious to anyone paying attention, and backed up by the majority of legitimate modern survey data on immigration, that Western democracies like Britain, Canada, and the United States, are the most sought after countries for non-white people to immigrate to, why do we not assert loudly and adamantly that phony claims of racism fly in the face of actual immigration patterns, and appear to be the work of opportunistic race grifters cashing in on the highly lucrative Antiracism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industries?
Why do we allow non-white people to be so brazenly racist and accusatory? While being hyper sensitive to white perpetrated non-racism labelled microaggression? Why do we judge white people on a different set of moral standards? No one but a white person is capable of committing a microaggression. How racist is that?
Why do we allow Antiracists to scapegoat and cast blame on white people? Or use the dozens of anti-white terms when describing regular (not racist) white people, like “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white tears,” “white rage,” “white resistance,” “whiteness,” “white supremacy”?
Why do we accept without question the perceptions and feelings of racism experienced by non-white people - when those feelings are rarely ever the result of overt racism, and almost always in the form of the invisible “microaggression”? We favour “black feelings” over not just the feelings of white people, but hard data and common sense too? Why are white people so weak on race, and filled with such guilt about the relative success of their group? Why are whites so apologetic about what they should see as an illustrious history of exploration and innovation?
Whatever the reasons may be, we cannot escape the glaringly obvious fact that all assertions of systemic racism in Western democracies are groundless. If Antiracists really cared about racism, they would first focus on the countries that people mostly immigrate from, not to. But Antiracists are grifters looking to make bank. Actual racist countries are unlikely to invest in the DEI industry the way Western countries have. The race grifting industry is most profitable in the least racist countries and that should tell us everything we need to know. But it doesn’t. We still listen and nod along to Antiracists, especially when they are non-white.
In the aftermath of the Richard Bilkszto tragedy, Kike Ojo-Thompson, as expected, did not self-reflect or apologise for her role in Richard’s suicide.
“This incident is being weaponized to discredit and suppress the work of everyone committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion…We will not be deterred from our work in building a better society for everyone.” - Kike Ojo-Thompson
On Saturday, insightful and outspoken twitter user @Orwell_X had this two say:
“It's been three years since my good faith in DEI was 'spirit murdered' by witnessing CRT diversity training in action ... so I have recognized this great social evil for some time ... but even I am disgusted by the absolute lack of reflection race radicals are showing now.
The radicals are like, ‘we simply cannot let a suicide slow down ‘the work' of teaching that all white people are racist, that white people don't deserve equality, and that their mere existence harms POC’.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Why do we let anti-white racists organize racially segregated events within a publicly funded education system?
Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, previously the executive superintendent of education with the TDSB before becoming the director of education at the HWDSB, has recently been the source of controversy for organizing a non-whites-only 'celebration of belonging' for 'racialized staff'. Petrazzini was a part of the group that piled onto Richard after he was humiliated by Ojo-Thompson. In a tweet after the TDSB struggle session, Petrazzini thanked Ojo-Thompson, and insinuated Richard was a racist:
“When faced with resistance to addressing Anti-Black racism, we can't remain silent as it reinforces harm to Black students and families,...Thank you @KOJOInstitute for modeling the discomfort administrators may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR,' or anti-black racism”
Petrazzini refused to remove the tweet until she received a letter from Richards' lawyer many months after the fact. On August 4th, Yale professor and author, Nicholas A. Christakis, tweeted the following:
“Kike Ojo-Thompson, a diversity trainer in Toronto, and the whole mob denouncing and pursuing this man should be deeply ashamed. Slander and ostracism are grave matters, and too often indulged by people of low moral character.”
But they are not deeply ashamed. They are doubling down. Shame I presume, may come later, if at all. Blame will be shifted. Nothing will be learned.
I’ll leave you with the concluding thoughts from a recent op-ed in the National Post from Conrad Black concerning the tragic circumstances of Richard Bilkszto’s suicide:
“There is no such thing as white privilege here; there is the sacred privilege of life itself. We will not raise up anyone suffering from injustice by gratuitously defaming the majority of Canadians. The majority also has rights — equal rights.”
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read The power of indigenous data sovereignty
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The arrogance and deviousness of people who speak like this: “What we see on a daily basis is that the education system, along with the child welfare system, and along with the criminal justice system, the police, are all in collusion. And they all rally around each other, to support each other, while our children are being abused.” The reality is their children are performing less well on average because they don’t take responsibility for their failures, such as single-parent homes and too few committed fathers.
Interesting article. In all this anti-racism training, there's no mention of Asian Canadians. They do better than any other group in the public school system. Why is this? If there is ongoing systemic racism, why are South Korean and Chinese Canadians the highest earning groups in Canada, and other Asian Canadians not far behind? Asian groups were discriminated against in the past, with the head tax, labour exploitation, and an outright ban on Asian immigration between 1923 and 1947 "The Exclusion Act,", plus the Japanese Canadian internment. If I were to mention this in a Kojo training session, what would be the response?