Race to Equity: Disrupting Educational Inequality

313 Pages·2005·19.944 MB·English

by  Tim McCaskell

Race to Equity
Race to Equity is a wonderful and moving addition to the literature on anti-
oppression education. McCaskell's account of the work of activist educators,
trustees, parents, communities and students is inspirational; his analysis of
the events, activities, and movements that make a difference is insightful;
and his belief that school change involves both internal and external forces
points the way towards a more equitable future for all students.
,
- Ta-r a T aGroa lGdsotledisrt,e Dir,e Dpeaprtamrtemnetn ot fo fC Cuurrrircicuulluumm,,
Teaching and Learning, OISE/UT
This is "history of the everyday" at its best, with a rich cast of characters.
Tim McCaskell writes from the double perspective of an insider-outsider;
someone who was in the system, but not of it, and who was always alert to
the need for community leadership and activism as a precondition for
change. Sober, lucid and yet passionate, this book is a must read for people
working for institutional change in Canada and beyond.
— Alok Mukherjee, Vice Chair, Toronto Police Services Board
McCaskell's telling of this story, in which he was a central actor, does it jus-
tice. It is resolutely personal and political, without a shred of jargon or
rhetoric, and is always aware of the larger economic and social forces shap-
ing action on the ground. It is a history progressive educators everywhere
can be grateful for.
— George Martell, School of Social Sciences,
Atkinson College, York University
Race to Equity provides a valuable institutional ethnography of major educa-
tional bodies. In the process it depicts successes and frustrations of the
many actors in projects of social transformation. It is a tribute to those who
struggle to change our everyday life but are often forgotten in the passing of
time.
— Himani Bannerji, Sociology, York University
McCaskell's careful and succinct capturing of key developments and mo-
ments from the vantage point of someone "positioned to know" brilliantly il-
luminates the complex nature of school board politics and community ac-
tivism. A must read text for every anti-oppression worker.
— George J. Sefa Dei, Department of Sociology
and Equity Studies, OISE/UT
Race to Equity
Disrupting
Educational Inequality
Tim McCaskell
Between the Lines
Toronto, Canada
Race to Equity
© 2005 by Tim McCaskell
First published in Canada in 2005 by
Between the Lines
720 Bathurst Street, Suite #404
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2R4
1-800-718-7201
www.btlbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the
Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite
1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the
Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McCaskell, Tim, 1951-
Race to equity : disrupting educational inequality / Tim McCaskell.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-896357-96-2
1. Educational equalization - Ontario - Toronto. 2. Educational change - Ontario -
Toronto. 3. Toronto Board of Education. 4. McCaskell, Tim, 1951- 5. Schools -
Ontario - Toronto. I. Title.
LA419.T6M32 2005 379.2'6'09713541 C2005-900626-9
Cover design by David Vereschagin, Quadrat Communications
Interior design and page preparation by Steve Izma
Printed in Canada
Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from
the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario
through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario
Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program.
Canada
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Contents
Preface i
1 Back Story 1
A Political Context
2 Beginnings 6
The Riverdale Intercultural Council • Allies • Understanding Racism in
Riverdale • If You're Brown, Turn Around • A Report on Race
Relations • The Final Report on Race Relations • Women Hold up Half
the Sky • A Crisis at Eastdale • An Equal Opportunity Office
3 Utopia 28
Sticks and Stones: Name-Calling and Power • Stereotypes and
Discrimination • Systems and Simulations • School Groups and Action
Plans • Personal Impact
4 Beachhead 47
Against the Current • Case and Endicott: Board Politics • A Splash in
the Baths • Parent Organizing and Institutional Change • Equal
Opportunity Work • New Strategies for the SCR Department • A
Student Program Worker • A Facilitators' Handbook • Following Up •
A Strange Country • Gail Posen • Gaining Momentum • Tony Bows
Out • A Plan for the Future • The SCR Department and Institutional
Change
5 Taking on the System 70
Hari Lalla • Myra Novogrodsky • Anti-Racist Education • Making
Connections • Affirmative Action Policy Review • Hitner Starr • Race
Relations Committee • Organizing for Change • Strategies and
Conflicts • Community Work
6 Backlash and Response 88
Biting Back • Homophobia • Identifying Bias • Committee on the
Education of Black Students • Taking Stock: Anti-Racism in One School
• Affirmative Action: The Review Continues • A New Student Program
Worker • Susan McGrath • The Proof of the Pudding: Race vs. Gender
7 Power, Pedagogy, Curriculum 112
Race, History, and Experience • Simulating History • Peer Power and
New Programs • Entering the Mainstream • Younger Students?
vi • RACE TO EQUITY
8 Great Leaps Forward 127
Fallout • Destreaming • Ruby Lam • The Controversies Continue •
Young Women's Retreat • Pay Equity • The Minors Report • Social
Democracy in One Province • New Structure
9 Equity and Identity 146
The Lost Book • Equity Studies • Homophobia • Working Together •
Vern Douglas • Identity Politics • Sexual Harassment Policy • Parallel
Retreats • Non-Traditional Employment • Racist Jokes
10 A Single Spark 164
The Lewis Report • Black Heritage • A Homophobia Blow-up •
Marsha Melnik • Learning Curve • Losses • Hate Rears Its Head •
From Hate Groups to White Supremacy
11 Re-Evaluations 179
Back to Freire • Resistance • Natural Selection • Identity Crisis •
Where to Start?
12 War of Attrition 190
Culture Wars • PPM 119 • Class Bias • Pepsi and Other Wars • A New
Policy on Racial and Ethnocultural Mistreatment
13 The Good Fight 205
Targeting Curriculum • Hate Again • Freedom of Information •
Cutbacks in the Equal Opportunity Office • Disabilities • Body Image •
New Schools: Triangle and Nighana • The Onslaught • New Blood, and
Triage • A Report Card
14 Under Siege 225
Corporate Partnerships and Class Bias • Fighting Back, Going Down •
As Night Falls • Attempts to Hold On • Homophobia Redux • Towards
the Final Curtain • The Accomplishments
15 Blueprints for an Invisible Future 242
Inclusive Curriculum • Triangles and Icebergs • Similarities,
Differences, and Identity Politics • Deeper into Structures • Two
Approaches: Idealism and Materialism
16 Thermopylae 255
Harmonizing Policies: Basic Principles • Setbacks and Mobilization •
Policy Showdown • Controversy in AHEC • The Consultations Heat Up
• Victory • Denouement • The Equity Department
17 Aboard the Titanic 273
Looking Back: Pondering the Nature of Change
Notes 286
Index 292
Preface
T
HIS BOOK IS A SERIES OF REFLECTIONS on my involvement with the
experiments, successes, and mistakes of twenty years of equity initia-
tives at the Toronto Board of Education. For almost three decades the
Toronto Board's efforts to reshape an education system to provide truly
equitable education for a hugely diverse student body garnered national and
international attention. My motivation for writing this book was to try to
preserve the memory of what I believe was a period of significant social
struggle, cultural transformation, and deep learning.
I have used the trajectory of my personal involvement with anti-racism
and anti-homophobia education and the evolving links to issues of gender,
class, and disability to trace some narrative threads in this "booming
buzzing confusion" of institutional and social transformation. In order to
round out my admittedly biased and faulty memories, I have also integrated
interviews with key participants and consulted twenty-five years of Board
minutes, as well as several academic theses on different aspects of the
work, and a number of the important documents produced along the way.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in the book are from the interviews.
I hope that my still admittedly partial account can at least dimly reflect
the enormous work of the activist educators, trustees, parents, communi-
ties, and students who propelled this process in the belief that education
should play a key role in creating a more equitable world.
Thanks
I need to thank a number of people for inspiring and helping with this book.
The first is my partner, Richard Fung, who shared many of these experi-
ences with me and whose own activism and artistic practice have been so
fundamental to my own understanding of questions of race. The advice,
medicines, and humility of my doctor, Philip Berger, helped me survive
through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic, which spanned much of the
period covered by this book. Between the Lines and especially Robert
Clarke provided invaluable editorial advice in turning my often rambling
memories into a much more readable story.
Those who consented to be interviewed - Nora Allingham, Domenic
Bellissimo, Keren Brathwaite, John Campey, Pat Case, Olivia Chow, Vern
vii
viii • RACE TO EQUITY
Douglas, Marg Evans, Carolyn Goossen, Tam Goossen, Marlene Green,
Hari Lalla, Ruby Lam, Geoff MacDonald, Susan McGrath, Marsha Melnik,
Alok Mukherjee, Fatema Mullen, Charles Novogrodsky, Myra Novogrodsky,
Gail Posen, Vanessa Russell, Tony Souza, Kristen Swartz, Alice Te, Barb
Thomas, Margaret Wells, Sandy Wong, Ya Ya Yao, Terezia Zoric - all pro-
vided invaluable insights without which this book could not have been
written.
The many others whom I could not interview and whose stories I could
not tell but who played a role in fighting for change at the Board must also
be credited. Thanks too to those who persevered in reading my much-too-
long first draft and offered their comments and suggestions. They include
Glen Brown, Kari Dehli, Bob Gardner, Tara Goldstein, and Lisa McCaskell.
Finally there are the thousands of young people I worked with over the
years. Their enthusiasm, honesty, experiences, ideas, and courage made this
whole experience immensely rewarding and exciting. I may have been their
facilitator, but they were truly my best teachers.
Back Story
Chapter 1
I
N BEAVERTON, THE LITTLE SOUTHERN ONTARIO TOWN where I grew up
in the 1950s, the range of social and cultural difference stretched from
Protestant to Catholic. The only Indians I ever saw were on television, al-
though some apparently lived on a reservation not far away, near Orillia. For
a while a Jewish family, the Roses, owned a clothing store on Main Street,
but they moved away. The only Chinese family in town, the Chus, ran Dan's
Cafe. My family's church, like many others across the country, raised money
to support missions in the less fortunate, heathen areas of the world. Those
were the days of "Eat up your vegetables. Children in China are starving."
When I was eleven, and my family drove down to Florida for a holiday, I
learned that Black people didn't really look like the ones portrayed in the
Beaverton Lions' Club Minstrel Show. The Southern U.S. service-station
washrooms were designated "Men," "Women," and "Colored." My mother
explained that in America, Black people were often not treated very well.
This, I was told, was not properly Christian. When the civil rights move-
ment began, I learned in Sunday School that it was just like Moses leading
the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. By the time I was in high school,
"Black Power" was in the news. My friends and I sympathized, and re-
marked that we were lucky there was no racism here. Of course, apart from
the presence of Lilly Chu, Brock District High was an all-white school.
I left Beaverton for university in Ottawa in 1969 but quickly became im-
mersed in left-wing anti-Vietnam War politics and soon dropped out, opting
instead for a mixture of travel to India, unskilled labour, and communal living
in Toronto. Then I spent two years living in South America, learning Spanish
in the process. By 1974 I was working at Toronto's Centre for Spanish
Speaking Peoples, an advocacy centre for Latin American immigrants. Stu-
dent power, the anti-Vietnam War movement, national liberation struggles
around the globe, and two years of living in the social upheaval of South
America had turned me into a young Marxist. Still, when my new comrades
in Toronto's Marxist Institute proposed a lecture series on racism in Canada,
I was puzzled. Racism wasn't really a problem here in Canada, was it?
John Saul, a professor of political science at York University, led off the
series with an analysis of racism as an ideology spawned by Western imperi-
alism to justify slavery, genocide, and colonialism. Other speakers gave first-
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