[Newsbot]

Title: Non-black students may boycott Africentric school
Category: Misc CDN
Posted By: EyeBrock
Date: 2011-03-29 08:49:36
Canadian

[EyeBrock]

I'm not sure what I think of this one. Kids need all the help they can get but seperate schools for seperate races, well I'm not convinced.

[andyt]

Why would non-blacks attend an Africentric school?

$1:

an Africentric school is just one way to address a 40 per cent dropout rate (among black students)

It would be nice if they told us what exactly Africentric means, and how it will address the drop out rate.

[CommanderSock]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

I'm not sure what I think of this one. Kids need all the help they can get but seperate schools for seperate races, well I'm not convinced.

Are you kidding me, it worked great from 1870-1960 in the USA!

Ok, in all seriousness, touchy subject. It`s strange but Portuguese kids have the lowest dropout rates in Toronto. Not sure about their income levels though.

If they can help the black kids by segregating them, then all the power to them, after all we have Catholic schools, Jewish schools, they are schools specifically designed for underperforming minorities (before people aks why there`s no `anglo school`).

IMO a Nigerian student doesn't need to go to a black centric school, Nigerians have higher education attainment than Chinese and Anglo students. But a Caribbean student on the other hand might need the extra help.

It`s complicated. Only a matter of time before it becomes a political time bomb.

[andyt]

CommanderSock CommanderSock:

Ok, in all seriousness, touchy subject. It`s strange but Portuguese kids have the lowest dropout rates in Toronto. Not sure about their income levels though.

If they can help the black kids by segregating them, then all the power to them, after all we have Catholic schools, Jewish schools, they are schools specifically designed for underperforming minorities (before people aks why there`s no `anglo school`).

IMO a Nigerian student doesn't need to go to a black centric school, Nigerians have higher education attainment than Chinese and Anglo students. But a Caribbean student on the other hand might need the extra help.

It`s complicated. Only a matter of time before it becomes a political time bomb.

Sock, you've got it backwards. The Portuguese have the highest drop out rate. It's because, horror of horrors, they all find work in construction trades.

You say if they can help the kids by segregating them... but the claim is that an Africentric school won't segregate kids. I mean that's what this article is about, that the worry is all those racist white and Asian kids won't attend an Africentric school.

I'f this works, ie kids stay in school and get jobs afterwards great. But my guess is that a lot more than this is required to break the dynamic of Carribbean black kids living with single mothers, no dads around, in ghettos. Basically we're importing this problem because we want to provide cheap nannies to yuppies. A lot of the problem is cultural. The Carribean has a huge gun crime culture and fathers that don't hang around with the family. (Same as American blacks) If we import a whole bunch of them, and allow them to cluster together in the warrens we provide, they'll just re-create that culture here.

OTOH, I used to work with a young black engineer who put himself thru school here while taking care of his younger brother. His parents had moved back to France, so he did it all on his own in a new country. Very smart. Very hard working. Very responsible. My point is that it's not about race. This guy had a different culture than the ones in this story.

[Bacardi4206]

What exactly is Africentric? Did they mean Afrocentric? Maybe they wanted to change up the words so nobody would look up the meaning of the words.

"Afrocentrism (also Afrocentricity; occasionally Africentrism[1]) is a reading of world history that emphasizes the importance of African people, taken as a single group and often equated with black people, in culture, philosophy, and history.[2]"

Yes, why would other racial groups want to escape a high-school like this? They must be racists to oppose such a fine school.

[BartSimpson]

Good piece by a black author on Afrocentrism:

http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2004/ ... nd-queens/

[Nuggie77]

This is about as stupid as "Ebonics" was. Could you imagine the uproar if someone started a "Eurocentric" school and only asked persons of European decent to attend?

[andyt]

Nuggie77 Nuggie77:

This is about as stupid as "Ebonics" was. Could you imagine the uproar if someone started a "Eurocentric" school and only asked persons of European decent to attend?

They would say, with some justification, that our schools are already Eurocentric. I don't know how you make up for that by teaching a bunch of bullshit tho. Introducing some positive black role models to the school tho, I could go for that. Spend some time on the American civil rights movement and MLK, for instance.

[OnTheIce]

Making a seperate education for black students will do dick all to help them as a whole.

Afro-Canadian families need to look deeper into their family dynamic and focus more on the family and less on trying to make the educational system a backup for a boy or girl without a father or mother.

[andyt]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Making a seperate education for black students will do dick all to help them as a whole.

Afro-Canadian families need to look deeper into their family dynamic and focus more on the family and less on trying to make the educational system a backup for a boy or girl without a father or mother.

They're not just going to do that you their own. Once you're mired in poverty like that, you need some help. I don't think this school is the answer tho.

And it's no all Afro-Canadian families. This is Toronto where they've created a ghetto full of poor immigrants that just perpetuates the cycle. I don't this situation holds for all of Canada

[martin14]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

I'm not sure what I think of this one. Kids need all the help they can get but seperate schools for seperate races, well I'm not convinced.

Worked well enough in South Africa.


Interesting how so many are now interested in ghettoizing themselves
even further than usual.

[CommanderSock]

The biggest problem is that we're still using the old, and outdated American version of race classifications in Canada. A 300 year old model. Obviously, we're not America and we can't use their system. In fact, even they shouldn't use that system of classification but that's for another thread.

The Globe and Mail recently had a good piece on why we can't just lump people into "Visible Minorities" and Everyone Else (everyone else being white Canadians, white immigrants, and aboriginals). They also cited research work done on specific groups of people in Canada.

For example, black Canadians, and black Caribbeans couldn't be further apart. African Canadians (from Africa) have attainment rates that are very high, we'd call them 'elites'. I'm sure if we let in many of Lagos' or Nairobi's elites immigrate here they'd be just as wealthy as the Hong Kong citizens who came here during ths 90s and their kids will have no problems going to the best schools, getting the best jobs, and earning top dollars. Black Caribbeans on the other hand, tend to have very low attainment rates in education, jobs, housing etc, almost anywhere they go.

On the other hand, amongst whites, there are massive disparities also. The Portuguese are the most 'uneducated' whites. However Greeks are the most underpaid. Greeks make 40% of what Anglo Canadians make. Anglos have by far the highest earnings in Canada, with or without an education. They tend to increase the 'white average'. The Chinese (from Hong Kong), and Japanese, tend to have very high earnings and educational attainment also, but they tend to bump up the overall "Asian" average as their Vietnamese, Cambodia, Laotian, and Pilipino counterparts are underperformers, ranking right along the Caribbeans.

So, all in all, it's so complicated, so difficult, and so politically challenging to get into this topic, without emotions running wild on all sides.

martin14 martin14:

Worked well enough in South Africa.

That was completely different.

[andyt]

Good analysis, Sock. It's the kind of thing that gets missed in our racist multiculti myths.