Mandatory anti-racism training for students？
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Summary
In this episode, Lindsay talks about the growing demand for a mandatory anti-racism course at Canadian universities, and why she thinks this is a good idea. She also talks about her own experience with racism in school and how she was taught about racism in schools.
Transcript
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A couple of petitions are circulating right now demanding that universities institute mandatory
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anti-racism courses for all students. Now, online petitions can really be a hit or miss,
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but in a climate where everyone is currently hypersensitive about racial issues and with
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our education system that says the customer is always right and we want student tuition money,
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so we'll do whatever the students want. This means that students, when they're demanding a mandatory
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anti-racism course, it is very feasible that at least a couple universities will go along with
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this. One such petition is addressed to the University of Ottawa and Carleton University,
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and all of these petitions that I'm bringing up have at least 10,000 signatures. So this petition
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that is addressed to the University of Ottawa and Carleton University is asking for a mandatory
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anti-racism course for all degrees at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
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And in their description of their online petition, they don't even really extrapolate
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on why that might be necessary. They just kind of assume that it is necessary. The petition says,
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it is time to stand up for marginalized students attending your institutions. There is one for the
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University of Toronto as well, but the description of the online petition is very sparse. And then there
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is one student at Ryerson University who actually wants to make an anti-racism course mandatory for high
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school students. So this one is addressed to the Ontario Ministry of Education. Part of it reads,
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our current primary and secondary education programs do not address the existence of racism in Canada
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in the past and in the present. Without educating students on the full extent of the history of
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racism and cultural assimilation in the past, we are perpetuating a continual cycle of colonialism
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today. Now what's interesting here is how the person who started this petition, this student at
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Ryerson, she frames it as a lack of education. I don't know about you, but I went through the public
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school system in BC. And I 100% remember learning all about residential schools, injustices towards
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Indigenous people. We learned all about Africaville in Nova Scotia. We learned about the Chinese head
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tax, Japanese internment camps. I remember in grade 10 watching the 2004 movie Crash, which is about racial
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tensions and injustices. And one of the main themes involves police. So even though that was that was a film
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from over 15 years ago, very topical to today. And so when I hear this argument that, you know, there's just
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nothing about residential schools, there's nothing about historical racism in the education system, I think
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maybe these people just don't remember. And so when I was learning about all this in school, I don't have
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any memory of it being dogmatic. So from what I recall, when we learned about these historical
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injustices, like the Chinese head tax, Africaville, and residential schools, they were not steeped in
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ideology with terms like white privilege and white fragility and systemic racism. We just learned what
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happened. And we knew it was wrong. So but feel free to share in the comments, what your experience was,
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what you can remember, and how long ago it was not to be too cynical. But I just see these mandatory
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anti racism courses, as a way of employing academics, or you know, people with master's degrees who
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specialized in social justice and identity studies. It's just a way of perpetuating their industry, and
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giving themselves work, because there are only so many diversity officer jobs to go around. And of
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course, yes, they want to spread their ideas, and instill their ideas about white privilege and white
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fragility and systemic racism. So while it might sound relatively harmless to have a course called race and
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ethnicity studies, or anti racism 101, we must understand that they don't want these courses instituted for the
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purpose of fact based information transmission. They want to use these courses to promote very specific
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views on topics like white privilege and systemic racism. And they want to promote their agenda of how
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to right historical wrongs. And they want to give themselves jobs. I'm Lindsay Shepherd with True North.