[DISCLAIMER] If you are not acting out in the manner described and if you are not a “racist white person” then you should not take offence to what I have to say about this. Continue and beware! If you read this article and find yourself getting mad and saying “I’m not racist!” You are probably racist and yes, your friend who acts like how the following reading suggests might be racist.

If you are truly not racist, you can take a sigh of relief because Grandpa Dinosaur is not talking about you. I write in a stream of consciousness, so sorry for the jumps and leaps. (FACT: I’m actually really good at running on roof tops.) [DO THE DISCLAIMER DANCE]

~(o3o)~

Do you Drift?
Euro-centric, unce unce
I need some Two-Mixx on mah radio, we be driftin’

Written by Grandpa Dinosaur

I went to school in the Greater Toronto Area and I will tell you this: there were a noticeable amount of teachers who were very unhappy to teach coloured students and were outright racist. Even when there were White teenagers acting out, the only people who would be singled out were coloured students. You see, “Up North,” schools do not teach race tolerance. In places where I have seen the most White people in my life, King City, Schomberg, Nobleton, Kettleby, the lists goes on—racial slurrs are commonplace and stereotypical thoughts towards coloured people, foreigners and even non-blonde white people. Even seeking non-Eurocentric Classes to find that even World studies was just another study about American History.

Reflecting on all my experience in education, I remember growing up in Toronto, amongst other Coloured poor children. Being anti-racist and proud of your heritage were encouraged despite the school curriculum being taught by a majority of White teachers—these teachers taught positive change and positive thought to a group of children living in a crime and drug-filled world. I can get behind my Elementary School teachings, but I want all Coloured kids to get through Elementary. I want them to know the basics of life, I don’t want even some of them to drop out of school… and during basic Elementary School at that.

I was reading up on Racialicious, (because the name makes me think delicious! XD) and saw that Afro-centric Schools were being brought up, so I decided to write my thoughts on not Afro-centric Schools, but Euro-centric schools and give the old school system a little “jab-jab” with my knife. If you haven’t figured it out, I am very PRO-Afrocentric schools for the reason of do anything to keep these kids in school because they need a future and to be taught to do the right thing.

Usually, I keep my mouth shut until I have a suggestion and this time I have one:

HEY CANADIAN SCHOOLS!! STOP HIDING YOUR RACISM!

If you’re thinking “Huh?”, then you’re dumb. I’m sorry.

Davita Cuttita and I often talk a lot, (being BOSOM PALS!!) and one of the things we usually discuss is the fact that in history lessons and studies, the textbooks tend to gloss over “touchy” subjects and portray only the parts that paint White people in a positive light when it comes to racism.

Davita Cuttita, in fact investigated her thirteen year-old brother’s textbooks to see if the history of hate crimes against Native people were included in it after he asked her if “the settlers and the Native People were friends.” Upon reviewing the chapter in which he claimed to have found this “fact”, Davita found that INDEED, the History textbook talked about how they shook hands and spent time together. Davita supposes that the supposed “shaking of hands” was a synoymn for “gave them and their famillies blankets infested with lethal diseases” and the time they spent together was brief as typically, the Natives only spent enough time with the White man to die.

If you don’t know what the White Settlers and Forefathers did to Canada’s original inhabitants, then you either have failed Canadian History or Canadian History has failed you. I won’t blame you either, it’s glossed over so fast or skipped over in the textbook it might have well never even happened. Like, whole races of Natives people weren’t “relocated” or wiped out. This is why Euro-centric Schools fail, people!

And if you don’t know basic history, you’re doomed to repeat it.

As I said before, (some) White people are afraid to reflect upon their own actions and history. They’re happy to ignore the problems of someone else if they don’t want to or don’t have to deal with them. They make up excuses, like “she’s just jealous!” in order to avoid thinking about the problem.

Some White people (but not all) are douche bags that try to make the problems that THEY have caused other people into someone else’s. Coloured people have been sighing for ages about this. I think if as a individual, you can’t reflect and say, “you know my sister, Kelli is a bit racist” then you aren’t worth my time.

And if you can’t even think of other people, besides yourself, your family and your friends for even five minutes—then reading this isn’t going to change your mind because you have already decided you don’t care.

Here, I’ll write your thoughts for you (if you’ve got “the apathy”): “Poor Poor/Native/Black/Coloured people. Oh well, it’s UNFORTUNATE you know. What can you do?”

Here’s what you do, you get out of my way because you’ve already shown that you don’t care and THIS ISSUE of Afro-centric Schools doesn’t effect you—oh wait! It does! Wouldn’t want them teaching Black children rap in school! (Just a little sarcasm. Okay non-racists, I’m not talking to you, but you can read along. I love you! *hugs*) “Wouldn’t want a Black Person to usurp me down the road in University, I’m lazy after all! Wouldn’t want there to be reverse-racism, it’s not like they’d teach RACE TOLERANCE—SHUCKS! We don’t even teach race tolerance!”

Sometimes I talk to people and they way they describe these schools make them sound not like schools, but places that are training soldiers for a war.

You guys… probably… Wonder about the type of people I talk to, don’t you?

Your apathy is the knife in my back, it’s the reasons why so many of my friends are gone and fallen and sorry if I’m not permitted to HATE the FUCK out of you. (Again, non-racist White people, I’m not talking to you. Don’t get all jittery! Racist White people, I mean RACIST! If you don’t pull or think this shit, it’s NOT ABOUT YOU!)

People are all up in arms, yelling “It’s segregation!”You wanna talk about segregation? Canada has just recognized the wrongs of their ancestors segregating the Native children from their families and putting them into Euro-centric Assimilation schools where they were often abused. It’s an extreme example, but guess what!? There are already Catholic schools and don’t tell me that those schools aren’t full of Italians man—Joking, my brother went to a Catholic school…. And he didn’t finish. (Urk…) There are a lot of religious schools and private schools filled with what? White learning designed only for White People. Black history month is once a year, White history month is every day of the year, six hundred years and counting.

For me, I want to see a struggling Black student GET from Kindergarten to University. If being exposed to a environment that enriches their life, teaches them who they are and can be and they are around students and faculty with a learning curriculum supports them; inspiring him or her, then please, by all means! I don’t want to hear that another Black child has dropped out of Elementary school! No more!

I’m not saying that schools should be less White, not teach English and remove European History and Canadian History and the History of the first two Worlds out of the books—but I can’t agree to standards that gloss over the history of crimes done to Coloured people and fails to recognize it’s own internalized racism.

Most average, everyday white people fail to recognize coloured people as Canadian Citizens, owners of property and as people. AND by recognize as people, I mean as fellow human beings.
Let me explain:

Most Average White people fail to recognize their views are racist because their thoughts are an accepted perception of their world and their peers. Their friends, family and neighbours reinforce these ideals and teach them certain “values”. Look at the ads of top class magazines and you’ll see many stereotypical images of White people–rich, beautiful, smart, educated, normal, attractive. What are Coloured people? Exotic, non-normal, dehumanized, fetishized and of course, Whitewashed.

The favourite language of assimilation and choice is English. (Second being French and I fail at French. No really!) But where is this leading? I talk to a lot of White teachers and adults and they often speak of cities, towns and streets with ownership. Even if they no longer live there. “This is my town, this is my backyard, this is my street—but now it’s different.”

And if you don’t know what they mean by different, they mean that said place is developed and/or coloured people have moved in.

It doesn’t matter if I move in and have been living there before them. I talk to a lot of white people and they treat us like we’re the foreigners paying rent on their land. They speak as though they are demanding tithings. They don’t care about their ancestors killing off the Native’s peoples and they act as if they were the first Settlers washing up upon Virgin Soil.

They truly believe they own the land because the language is English and the schools are Euro-centric and the world they perceive is White. And they may not even realize that they are being racist, but I believe that these groups of white people can be blind in their self-centered nature.

In my neighbourhood, I always hear “this is/was my street, and now it’s different” (and I always hear it from a White person), I usually reply with: “Well, people need somewhere to live.”

A King City girl once tried to teach me once in these very words, “White is Right.” I’ll be fair, she was teaching me of how to remember my left from my right (I’ll admit I still have trouble), but even my Muslim friend’s jaw dropped. He started shaking his head, mouthing the words “Don’t listen”.

I still have trouble with left and right to this day but you can’t teach someone if you can’t even acknowledge that you can’t even recognize your own racism. You fail! REPEAT!

Actually—No, don’t repeat! I’ll teach, you stop teaching. I need to teach the right thing and it’s not going to be Euro-centric, but best believe I only teach in English. I believe there should be a teaching standard, but a fair one and not some game where I may win or lose.

I promise you I’ll do a better job then you EVER will. Your time is over, it’s my time to talk.

Is a Euro-centric teaching system positive for Students of Colour? I think it really fails not only us, but White Students as well as they are unaware of EVEN the current situation that Native people and children are dealing with right now as a result of what happened in the past. If there is to be no Afro-Centric Schools, I think the Canadian School Curriculum needs to change the curriculum to reflect the needs of it’s most struggling and needy students and it’s growing multicultural population.

Don’t give me this shit about Toronto being a World Class City!
Don’t give me that shit at all!

Not when children are failing Elementary School!

CANADA, YOU don’t know BASIC ELEMENTARY!

Via Pregnant Drug-Dealing Prostitutes

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