Opinion Piece: Fighting Anti-Black Racism in Education

For this year's Black History Month, we at BridgeTO Youth were looking to spotlight someone who embodied our mission of bridging the gap to success for youth in under-served communities. In our search, we resonated remarkably with the work and experiences of Charline Grant. 

The Toronto Star

Charline, who herself is a mother of 3, works as a York Region System Navigator for Parents of Black Children (POBC), an advocacy group she co-founded to fight for fair and equal treatment of Black children in the Ontario education system. Through her work, she helps parents and their children in navigating schooling from kindergarten all the way through grade 12, consulting on issues such as academic streaming, over-policing, and the disproportionate withholding of support. 

In a post on Chatelaine.com, Charline details her own first-hand experience seeing the anti-Black racism that prevails in the school system; when her son, after experiencing subtle discrimination all through elementary, was the victim of abject prejudice from his high-school teachers as well as the administration. She mentions how the principal of his school performed caricatures of racial stereotypes on stage to demonstrate “inappropriate school attire”. His French teacher subjected him to several racial microaggressions, and his gym teacher would outright accuse him of theft. When confronted, these teachers would lie or even more frustratingly, defend their actions. Upon realizing they would have to find justice themselves, Charline and her husband filed a discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Following this, a York region board member spoke out about the systemic racism within the board. The situation then escalated to national news, when Charline was subjected to a heinous racial slur by a board trustee, because of her being interviewed for television discussing the matter. This increase in exposure, however, did allow Charline to broadcast the systemic racism she was working to uproot on a wider platform. Following her efforts, the trustee resigned, the director of education was fired, and she received a promise from the board to make changes to prevent any repeats of her son's experience. 

Unfortunately, anti-Black racism is still prevalent within the school systems, and Charline’s work continues to be vital. This proves to be especially true now, considering how disproportionately the current pandemic has affected Black and Brown communities.

Charline Grant (Right) with Education Minister Mitzi Hunter. - The Toronto Star

We had the opportunity to connect with Charline to discuss her work and experiences, as well as the current state of anti-Black and other anti-minority prejudice. When asked what the near-future of fighting anti-Black racism looks like, she said

“We’re holding school boards accountable, (we’re) coming out with a report… telling the stories of parents. Because what we would like is an inquiry into the education system by the Ontario human rights commissioner.”

In 2021, Charline’s advocacy group POBC launched an anonymous racism-reporting tool for educators and staff. This was done in an effort to increase the accountability of Ontario school boards, and to shine a light on the lack of action on their part to properly track these incidents themselves. This lack of data allows educators and administrators to not only get away with their individual acts of racial discrimination but to also pretend there is no evidence of it being a trend. The tool is intended to quantify the incidents of anti-black racism, and to release the aggregate data publicly, directly combating this lack of accountability. 

“We advocate differently for families, school boards… a lot of them are doing equity strategy a lot of them are implementing stronger accountability measures, if you ask me its not quick enough… it’s not widespread enough, and they’re still not seeing racism as violent.”

Charline implores all youth who are facing any prejudice themselves, to reach out on any of her platforms:

Parents of Black Children: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website