Y'all didn't think I was finished with this didja? I reckoned that since last post was like a three-posts-in-one I'd divide this therapeutic tirade into two posts. This post has a lot of homework in it too but there is some delicious irony that some of you may have picked up on already but maybe not. I love irony! It's so... (fake well) ironic!
When I was 8 or 9 years old my family moved from Hamilton Ontario, steel city Canada, to a beautiful part of the most beautiful province in Canada - BC. The community was almost completely comprised of a group of Russian immigrants to Canada called the Doukhobors. You can read about them here. My Mom hooked up with one in Hamilton named Phil and moved us all west. The little history tells us that they were persecuted in Russia for extreme pacifism. Segregation is no stranger to the Doukhobors. Yup, peace, equality, and pacifism. Irony part I: Phil may be the single LEAST pacifist human being I have ever met. If ever there was a... I think I'm gonna need to invent another word here... a violentist, Phil was it. He was violent to family, friends, pets, I have even heard tell of Phil in his younger days protesting with other Doukhobors for peace... by blowing shit up! He may have done jail time for it too.
While in this small, rural community amidst the mountains and the junction of the Kootenay and Slocan rivers I, and my three brothers, became country boys. We OD'd on fishing, hiking, mountain climbing, all the things the city of Hamilton didn't provide. My older brothers were bussed to Castlegar for school but I had to go to the tiny, 4-room schoolhouse right next to Phil's father's property on which we lived. I think my younger brother Jeff was not yet of schooling age. Lucky him! I was the only non-Doukhobor in the school until in my second year (grade 4 I think) a boy named Jesse came to the school. He lived at the trailer park and I think his parents drove him to school each day. So I'd say there were about 25 students per class making (for convenience's sake) 100 students at the school. 98 of 100 were Doukhobors. That's a higher number of Doukhobors than remain in Russia today. So they went from a persecuted minority to the vast majority in the little village of Shoreacres, BC. Of course, having experienced exclusion because of their beliefs they were welcoming to outsiders. Of COURSE they were! Individually. I even got a Doukhobor girlfriend when I first arrived and we hung out all summer together. But when school started and groupthink took over the exclusion began.
One day one of the girls named Selena who was about the most popular girl in the school said that I smelled like bacon and from then on I was shunned. Point of note: Doukhobors are commonly vegetarian as well although Phil ate as much meat as anyone and I saw an awful lot of lunchmeat in the sandwiches the other kids brought to Shoreacres School. The fact that they were Doukhobor could be incidental. I mean, if I could find bacon cologne I'd wear it! Smelling like bacon is a GOOD thing to me. The vegetarianism and the bacon smell whether either were real or imaginary, may have been significant but I don't think it was their professed vegetarianism or any other Doukhobor-ness that was the major factor that caused the exclusion of Jesse and me. I think it was the majority status and the tribalism that is so often the biproduct of it. With the exception of a few, those kids were HORRIBLE to us! Even my summer girlfriend fully jumped on board and ignored me as if we had never had a minute of fun together. That hurt, but when she started saying I smelled and avoiding contact, even wiping off any body part that had accidentally come in contact with me - yeah I'm not kidding. There was one non-Doukhobor teacher, Mr. Ottowell, who did his best to be nice to me and chasten the kids for exclusionary practices but he was ineffective. Irony Part II: Doukhobors who were shunned as a minority in Russia came to Canada, became a majority and proceeded to exclude non-Doukhobor minority kids.
I'm talking about kids here because my main topic revolves around exclusion in school. I have heard my mother talk about HER experiences as an adult in the community and she felt the same feelings of not belonging although I doubt anyone was calling her "Stinky Judy" or washing themselves after touching her.
Back to school. In the ensuing years I went to schools that were progressively less Doukhobor in enrollment and I had more friends and more inclusion in almost direct proportion. I was too young to keep stats so you'll have to trust me on that. Even a lot of the Doukhobors who had shunned me became my friends. By high school even Selena was my friend. I harbour no ill feelings to any individual Doukhobor to this day, but they can be assholes as a group. I think that can be said about almost any group so it's not really fair to single out the Doukhobors.
So... suffice to say there was exclusion long ago in BC schools. This is not a new thing. Its roots appear to have more to do with groups than individuals so, as my inclusion plan specifies, the appropriate strategy to diffuse exclusionary behavior is targeting the individual. It is just as important, and this falls to the government or the province and the country, to maintain an environment of equality (not equity). I'm talking about avoiding situations in which schools have overwhelming majorities of students with a commonality that could lead to divisive behavior. In the example I gave it was a shared upbringing, values, beliefs. It could be skin colour, it could be religion, it could be heritage or language. The government of Canada and the various provincial governments have created situations (documented in previous post) in which these opportunities for divisive behavior have increased. For years Asian immigration was increased at record rates and nowadays immigrants from India are noticeably increasing. When it comes to "racial" or cultural exclusion in Canadian schools, in true Canadian fashion the articles about this problem fail to specify the exact nature of the exclusion but I have lived in China and I have worked with a lot of Indians. When I worked at Tech in Trail there were two Indian employees who exhibited exclusionary behavior based on caste. Back in India the one was a member of a higher caste but while in Canada the lower caste member was in a position of leadership and the higher caste member had great difficulty obeying orders or even accepting suggestions from a person he considered to be his social inferior. I have no doubt this is surfacing in Canadian schools.
Check out this vid. I know it's in Houston, Texas but the girl being bullied and considering suicide was mistreated for not speaking Spanish, not English.
While living in Vancouver I tutored a Korean kid and he told me of gangs in his school. The Koreans were the KD's. I found that hilarious because KD to me means Kraft Dinner. The Chinese too had a gang. I forget the other gangs but he made it clear that there was severe tribalism and segregation in Vancouver back then. This was in the early 2000's. Irony of ironies? The efforts of Canada to multiculturalize have created large groups that self-segregate based on heritage. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
So what is the solution? They need people who can encourage inclusion through sharing stories of experience. Experiences both with positive effects of inclusion and negative effects of exclusion. People like, for instance... ME! Now HERE is the irony of ironies of the post: It appears that I am being denied a chance to be an agent of change, an inclusion officer, a person the public schools of Canada are "CRYING FOR" because I am being excluded due to skin colour and gender.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not just saying white males are the only victims. In a country that stupidly recognizes only three "races" in its legislation we're being shot in our collective feet by our own lawmakers and government. My brother had two guys from Saudi renting his basement suite in Victoria while attending college there. The Saudi Prince gave them VERY substantial assistance but, because they were members of the "other" race in Canada, i.e. "brown," they were also able to take advantage of a lot of benefits offered by the BC government to foreign students. What about Ukrainians? What trumps what, their colour or their country? I know of many Ukrainian adults getting refugee benefits from the government but at school maybe they're just "white" kids.
This reminds me of what I have heard about prison. Are schools like prison? Even here in the friendly, multicultural Mecca we call Canada? The short answer is yes. Our prisons are perpetuating racism rooted in our colonialist Canadian history.
Well, maybe the schools are too. Most people have no idea about how "white" a country Canada was not so long ago. The Komagatu Maru was only a little more than 100 years ago. Yeah! A boatload of Punjabis fired on by BC military and told to go back to India. Nowadays there are loads of Indians coming to Canada the majority of whom are STILL from Punjab but now they are being mistreated by other Indians. See another of my previous posts entitled "Canada's NEW Indian exploitation."
And in the video the residential schools from Canada's past are mentioned as well in which Natives were taken from their families and mistreated at school. So what does this all amount to? It's nationally sponsored segregation and exclusion practiced by the Canadian government in the past and still very much in the present. Now we're having trouble with exclusionary behavior in public schools. Gee, I wonder why...
I'd be remiss if I didn't circle back to the Doukhobors which was where I began the post. I left out an important thing. When the Doukhobors arrived in Canada many parents, especially those of the "Son's of Freedom" or "Freedomite" sect, did not permit their children to go to Canadian schools. The government did what we've been socially misled to believe Canada would never do: they took the kids out of the Doukhobor homes and forced them into residential schools just like the Natives. Take a look at this lawsuit launched by some Doukhobors for exactly that. Look at the very first name on the list. I recognize some of the other names on that list too.
So, maaaaybeeee being segregated by the Canadian government might have had more to do with the exclusionary behavior of the children of the children in this lawsuit than their heritage. Maaaaybbbeeee if Canada stopped its knee-jerk discrimination and became TRULY multicultural instead of the largely political multiculturalism we have developed in our country there wouldn't be this problem in our public schools. MMMAAAAAYYYYYYBBBEEEEEE if they got somebody teaching in the schools who KNOWS all this, we could start down the right road to equality.
I am positive the people of Canada want this but that is irrelevant in a Country where the people don't get what they want. It comes down to whether the powers that be in Canada want it and I see a lot of signs that point to an answer of no on that question. I think our owners in Canada fear true inclusion because with it comes in-fighting between the tribes into which citizens have a habit of self-segregating. When that happens Canadian citizens are distracted from those we really SHOULD be fighting with: our government, lawmakers, and people who truly run this country.
What do you reckon?
The day after I read this I was looking through our local paper and saw this:
Do you think for half a second that somebody wouldn't write the newspaper and the organization and maybe even start a letter-writing campaign to the provincial and federal governments if the picture had all MALES in it? Do you think for half a second that anybody (except for possibly stupid old me) will write anything anywhere protesting the fact that this picture contains not a single dude? Do you think the paper would have ever come close to publishing a pic with all men in it? If you said yes to any of these questions you don't know Canada. And you don't know what the effects are of almost 40 years of Employment "Equity."
"Look what we've done to white men." "Shelter dogs, bro." Apologizing for laughing at a comedian. Akaash Singh knows what he's talking about.
I still might write a letter that won't be put in the paper and will ensure I'm even MORE unemployable but that's just because I am not quite full shelter dog yet. I'm bottling shit up. Have been for 40 years but I'm not licked yet cuz I'm too stupid to give up. It IS getting more and more discouraging with every unemployed day I spend in my country though. And there is no guarantee I won't just completely give up and say, "Fuck it, I'll support the Tariffic Trumpster or some equivalent entity here in Canada like Doug For-Our-Republican-Douchebags Ford. I may just get a forehead tattoo saying, "I apologize for my penis." I may just jump on the raise-the-price-of-everything tariff war bandwagon, but not yet my dear readers. Not quite yet...
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