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Segregated Schools in Canada

Canada is a template of multiculturalism and social tolerance.This makes Toronto, the largest city, one of the most diverse; and unlike the U.S., where entire regions in cities are segregated, Toronto's many cultures are, for the most part, visible throughout the city. With 49% of the city's population having been born outside of Canada, people are forced to learn to tolerate and respect other cultures and religion if they wish to carry on a productive life here in the city. The Toronto Star article, “Serving Students in Culturally Clustered Schools” by Louise Brown, and the National Post article, “Staff Report Endorses Afrocentric Education” by Jordana Huber, attempt to tackle a debate that has arisen as a result of Toronto's rich diversity.

When most white people talk about segregated communities, they think of communities with many black people or other racial minorities. Most white people believe that minorities have mostly same-race friends and that they need to be racially integrated with the rest of society. However, this is a false assumption based white people’s tendency to notice people’s race only when the people are not white. The typical white person notices race when passing through communities of colour, but she rarely thinks about race when she is surrounded by all white people. If the typical white person is in a group setting with mostly white people but one or two token non-white people, the typical white person perceives the group as “diverse”. A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly found that campus racial and ethnic diversity is important in predicting friendship heterogeneity, and that minorities have higher predicted friendship diversity than whites. As school diversity rises, predicted friendship diversity also increases, although whites still have lower predicted levels of friendship diversity than minorities. However, this relationship shifts as schools become more diverse, with whites having nearly as diverse friendship networks as minorities on the most diverse campuses. These studies that show that whites are the most segregated are important, because white people often criticize minorities for living in so-called “ethnic enclaves”.

The census tract around Claireville Junior School near Finch Ave. W. and Martin grove, for example, is 80 per cent visible minority, and more than 40 per cent South Asian, whereas the families around, say, Blythwood Junior Public School near Eglin ton and Bay view are more than 90 per cent white. In Halton Region, where Milton has seen an almost 800 per cent jump in the percentage of visible minorities in five years, “students need teachers who are both mirrors and windows,” said diversity co-coordinator Suzanne Muir. “They need a mix of same-culture role models and also teachers different from themselves to help them see the world in a different way.” With the growing waves of immigration, schools dominated by a particular culture pose a challenge educators cannot ignore.