No white men or women need apply. Forget about Asians, Hispanics, East Indians and LGBT folk too.

It seems at the obsessively woke Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) only Black, Indigenous and racialized people are worthy of being hired.

Right after March break, the WRDSB will hold a job fair for those three ethnic groups only because, according to WRDSB officials, they best understand the academic needs of students who identify with them.

According to the March 29 job information fair flyer – which portrays visible minority faces only – the board’s 2019 workforce and 2021 student census information showed gaps between the ethnicity of the board’s students and the people who work at the board.

The flyer states that only 1.6% of the workforce identified as Indigenous as opposed to 3% of students; 1.2% of employees were black compared to 6% of students and 7.9% identified as racialized compared to about one-third of students.

There is no information on the other two-thirds of students and employees such as what percentage are Asian taught by Asian staff. 

Of course not.

Yet this has given the board enough of an excuse to engage in segregated hiring.

They claim they are “committed” to hiring more Indigenous, black and racialized employees – even, get this, custodial, maintenance staff and secretarial staff.

There is so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to begin.

I have no issue with hiring employees of all ethnicities and religions as long as they have the right qualifications to do the job. But that’s the issue here.

This is Critical Race Theory and intersectional ideology at its finest.

WRDSB officials are no longer hiding the fact that they are eager to hire based on the colour of a would-be applicant’s skin rather than their capabilities or talent in a particular field of teaching or maintenance or even secretarial skills.

By eliminating all but a select few, education director Jeewan Chanicka and his officials are creating a culture of divisiveness and reverse racism.

Racial segregation ended in the 1960s in the United States. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery Alabama spurring the civil rights movement.

Yet the WRDSB appears to want to go back in time and figuratively send white teachers and anyone else not black, Indigenous or racialised to the back of the bus.

Instead of worrying about having employees that check all the right intersectional boxes, Chanicka and his bureaucrats should be more concerned about ensuring those with talent in math, literacy, reading – in other words the basics – are populating the board’s classrooms.

Who other than the obsessively woke educrats at the WRDSB care about whether a custodian or secretary is a visible minority

It’s all just a ridiculous attempt to pander to political correctness led by a board director who is more activist than experienced educator.

Once again, the students suffer under these radical tactics.

It’s all window dressing. It has nothing to do with ensuring student well-being.

Author

  • Sue-Ann Levy

    A two-time investigative reporting award winner and nine-time winner of the Toronto Sun’s Readers Choice award for news writer, Sue-Ann Levy made her name for advocating the poor, the homeless, the elderly in long-term care and others without a voice and for fighting against the striking rise in anti-Semitism and the BDS movement across Canada.