A months-long project exploring the experiences of Black students in Hamilton has found the vast majority of youth who responded have reported experiencing racism in school.
Funded by Ontario’s Ministry of Education, the Community Safety and Well-Being Action Plan included eight consultation sessions over Zoom and five surveys, with participation extended to Black youth between July and September.
The report, released on Wednesday, was informed by 159 Black students and caregivers who spoke about anti-Black racism in schools, safety in schools, and how the pandemic impacted Black students.
“One Black student experiencing racism, one Black student experiencing targeted and punitive disciplining, one Black student struggling from disproportionate health outcomes during the pandemic is one student too many,” said former public board student trustee Ahona Mehdi, who helped create Hamilton Students For Justice, which worked on the report with the Hamilton Centre For Civic Inclusion.
“These are young Black students who deserve to have grown up in an education system free of anti-Blackness criminalization, systemic racism, and trauma.”
About 95 per cent of student respondents from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) and 76 per cent of Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board (HWCDSB) student respondents reported experiencing racism in school.
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The sessions and surveys were also open to Black youth from Hamilton’s publicly-funded French-language schools.
Among the experiences detailed by respondents included being subjected to racial slurs and hate speech from both students and staff, being overdisciplined and overpoliced, racial profiling from police liaison officers stationed in schools, a lack of support during the pandemic, and obstacles in trying to report anti-Black racism.
Yammy Peter, a former student at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School, recalled being targeted when trying to go to school while wearing a durag.
“I was considered a gang member for even trying to wear a durag inside my school, which makes me uncomfortable, … to be racially profiled as a gang member just because I want to take care of my hair.”
The report lists eleven recommendations for publicly-funded school boards, as well as the Ministry of Education, and letting Black students wear cultural dress, including durags.
The student dress code is something that’s under review at the HWDSB since an announcement about the dress code at a Waterdown high school sparked protests and outcry from students feeling unfairly targeted amid a sexual assault investigation.
Manny Figueiredo, the HWDSB’s director of education, said he’s supportive of the recommendations and appreciates that a timeline for implementing them is included.
“It allows us to really work with our board of trustees to say, okay, look at our current equity action plan, where we are we aligned, where are there gaps?”
He also said some of the recommendations — like changing the dress code and hiring more Black staff — can be applied at a local level, but others will need some help from the provincial government.
Pat Daly, chair of the HWCSB, said the Catholic board will be looking into how the report’s recommendations align with the 22 recommendations from its own anti-racism education committee that it’s already working toward implementing.
“We’re going to want to thoughtfully consider the report, and … consider it integrated into other recommendations coming from the committee that we established. But we will study it very carefully.”
The recommendations also include a call for other Ontario boards to follow the HWDSB’s lead and get rid of police liaison officers in schools.
Layla El-Dakhakhni, a member of Hamilton Students For Justice, said every single board has a lot of work to do — including the public board.
“Just because the HWDSB has taken some preliminary steps, it speaks volumes that there are statistics in our report that show that HWDSB students are still experiencing the most amount of racism in their schools.”
In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Ontario education minister Stephen Lecce said the province will continue to “directly confront anti-Black and systemic racism in Ontario schools”.
An email from a Ministry of Education spokesperson added that they will be reviewing the recommendations within the report and “continue the work to best support student safety and counter anti-black racism”.
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