Ruminations: Black Sensitivities Over Anti-Black Racism

“Staff members have received training to give them tools to intervene in an appropriate way to help students understand different realities by different students,."
"The school will be accompanied by an expert in order to assess the situation and make sure best practices are adopted when it comes to prevention and intervention so every student feels safe and accepted, despite their differences."
College Bourget executive director Philippe Bertrand

"They've been trying to tell them that they've been spat on, their hair pulled and they've been called the N-word on numerous occasions by other students at the school,"
"It’s extremely important for our premier, François Legault, and the Coalition Avenir, to recognize the existence of systemic racism,"
"She proposed to bring in some food and was told that African food smells too much."
"It’s not just in law enforcement, it’s in every single institution where there is a repetitive incident or issue regarding race."
"What's going on is a classic example — and a clear example — of how systemic racism continues."
"Here you have authoritative members of the school that should be doing the right thing by educating the students, reprimanding those that are continuing the hatred; however, for six years, it's just been kind of brushed under the rug."
Joel DeBellefeuille, founder, anti-racism group Red Coalition

Collège Bourget in Rigaud, Que., on Feb. 1, 2023. (Credit: Martin Daigle/CityNews)

"It's become hard to go to school, acting like you're happy when you're truly not and you feel like you're hated by everyone,"
"I have faked being sick or faked an injury just so that my parent can let me stay home because I wasn't up for a day of school, because I didn't know if I was going to get bullied, if someone was going to come up to me and say the N-word or if I was going to get in trouble just for acting as a normal student."
Unnamed Black student

It can be hard to 'fit in' when you look different than everyone else. Not everywhere, granted, but in some jurisdictions. The Province of Quebec heatedly denies it is a racist society. The current government argues that the province was once under the oppressive heel of the Catholic Church until during the 'Quiet Revolution' it freed itself from the religious manacles that constrained the Catholic residents of Quebec for centuries. Quebec models itself on France, which is proudly secular.

As such, religious symbols, it argues, have no place in the public eye. Which is to say if someone's custom reflecting their religious adherence is to wear a specific piece of clothing, jewellery, anything obvious like a kippah, a turban, a headscarf, a crucifix, a Star of David, a Kefiyah they may do so as private citizens but not as government employees. There is legislation to enforce this employment-stipulation that anyone serving the public in a public service capacity may not wear anything symbolic of religious devotion. In the rest of Canada that's called racism.

The crucifix above the chair of Quebec National Assembly Speaker François Paradis, created by Quebec artist Romuald Dion, was installed in 1982 during renovations of the legislature. It replaced the original Duplessis-era crucifix placed there in 1936. (removed in 2019) Photo by Jacques Boissinot /THE CANADIAN PRESS

Two sisters, attending a private school in Rigaud, Quebec, not far from Montreal, have had six years of anti-Black prejudice shoved at them by their classmates and other students at the school. Six years is a long time for the school administration not to have taken seriously the complaints brought to them by the harassed students. Their complaints of racism were routinely brushed off, the girls often told they were imagining or misinterpreting slurs.

Finally, the obviously concerned parents of the two girls, fed up with not getting anywhere in their efforts to alert school administration to the need to enact policies and act on them to ensure that their daughters were treated with the respect and dignity owed to all students, all children, all residents of the area regardless of origins, ethnicity, colour and history, brought their grievance to the attention of an activist group.

That anti-racism group, acting on behalf of the family's girls and the extended Black community, enjoined the school to wake up to its responsibilities to its students and the wider community. Finally, the school administration woke to the situation they've long ignored as being of no concern, when an assertive group action was taken and when the situation became a matter of public knowledge, reported in the news media.

When the older daughter of the family involved began attending College Bourget six years earlier she began receiving abuse, and the untenable racism continued, to encompass the younger daughter as well. The family name has been withheld reflecting the parents' fears their daughters will suffer further mistreatment in retaliation for making the issue public. The text messages, racist memes, slurs and stereotypes simply went on far too long.

When one of the girls thought of organizing a Black History Month event at the school, she was brought up short. Now, according to the school's executive director the situation is being taken seriously and actions are being taken to address it. Staff have been exposed to training on the "different realities" of students. And what kind of weasel-words might that be? The reality is that Black students are no different in their needs and emotions than any other student.