Toronto police are investigating a possible hate crime after four Toronto District School Board (TDSB) teachers received a racist letter in response to an anti-Black racism course they teach.
The TDSB confirmed that on Feb. 17, hate mail was sent to Newtonbrook Secondary School in a nondescript envelope with no return address.
Inside was a torn Toronto Star article on which things like “The n—–s have taken over the school system” and “If you disagree you’re racist! If a Black student fails the teacher is racist” were written.
The message was scrawled on top of an article that was published about an anti-Black racism course for Grade 12 students that is being taught at the high school.
The letter goes on to make other hateful comments about young Black boys and the education system.
“All of us were appalled, disgusted and extremely upset when we found out about this situation,” said TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz.
The school board says they immediately spoke with staff, contacted police and sent a letter home to the Newtonbrook community.
Detectives told CBC News that the incident is being investigated by the central north district criminal investigations branch and the hate crimes unit.
D. Tyler Robinson is one of the four Black teachers who received hate mail. He told CBC News that while he’s disheartened by the incident, he isn’t surprised.
“A lot of people act like this kind of racist stuff doesn’t happen in Canada and that it’s an American issue. I don’t think it’s someone in the states getting a copy of The Star who sent this to us,” he said. “It’s been clear we have this problem in our country too.”
Robinson says he almost prefers dealing with overt acts of racism like this because the alternative is tougher to identify.
“Sometimes racism is obvious and it’s sad but it’s the covert racism, the hidden and elusive stuff that you can’t put your finger on that’s harder to deal with.”
Anti-Black racism course
That ability to understand both types of racism is part of what Robinson teaches.
In September, the TDSB rolled out the course — called Deconstructing anti-Black Racism in the Canadian and North American Context — which Robinson helped develop.
The pilot program is currently running in seven secondary schools. The school board says 13 more schools will run the program next year, and 30 more schools are also interested in offering it.
Robinson says he was inspired to work on the course by the street protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota last May.
He says students told him and other educators they felt their Blackness was a burden and they didn’t want to be Black anymore after seeing video of Floyd’s death.
That’s what he says sparked him to help create the course, which explores subjects like language and discourse, Black history, deconstructing and defining Blackness in the media, and oppression.
Kids are not the issue, they want to learn and talk about racism. The problem is adults who have very fixed and narrow opinions on racism with their own set of prejudices,” he said.
Robinson says incidents like these are exactly why the course is needed.
Schwartz-Maltz agrees.
“What this incident shows more than anything is that teaching this course is so important because racism is out there. They’ve created this beautiful course and there are people who simply don’t want to see it taught.”