Did my education make me think racism is okay?

By Mariyah Salhia

We’re expected to learn how to behave in school. We’re supposed to learn how to navigate the real world with the skills that we gained in the classroom. But what are students to do when the version of the real world that we’re taught about isn’t the same as what we experience?

Me and History Class

My earliest memory of history class starts in the third grade. I remember learning pretty briefly about Indigenous tribes, particularly the Wendat-Hurons (or as my fourth grade French teacher taught them to me, “Les Wendats”). We learned about the way they hunted and gathered, the homes they lived in and clothes they wore. One day, in the fourth grade, we started learning about the pioneers, or the settlers, and I thought, “What happened to the Wendats?”

I don’t think I ever got the answer to that question.

In the fifth grade, we learned about Ancient Egypt. I was taught that the British had discovered the civilization, not about the Egyptian labourers who’d dug and brushed in the relentless heat, only to have the artifacts stolen and put in a museum in England. I learned of the kings and queens that reigned with images of white people. This was especially confusing to me because when I’d gone to Egypt to visit my father’s family, there were hardly any people who looked like the images in my textbook. 

In the seventh grade, I learned about Samuel de Champlain, “the Father of New France”. He was revered by my teacher for his “allyship” with the Indigenous people, but she’d never mentioned that he’d only befriended them so that he could navigate the land he was stealing from them. 

In the eighth grade, I’d learned about Black slaves fleeing their owners via the Underground Railroad, and coming to Canada. Nobody had ever mentioned to me that there was slavery in Canada. We’d breezed over the laws around segregation, but we’d never learned that in Canada, the laws said that slavery was optional, not illegal. 

In the ninth grade, I learned about Residential schools. I was taught about them as a racist blip in Canada’s history but there wasn’t an emphasis on the fact that the last one didn’t close until 1996, only five years before I was born. 

But it was my tenth and twelfth grade history classes that had left me with more questions.

I was in the tenth grade when I learned in depth about the first and second world wars. It was then that I’d learned about the creation of Israel, a place for Jewish people to call their homeland. We’d never learned about the conflict that this left between Israelis and Palestinians, or how the Western world left both sides to fend for themselves. I remember learning little about conflicts that ensued for decades, and continue to happen today. Media outlets continue to bring no attention to either side of the conflict, and force radical views to become the majority of the voices that are heard.

When I learned about the British monarchy, we learned that the Queen’s crown held the world’s largest and most priceless jewels. I had never learned that they were stolen from South Africa, India, and various other colonies of the Queen. We’d never learned that many African, Asian and South American countries were only given independence from the British Empire until all their resources had been depleted, and their culture had been pillaged so severely that they barely left with an identity that wasn’t connected with British rule. We’d always learned that these countries were “developing,” not that they’d been expected by the entire world to catch up to the normalized level of industrialization, even without any recollection of what they’d done before colonization. 

In my twelfth grade world history class, the least Eurocentric thing we learned about in depth was the Italian Renaissance. My teacher had briefly mentioned the Muslim, Chinese, Indian, and African monarchies, but that’s where my in-school education about them ended. We’d spent about a week learning Ottoman Empire before we spent the next month learning about the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The fact is, the only time we ever learned about countries outside of North America or Europe was when they were being colonized or bombed. The majority of the students in my classes, myself included, came from ethnicities whose culture and history is rich, and predates the white man’s need for spices, labourers or land. 

The history of any non-white persons’ ethnicity did not start at colonization, and it did not end at the Civil Rights Movement. Why didn’t I learn that people are still fighting for rights that everyone thinks we already have?

We are taught history in a way that perpetuates the idea that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) need white people for them to matter.

While I can only talk about a few ways in which this kind of narrative is damaging, there are several. 

BIPOC’s existed before white people knew they did

When the narrative that white people are needed to mark the beginning of a BIPOC’s history is perpetuated, it enforces the idea that we will always need them for our heritage and culture to be important. There were African kingdoms before slave traders arrived and stole people to be sold like property. There were strong Indigenous communities all across North and South America before Christopher Columbs sailed the ocean blue. Arabs had strong, affluent monarchies before they’d been dubbed as terrorists. Kingdoms all across Asia were great and powerful before the British Empire went looking for spices and silk. 

It is impossible that our histories started when England decided that it did, so why are we so comfortable knowing nothing about where we came from?

We learn that racism is a thing of the past, and it isn’t. Why is this so problematic? 

Believe it or not, racism is still a thing

Racism is alive and well today. No, it doesn’t look like segregation laws, or immigration policies that only allow white people into a country, but it’s still there. By learning about racism as an issue that was squashed with the Civil Rights Act, people think that racist attitudes today are an anomaly. We know now that this is not the case. 

This narrative completely minimizes racism that the Black, Indigenous and other communities of colour have faced every day after the Civil Rights Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were passed. No, the laws no longer explicitly dictate that Black people are subhuman, or that Indigenous people are not to marry white people. And no, the immigration policies no longer say that individuals from countries outside of Europe and North American are undesirable or lazy. 

But racism transcends the law. Just because it isn’t written in so many words, doesn’t mean that race is always going to be the first thing that people see when they see a non-white individual. Just because the law says that we should all have equal rights, treatment and opportunities, it doesn’t mean that’s how we’re often treated. By pushing the idea that racism ended when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, it makes BIPOC feel like their experiences aren’t valid, or what they experienced isn’t racism. 

Racism isn’t just an American problem

When we learn about racial conflicts in the United States, Canadians like to turn their noses up at the fact that “we don’t have that here”. But that couldn’t be more untrue. Sure, maybe racism is a little quieter here, but it’s still there. 

When we fail to learn about racism in Canadian immigration policies, mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, or slavery and segregation of Black Canadians, we begin to think that we are somehow aboves Americans, or that we “did better”. 

This is dangerous, because by pushing this agenda, we begin to think that systemic racism in Canada simply doesn’t exist, and so we are less inclined to call attention to racism when we see it, especially because we aren’t always immediately inclined to think that what we’re experiencing is racism. 

Black-led protests don’t only benefit Black people

While we learn briefly about the Civil Rights Movement, pushing an “us versus them” mentality only furthers divisiveness, especially between minority communities. 

We need to shift the way we look at Black Power uprisings during the Civil Rights Movement. The way we learn about the protests makes it look like Black protestors were only showing up for Black people, which wasn’t the case then, and isn’t the case now. 

Yes, the protests were Black-led, and a lot of the ideas were designed to combat anti-Black racism (a battle that needed to be fought). 

Yes, the equal treatment of Black people was part of what was fought for, but it’s important to note that this impacted people of all races and ethnicities, it was a fight for equal treatment of all individuals. The Civil Rights Movement ended discrimination based on place of birth, place of residence, sex and nationality in immigration policies, opening the door for a lot of the People of Colour who chose to immigrate to North American countries, including my grandparents.

Race-on-race racism is prevalent in almost all minority communities, and it’s perpetuated when we only learn about one part of the civil rights movement. Instead of continuing the “us versus them” narrative, we should be learning about all the things minorities have done to support and help each other, tools that will help put a stop to inter-racial racism.

Non-white history deserves a place in the classroom

I am lucky enough to say that I never had to endure a teacher making racist comments about me to my face. Nearly all of my teachers inspired me to embrace my race, ethnicity and experiences. They encouraged me to educate myself outside of the classroom. This isn’t the case for a lot of my peers. It goes without saying that by having teachers put racist ideals in the classroom, students begin to think that those ideas are okay. 

As a person with parents who I often have conversations with about race, religion and ethnicity, I was able to learn about things that I never learned in school, but not everyone has the same parents that I do. Not everyone had the same high school teachers I did. Not everyone has the same access or opportunities to learn that I do.

It’s a nice thought to have students take classes about race in higher education, but a lot of students can’t afford to deviate from their mandatory classes. Instead, students should be learning about race when they’re still in the public school system, when they should have an equal chance to become educated. 

So, did school make me think that racism is okay?

Yes, I think it did. 

I’m thankful for the education that I’ve been afforded, but there are many areas where I think there is room for improvement. I learned a lot in school, but an alarming amount of Canadian history just isn’t in the curriculum that I was taught from. 

No, I don’t expect to learn about every single atrocity that was committed in Canadian history from one class in high school, the list is too long. But if the class I’m in is called “History” and not “Colonial romanticization”, then I expect to learn enough about these atrocities to not be shocked every time I hear about one. 

Investing in a mandatory class about race in public school systems is an investment in students, and their future. 

The fight against racism isn’t made to be easy. It isn’t made to be comfortable. Dealing with racism is difficult, and uncomfortable. But the first step to creating a less racist landscape starts with students learning about race in modern context.

Resource links

Parnika Raj started a petition to have a course on race implemented into the Ontario curriculum. Click the link below to sign her petition, and fight for change.