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Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2023 19:18:01 GMT
Megyn Kelly talks to journalist Rupa Subramanya about her recent report for The Free Press, "A Racist Smear. A Tarnished Career. And the Suicide of Richard Bilkszto."
Students should be treated fairly. Those who are disadvantaged should be given the supports they need in order to thrive. Demonstrated interest and hard work should be rewarded. These are all important principles on which public schools should be based, he told TVO’s Steve Paikin in May.
Bilkszto didn’t just believe in these principles, he actively worked to advance them. He took the lead on founding the Toronto chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which advocates for liberal values, such as freedom of speech, treating everyone equally regardless of the colour of their skin and being tolerant and understanding of differences — the type of principles that used to be taught by those who find racism abhorrent.
He believed these were Canadian values. So when a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultant teaching a professional development course for Toronto District School Board (TDSB) administrators made the claim that Canada was a more racist place than the United States, he spoke up. The consultant is alleged to have berated him for (politely) disagreeing.
Bilkszto was up against a person whose job was to sell guilt and shame — the facts didn’t matter. He cited Canada’s universal health system and how schools are funded in Ontario as evidence that Canadian society is more equal.
But those facts contradicted the consultant’s message that Canada is corrupted by systemic racism, colonialism and white supremacy. Bilkszto was lectured for having the audacity to voice an opinion about racism to a Black woman. In a follow-up session, his comments were allegedly cited as examples of white supremacy.
Bilkszto’s July death came after diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, instructor Kike Ojo-Thompson proclaimed Canada was more racist than the United States, a statement the principal pushed back on.
Ojo-Thompson was hired by the Toronto District School Board in 2021 to provide four DEI training sessions to staff.
“You and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people,” she told Bilkszto, according to a lawsuit filed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism against the school board.
In audio obtained by The Free Press, Ojo-Thompson brought it up again at the following session a week later.
“One of the ways that white supremacy is upheld, protected, reproduced, upkept, defended is through resistance and, like I said … I’m so lucky,” she said before laughing.
“Who would’ve thought my luck would show up so well last week that we got perfect evidence, a wonderful example of resistance that you all got to bear witness to, so we’re going to talk about it, because, I mean, it doesn’t get better than this,” she continued as others chimed in to back her up.
The next day, Bilkszto filed for sick leave, according to The Free Press.
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board looked into the incident and found that Ojo-Thompson’s conduct “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”
Yet Bilkszto said his reputation was nonetheless ruined. Following a six-week medical leave later that year, the district refused to reinstate his contract.
Bilkszto claimed the refusal to reinstate the contract was a result of either his fallen reputation or as retribution for having the WSIB investigate the incident.
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Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2023 19:30:46 GMT
Richard Bilkszto, a long-time principal at the Toronto District School Board who’d also once taught at an inner-city school in upstate New York. Having worked on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, he told Ojo-Thompson that her generalizations about the two countries seemed misguided; and that denouncing Canada in such a vicious manner would do “an incredible disservice to our learners.” Bilkszto’s descriptions of Ojo-Thompson’s presentation (a recording of which was verified by at least one Canadian journalist) suggest that she is indeed quite ignorant of both American and Canadian history. Her claim that Canada’s monarchist tradition marks it as more racist than the United States is particularly absurd, given that the British outlawed slavery decades before both Canada’s creation and the U.S. Civil War. National Post columnist Jamie Sarkonak describes what happened after Bilkszto began speaking up: Ojo-Thompson is described to have reacted with vitriol: ‘We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?’ Bilkszto replied that racism is very real, and that there’s plenty of room for improvement—but that the facts still show Canada is a fairer place. Another KOJO training facilitator [KOJO Institute is the name of Ojo-Thompson’s company] jumped in, telling Bilkszto that ‘if you want to be an apologist for the U.S. or Canada, this is really not the forum for that.’ Ojo-Thompson concluded the exchange by telling the class that ‘your job in this work as white people is to believe’—not to question—claims of racism. For his part, Bilkszto responded by suing the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for harassment. He also sought a TDSB investigation of Ojo-Thompson’s actions, which the school board refused to conduct. But Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) took the incident more seriously, determining that Bilkszto was owed seven weeks of lost pay due to the mental stress he’d endured. The WSIB judgment, later obtained by the National Post, concluded that Ojo-Thompson’s behaviour “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying,” and that she’d intended to “cause reputational damage and to ‘make an example’” of Bilkszto. Bilkszto was particularly devastated by the fact that some of his TDSB bosses, whom he’d naively expected to defend him (or at least have the courtesy to say nothing at all), eagerly piled on with the public shaming meted out by their external DEI consultant. For good measure, Robinson Petrazzini also suggested that Bilkszto (whom she did not name, but was the obvious subject of her Tweet) was allied with the forces of “resistance” to anti-racism, and so was abetting “harm to Black students and families.” Bilkszto personally asked Robinson Petrazzini to delete the Tweet. She did so only eight months later, and only after receiving a letter from Bilkszto’s lawyer warning her that she’d be sued unless she did so. According to Bilkszto, his other bosses also refused to support him, instead attacking him for his “male white privilege.” And yet, once Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the TDSB, seeking $785,000 damages for the emotional and reputational harm he’d endured, those same administrators now began claiming that it was Ojo-Thompson who’d gone rogue. While they’d been perfectly happy to throw Bilkszto under the bus when the stakes were confined to emotional “discomfort,” the TDSB suddenly decided to sue Ojo-Thompson for negligence and breach of contract, demanding that she effectively indemnify the school board for any payout that might become due to Bilkszto. (The TDSB later claimed that it planned to discontinue this suit. But Sakornak reported that it was still a going concern as of June 6.)
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2023 19:06:03 GMT
An anti-racism trainer accused of denigrating a Toronto principal who later died by suicide says she welcomes the Ontario education minister's review. Earlier this week Minister Stephen Lecce called the allegations raised by Richard Bilkszto "serious and disturbing" and said he's asked his staff to review what happened and bring him "options to reform professional training and strengthen accountability on school boards so this never happens again." KOJO Institute CEO Kike Ojo-Thompson said the accusations are false and mischaracterize what happened at two training sessions in 2021 attended by Richard Bilkszto. Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the Toronto District School Board earlier this year, claiming supervisors failed to intervene and then retaliated against him when Ojo-Thompson allegedly implied he was racist when he disagreed Canada was more racist than the United States, later using the exchange as an example of how white supremacy is upheld through resistance. Bilkszto's lawyer publicly linked the incident to his death earlier this month. In a statement posted Thursday night, Ojo-Thompson calls Bilkszto's death a tragedy and offers her condolences to his family. She says the incident has been weaponized to discredit and suppress the work of people committed diversity, equity and inclusion, noting her and the team have been subjected to threats and online vitriol.
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