"FEAR OF STIGMATISATION" - BLACK CANADIAN YOUTHS’ REACTIONS TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A BLACK-FOCUSED SCHOOL IN TORONTO - Research Paper

Oct 15, 2026

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Examining the Toronto District School Board’s 2009 proposal for a black-focused school, this paper investigates reactions from Black youth in the Greater Toronto Area using focus-group data. While participants agreed with parts of the proposal, many opposed implementing it through creating a separate school. Framed against documented academic disengagement among Black students, the study situates youth perspectives within broader educational inequality and highlights implications for education stakeholders and proponents of the initiative.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages37

Reading Time1 h 33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Policy context and community consultation

Academic disengagement and educational inequality

Patterns in schooling outcomes and proposed interventions

“FEAR OF STIGMATISATION”: BLACK CANADIAN YOUTHS’ REACTIONS TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A BLACK-FOCUSED SCHOOL IN TORONTO1 Megan K. Gordon and Dawn M. Zinga, Brock University The black-focused school introduced by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in 2009 has been controversial since the community consultations were conducted. Although media representations and Dei (1996, 2006) provide insight into what Torontonians’ reactions are to the proposed black-focused school, the reactions of black youth in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have not been documented. We address that gap by providing a representation of black youths’voices obtained via focus groups. Black youth from the GTA voiced their agreement with elements of the proposal, but resisted the idea of implementing the proposal by creating a separate school. These findings pose important implications for those in education fields, the TDSB and the black-focused school proponents. Introduction The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) introduced a black-focused school in 2009 in response to concerns from the black community in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) about the high levels of academic disengagement among black youth (TDSB, 2008) . During the consultation about the proposed school, contrasting opinions arose on the appropriateness of such a school in the GTA (Dei, 2005; Windsor Star, 2005) . Some parties argued that the proposal was a progressive strategy to promote the academic achievement of “failing” black youth, while 1 We would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada who provided funding for this project through a strategic research grant from the Multicultural Issues in Canada program. others saw it as a regressive step back to the days of segregation. Despite controversial media coverage and community consultation sessions about the proposal, the voices of black youth were underrepresented. Recognizing the importance of youth voice in educational decisions, we documented black Torontonian youths’ opinions about the implementation of the black-focus school. Youth were also asked if the proposal would address black youths’ academic disengagement Academic disengagement is a considerable issue among black youth. Decades of research have documented black students’ struggles in Canadian education systems (see James & Brathwaite, 1996; Mata, 1989), and scholars have examined reasons for black Canadian youth disengagement (see Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac, & Zine, 1997; James, 1990) . While many factors contribute to this academic disengagement and one must be careful to generalize one reason over another (Dei et al., 1997), this paper conceptualizes black Canadian youth’s academic disengagement in the GTA not as a problem of black youth, but of the inequality perpetuated by Canadian education (Brathwaite, 1989) . Despite the value black Canadian families place on education, research since the 1970s has shown that black Torontonian youth struggle to excel in Canadian education as they do not choose the courses or accumulate the credits needed to pursue postsecondary studies (Moitt, 1996). These struggles have been well documented in scholarly literature. Beginning in the 1960’s, Canada saw a large number of blacks immigrating to Canada from the Caribbean (Foster, 1996) . In the 1970s, Canadian school boards and other independent researchers began to recognize that African Canadian students, particularly those with Caribbean heritage, were having difficulties at school (James & Brathwaite, 1996) . To illustrate, TDSB statistics showed that during the 1970s and 1980s a large percentage of black students were placed in courses that did not prepare them for university (Brown, 2005) . Similarly Caribbean born youth were less likely to enter into college or university than Canadian born youth (Mata, 1989) . Instead black students were often categorized as students with special education needs, or placed

FAQs

What evidence does the paper cite about educational outcomes for Black students?

It references TDSB statistics and scholarly research showing Black students were often placed in courses not preparing them for university and experienced lower credit accumulation and higher dropout rates.

Oct 15, 2026

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