Okay, let's have that discussion.

I didn't bother listening to the audio at first because journalism first principles are "quote it if it's worth quoting." As there sure weren't 4 minutes worth of quotes in the text, I presumed (correctly), that the audio is a nothingburger.

The point Bilkszto is trying to make is that Canada cannot be more racist than the United States if Canada has better economic policy. I know why he's making that argument, and so do you - Canada spreads its resources more evently and equitably than the United States.

The point of a DEI seminar is "it's racist enough, Karen."

The biggest skeleton in Canada's closet is its treatment of indigenous people. At least, that's been my impression from being Canada-adjacent for 30-ish years, I welcome input and/or correction from our resident Canucks. It's a national-level problem with a great deal of structural buy-in. It is also broadly seen as a bigger problem than "well at least our property tax system is more progressive."

Unfortunately for Thompson, the biggest component of DEI is representation - I'll let you google that yourself; fundamentally, everything else is window dressing until "person who looks like me" and "person in authority" are one and the same. Thompson is not indigenous and shifting the discussion to the treatment of indigenous Canadians would be accepting Blkszto's whataboutism, giving him the opportunity he was probably looking for - but you're not indigenous so why do you have any more credibility to discuss this than I do. And unfortunately for Bilkszto, the only way to increase representation of minorities is to decrease representation of straight white men. Sorry, bud. You are being erased. Your cultural hegemony is sundowning. You'll still have nearly all of the power and most of the money but the more we center other people in the discussion the more likely they are to raise their voices.

It's telling that this is a zoom meeting but we have only been given the audio, as telling as we were given the audio but the authors made no attempt to explain it. Your impression is that this is some harmless dude just trying to be patriotic and yeah, maybe. But you're also being given the opportunity to imagine exactly the BLM scold your fantasies want to build Kiki Ojo-Thompson into.

Do me a favor. Google her, too. Do a news search. Who's talking about this and why? What do they want to say? Because by my read, here's the fundamental message:

DEI TRAINING IS SO HORRIBLE IT BULLIED A MAN INTO SUICIDE

Have you been through DEI training? I have. Exhaustive amounts. I even paid $8k to put my staff through said-same. Could you sit there and have a conversation about whiteness without capping yourself? I could. Now let's suppose you couldn't. Not being permitted to mansplain racism to a black woman was so searing to your soul that you felt you had to end it all - not have a conversation about it, not raise a complaint, not talk to anyone about it, but end it all.

Two-odd years later.

Except that's not what happened. Within a few days, Richard Blikszto filed a formal complaint with the Toronto School District. The next day the Toronto School Administrator's Association filed a letter in support of the complaint. Blikszto wasn't there for the second half of the zoom meeting - you'd make a damn example out of him, too. And you wouldn't call him out by name, and you would reference it in passing, and you'd be 100% certain not to point out that the world's most fragile white guy got so sandy-pantied over not getting his way that he left in a huff and asked to speak with the manager.

The next thing that happened is he filed an L&I claim. Yeah - dude was so torn up about losing an argument about racism with a Black woman that he said he couldn't go to work. WORK AGREED! Gave the dude SIX WEEKS PAID VACATION! And then he saw a shrink who said "yeah no you can totally go back to work."

62. However, due to reputational damage and/or reprisal for filing a harassment complaint

and/or a WSIB claim, the TDSB failed or otherwise refused to reinstate Bilkszto to the position

as Principal of Burnhamthorpe in September 2021.

You were so torn up by a fuckin' DEI seminar that you needed 6 weeks recovery? Yeah no you don't get to be a principal in Toronto anymore. I'm sorry, your extreme white fragility is one for the record books.

64. This refusal to reinstate Bilkszto to his employment after being off work on a sick leave was

discriminatory based on his disability and otherwise constituted a reprisal for making a

harassment and/or WSIB claim contrary to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Human

Rights Code, the Harassment Policy and/or the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.

So you tell me. What was Blikszto's disability here? 'cuz the only thing I can come up with is "racism." We're talking about a guy suffering from disabling racism. "Racism in Canada is not as bad as racism in the United States, if you try to tell me otherwise I shall faint like a goat."

65. The harassment of Bilkszto continued by senior management of the TDSB. On September

7, 2021, Bilkszto reached out to Trustee MacLean in the hopes of having a conversation about

why he was not returning to Burnhamthorpe. MacLean refused to speak with Bilkszto, claiming

Bilkszto’s situation was “uncertain” and therefore it would “be inappropriate to engage with you

directly.”

"We've learned not to engage you without a lawyer present" = "harassment"

AND YET the time elapsed between Bilkszto's last contact with the Toronto School District and Bilkszto's suicide is NEARLY TWO YEARS.

DEI TRAINING IS SO HORRIBLE THAT IT BULLIED A MAN INTO SUICIDE (after having his complaint honored, earning six weeks of paid leave and waiting two years)

Worthy of note - Dude bailed on education the minute he turned 60 then came back in at 62. Burnhamthorpe, the elementary he ran, is 25% low income in a city that's 37% white, 25% South Asian, 7% Chinese and 6% Black. He's exactly the guy who needed to get something out of DEI training. Instead he filed a grievance, got butthurt when that grievance cost him his job, ended up as a substitute (collecting social security, I might add) and then sued the school board for $800k (plus "special damages to be particularized in an amount prior to trial").

Except he didn't even DO THAT. He never even fucking served it.

That's just what I get from following the breadcrumbs your article accidentally drops. The only people talking any sense about this are simping like crazy because - let's make it really fucking clear - white people are breathtakingly fragile about this shit.

Equity studies scholar Sheila Dawn Gill offered the term “unspeakability of racism” to describe the barriers to naming racism within Canadian spaces. She used the example of the silencing of the late Cree politician, Oscar Lathlin, for using the term “racist.” This silencing was again applied to current NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s use of “unparliamentary language.”

Yeah we'll talk about the R-word so long as we don't use the R-word because the minute you call one of us the R-word we're entitled to either tragic suicide or an $800k payout on top of our six weeks vacation

______________________________________________________________

He try’s to make what seems a rational point about the US having more educational disparity for black kids because of resources being derived from their local tax base.

He's telling a Black woman that Canada doesn't need to worry as much about racism as America because educational funding isn't tied to property taxes. He literally showed up for a 2-day DEI Zoom meeting in Canada to say "Canada doesn't need DEI training" and then made it a formal grievance with his employer when he got "well ackshully"d.

Maybe this is not endemic of all DEI instruction,

It ABSOLUTELY is, it ABSOLUTELY should be, it ABSOLUTELY needs to be. "I don't feel like I'm a racist - " "Yeah see that's the problem lemme 'splain" is DEI training in a nutshell.

but his peers piling on and not standing up for him

What would "standing up for him" have looked like? I'ma say

"I don't need to worry about racism because I have more minority employees than white employees"

...and the DEI trainer says

"You do tho because the way your employees experience our culture is different from how you experience it"

...and I say "I need you to acknowledge that this isn't my problem because I've done my part"

...and the DEI trainer says

"that's not how it works"

Stand up for me. Model the behavior you desire. Illustrate how you would wish for your peers to come to my aid in this situation.

'cuz look.

- I had to fire a Black student midwife for being racist towards a Brazilian-Japanese midwife.

- I had one half-Asian employee get super-salty at another half-Asian employee for how they handled DEI training. Both pass as white, one plays down her heritage, the other plays it up, and the downplayer was privately seething about how the upplayer was centering every discussion on herself.

- I had a potential Black client comment affirmatively about how we had "Black baby dolls" in our play bin, have my wife say "we try to make sure all colors are represented here" and have that client LIGHT US UP on social media for using the word "colors."

It's a fucking minefield, dude. And the way we deal with it is by listening. By being wrong. By actively trying to do better.

'member 8-bit? Know why he's not here anymore? He just got fuckin' sick of white people. I get it. It saddens me? I wish I could change it? But I get it.

And so long as we can sit around going "sure is tragic the way that 62-year-old white guy committed suicide two years after losing an argument over Zoom, blowing shit up with his union rep, getting six weeks paid leave for his disabling racism, collecting his pension for another two years and then putting together but not filing an $800k lawsuit" these conversations are not going to get any easier.