- A beloved educator was branded as a bigot in a series of DEI sessions. The Free Press reveals the details—and exclusive audio—from a story of public shame.
He added: “It’s about the whole cancelling and not allowing for free speech, free debate, and all those types of things. I’m a big free speech proponent.” Bilkszto said he thought Chris Rufo, the conservative activist who built his online following by spotlighting the excesses of wokeness, was spot on.
The source material, meaning the actual audio of the exchange that launched it all, is what I found so disturbing. 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 even does so in what sounded like a kind demeanor and with first hand experience teaching in the US. There was nothing racist about it or even controversial. Seemed like the DEI instructor didn’t like being challenged and decided to make an example of him. Disturbing stuff. Maybe this is not endemic of all DEI instruction, but his peers piling on and not standing up for him for fear of also being called a racist is likely not an isolated phenomenon. I feel bad for the guy. This wasn’t cool.
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." 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. 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." 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. 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'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. 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. 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.
62. However, due to reputational damage and/or reprisal for filing a harassment complaint
64. This refusal to reinstate Bilkszto to his employment after being off work on a sick leave was
65. The harassment of Bilkszto continued by senior management of the TDSB. On September
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.”
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.
Maybe this is not endemic of all DEI instruction,
but his peers piling on and not standing up for him
And the way we deal with it is by listening. By being wrong. By actively trying to do better.
Agree. It's by listening. I listened to the audio, it didn't appear that he lost an argument to me. It didn't appear that he was trying to argue, but rather that he was engaging in a conversation. This wasn't something that was desired. Seemed to me he had an informed perspective as someone that had taught in both countries and was attempting to point out that Canada has issues with equality but that Canada is not doing a worse job than the US. And the way we deal with it is by listening
amen. Listening is a two way street. All the rest of this story doesn't mean much to me, including his suicide btw. It's the exchange and how it was re-framed into him being a racist. That's no good. It does nothing to help foster more equity and inclusion to shut down dialog. He had something to offer the discussion and was promptly shut down. I can't imagine you listened to that exchange and genuinely thought to yourself that what he was saying was egregious racism. The audio IS the burger, the rest is nothing.
"I want to make a comment about the US-Canada thing, a little bit of a challenge to it" That's not how you start a discussion, that's how you end one. "To say here that Canada is not a more just society than the United States?...I invite everyone here to do some research...You look at a system like Ontario, where every student is funded equally... you go to the United States where their funding is based on tax base...I see you shaking your head but..." That's him rejecting the premise of the speaker, inviting the rest of the seminar to reject the premise of the speaker, raising as the sole concern "tax base" and then disregarding the objections of the speaker." "What I'm saying is your point is not untrue. What I'm saying is how it's lived out is not as you say" That's the speaker saying his point is noted, but not relevant to the discussion at hand. "In the name of that equality, kids are still experiencing systemic inequalities" That's the speaker saying that she hasn't disregarded his point, but that the end result is exactly what she's talking about - inequality. "I hear what you're saying, HOWEVER, I think to ignore that fact... we're very here, we have a public education system... it's not the same way as the United States" That's him refusing to acknowledge that she has answered his objection. Period. "I think we're doing an incredible disservice to our learners. Incredible disservice to our learners. So I just wanna say that, right?" THINK OF THE CHILDREN! "Thank you so much" You mansplaining dick "What I'm finding interesting in the middle of this COVID disaster... that you in your whiteness can tell me what's really going on for black people? Is that what you're doing? Because I think that's what you're doing. But I'm not sure so I'm going to leave you space to tell me what you're doing right now." That's her saying are you sure you wanna go down this road whitey because it is not landing how you think it's landing, here's how it's landing, do you have any interest in stepping back from the brink "I just wanted to talk about the United States. You said listen to the facts and figures" "We're not here to compare, we hear you, who did these studies, fair to whom, just to whom, a black or indigenous student in (the school district) has the same access to resources, but they don't have the same outcomes, right? They're disproportionately impacted by streaming, (something) discipline, other metrics... I hate to disagree with you in this forum but it's just not... not relevant? What you're bringing up? Unfortunately the experience of black and indigenous students in the TSD, in whatever school you lead, they're just not good enough. And that's just the reality. So if you want to be an apologist for the United States or Canada, this really isn't the forum for that." The instructor straight-up gave him an opportunity to step back from the brink, he straight up refused, and a supervisor stepped in to shut his ass down. As is appropriate. _______________________________________ See, there was no misunderstanding there. There was no questioning of assumptions by Blikszto. He kept going "in theory" they kept going "in practice" and he just got madder. Blikszto made no attempt to listen, made no space for being wrong, and made no attempts to do better. LOL you listened to a carefully cherry-picked 4 minutes of a white guy refusing to answer "are in your whiteness can tell me what's really going on for black people" and you think he didn't lose the argument? It wasn't even an argument. It was "I want to make a comment about the US-Canada thing, a little bit of a challenge to it" followed by it doesn't fucking matter, dude, do you get that followed by think of the children. Dude was literally attempting to invalidate the whole of the discussion. And uhhhh Charles Murray's whole argument is, in a nutshell, some Black people are high achievers but on average, they are inferior as a race, take a look at these IQ tests. Refusing to look at details and instead focusing on "the data" has been a racist dog whistle since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That's some context that might be worth discussing in this whole dust-up, IF one were to give it the courtesy of discussing it. Which you seem to insist upon, because a heavily decontextualized right-wing smear campaign has merit in your eyes. So we've discussed it. But, much like Kiki Ojo-Thompson, I don't know what else to do if you think Blitzko came out looking good in that discussion. Let's circle back: Here's what you said to prompt that discussion: How does this get better in your eyes? What response by the rest of the 200-person Zoom meeting redeems this in your eyes? How does the tragic ending become a happy one?I listened to the audio, it didn't appear that he lost an argument to me.
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.
Disturbing stuff. Maybe this is not endemic of all DEI instruction, but his peers piling on and not standing up for him for fear of also being called a racist is likely not an isolated phenomenon. I feel bad for the guy. This wasn’t cool.
And I fail to see what's so wrong about what the DEI instructor said. Did she call it "egregious racism?" He was basically saying "things aren't so bad here," and she's saying "no, they are, please let me give my talk" that was the whole exchange, nothingburger is a totally fair description imo. Where is the bullying?
The "bullying" was a tweet that didn't mention him by name that night, and two discussions of him in the third person without mentioning him by name the next week, when he had opted out of continuing the seminar. Black people are facing a reality where police don't go to jail for murdering them in the middle of the night and White people are facing a reality in which derailing a DEI discussion and then taking six weeks off for psychic damage gets a "no no the dude has a point."