rotmanmagazine.ca / 27Jeewan Chanicka
Superintendent, Equity, Anti-Racism
and Anti-Oppression,
Toronto District School Board
AS WE EXAMINE OUR BEHAVIOUR as a society, it is important to re-
member that through the colonization of Turtle Island [North
America], systems and structures have been created to explicitly
privilege certain people. Back when our current legislation was
created, people believed, for instance, that women were inferior
to men; that minorities and people with disabilities were inferior;
that black people were tools for the economic benefit of those
in power; that 2SLGBTQ+ identified people were deviant; and
that Indigenous people needed to be civilized by being sent to
residential schools. All of these things were coded into the law,
and these laws have influenced the systems and structures that
we are navigating today.
When we talk about the ‘hetero-normative views’ that ex-
ist today and the mindsets that propel them, we must remember
that those mindsets weren’t chosen by people: They have been
upheld by actual systems and structures for well over a hundred
years. The laws and systems that guide us today are not neutral;
they are artefacts of attitudes and beliefs.
This is not about shame, blame or guilt; it is about improving
outcomes for all. One thing I work on with educators is to help
them understand that when it comes to closing achievement/
well-being gaps, raising the bar of excellence for all and fight-
ing discrimination, there is no such thing as being ‘neutral’. In
our work we must adopt an anti-oppressive stance, which begins
by thinking about who we are in relation to who we are serving
and what types of beliefs and attitudes transcend our spaces by
virtue of the way structures have been created.
The fact is, if we are not actively addressing the fact that we
are all products of these structures, then we are perpetuating
them. Even though we all share the same world, we do not share
the same experiences of it. If we want to reach higher levels
of excellence and improve outcomes, we must remember that
equity is a leadership competency, and build that into all of our
systems and structures — both public and private.norm; or that you are physically able to do things that some peo-
ple aren’t. I can list a dozen aspects of my identity that I never
have to think about; as well as others — like my religion, skin co-
lour and gender — that I do need to think about often, both in my
community and workplace.
Here’s an analogy that I learned from the work of racial
justice educator Debby Irving: When I go jogging, every now
and then I get a nice tailwind, and for a few minutes, I feel like an
Olympic athlete — not realizing that the tailwind is doing most
of the work; but when I head back towards home, all of a sud-
den that wind becomes a headwind, and I struggle. Now I notice
the wind. The key is, wherever you have ‘tailwinds’ in your life,
many other people are experiencing headwinds, and you are
less likely to notice it because that’s the part of your identity you
don’t think about.There is good news about ordinary privilege: The areas of
your identity that you think about the least — where you have
the tailwinds in your favour — are also the area where you can
have surprising influence. Research shows, for example, that if
someone tells a racist joke and a black person speaks up about
it, they are viewed more negatively than if a white person speaks
up. In a career context, if a white manager hires a white person or
a black person, they will not take a hit for that in the eyes of
their manager; but if a black person hires a black person, they
will take a hit for it.
Ordinary privilege is a surprising source of influence. Of
course, we need to be careful not to speak over or for those who
we wish to support. But we also need to be careful to not be by-
standers and leave the work of fighting tailwinds to the people
facing them.