A common refrain among people expected to be part of anti-racism solutions is “How much more can we do?”

This is what I call the outside-in view, the frustrated utterances of people who haven’t experienced sustained discrimination but are trying to fix a problem they don’t fully grasp.

They could be teachers trying to reach out to marginalized students and families, journalists trying to reflect different perspectives or employers trying to retain staff of colour, among others.

Take the example of the Peel District School Board. In June, a trustee referred to Brampton’s McCrimmon Middle School, with predominantly Black and brown kids, as “McCriminal.” What was just a simple matter of an apology instead blew up to reveal severe shortcomings in the board’s handling of anti-Black racism in its schools. Finally, the Ontario Ministry of Education launched a review last month.

How much more can we do?

Turns out the answer is: a helluva lot more if we’re serious about more than just the optics.

The obvious problem is that neither of the two reviewers Suzanne Herbert and Ena Chadha appointed Nov. 27, are Black. This does not necessarily mean they’re not knowledgeable in anti-Black racism; Herbert was also one of the reviewers of racism at the York school board. The other reviewer at York was Patrick Case, who is Black, and is now the Assistant Deputy Minister of Education. He is overseeing the Peel review.

However, as Dave D’Oyen, who worked on the team that conducted Ontario’s seminal review on police carding — or random street check encounters — in 2018 points out in a blog, not being Black means neither reviewer has the lived experience to contextualize what they will be hearing. “Absent the inclusion of a qualified member from the Black community, this review will not enjoy credibility,” he wrote.

Other problems lie beneath the surface.

The two people hired to do outreach are not Black, either.

Those who understand the dynamics of Black communities and have experience working within them say they are aghast at the reviewing team’s wholly inadequate outreach efforts.

Buried in the ministry’s announcement of the review was an email address where the public could contact them.

If the Ministry of Education applied a basic review tool often given to teachers: “How does this plan affect the most marginalized student in my class?” they would see how their action excluded those without internet access and those without the sophistication to sift through press releases and find contact information.

That means the 130 or so people that have reached out to the board so far are not representative of all voices. (The York review interviewed more than 350 people.)

Brampton community activist Idris Orughu has been scrambling — on his own time and dime — to help reviewers find community spaces that are free of cost to conduct their interviews.

“Malton has Black people who are some of the most marginalized,” he said. “As a Black man I can’t even rally people at Malton, I would rely on somebody who is well connected with Malton to do that.

“How are the reviewers supposed to hear these people?”

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The most marginalized don’t even know there’s a review going on, said Danielle Dowdy, a Peel school parent who was also on the carding review team led by Court of Appeal Justice Michael Tulloch.

That review, too, focused on Black voices speaking to their experiences in the system, and was conducted over 11 months, during which Tulloch met with more than 2,200 people and received over 100 written submissions.

What did that outreach look like?

“We were always making sure we were reaching out to the most marginalized of communities,” said Dowdy, who was the team’s Senior Strategic Initiatives Lead. “We had to be so deliberate in going into communities and understanding how to hear the reality of what’s really going on.

“It’s not a passive exercise like putting up an email address.”

The carding review team sought online submissions, asked people to send their stories by video, hosted public meetings with schedules that were posted in flyers, ensured community members received them, livestreamed and live-tweeted those meetings and invited questions from audience and viewers.

“There was a real emphasis on making it as open and available as possible,” Dowdy said.

Unlike that effort, the Peel review is at risk of being a rushed task. Education Minister Stephen Lecce has asked that the review be completed by “winter 2020” with an interim report to be submitted at the end of this month, when people are distracted by the holidays.

“If the review is about how is (anti-Black racism) being allowed to flourish and how do you dismantle it, you can’t get to that answer in six weeks,” Dowdy said.

“To get to the nuances, the cultures — that requires thoughtfulness,” she said.

“Process is equally as important as the outcome,” said Orughu. “Our community members want to engage with these people and pour out their pain. This has been going on for generations. They want to put a stop to this. And they want people to hear them.”

Shree Paradkar , a columnist covering issues around race and gender, is the 2018-2019 recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @ShreeParadkar

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