Being Black In Peel: Kamilah Bosewell Shares Her Experience

Kamilah Bosewell reveals the unchecked racism she faced during her time as a Peel District School Board student. Her middle school and high school experiences were tainted with discrimination.

Black students of the Peel District School Board continue to face injustice when it comes to racism and its consequences in school. Kamilah Bosewell, a 2024 graduate from a PDSB Secondary School, opened up about her story in hopes of shining a light on how racist incidents were handled. Her experiences as a Jamaican-Canadian youth reveals systematic negligence within the school system.

Recounting her time during her early education, she faced plenty of microaggressions. They particularly targeted her hair. “If I got my hair braided and I took it out the next day people would be like ‘oh did you take out the dye in your hair?’ or ‘did you cut your hair?’” she shared, “I would tell them it’s extensions and the next time I do it, they would say the exact same thing…I got annoyed …I was like, let me just change so it is easier for people to digest my identity.”

While these comments may be innocent to some, they are part of the racial insensitivity and ignorance that many Black students face. Bosewell expressed her annoyance with repeatedly having to explain her appearance to the same people, as if to them, it is a conversation starter. “I feel bad that middle schoolers go through that too.” Bosewell mentions that her experiences with discrimination are still continuing with the younger generations.

When Bosewell was asked about the education of Black culture and Black History Month, she said, “They teach about the same three people. They teach about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and barely Malcolm X. Every year it is the same thing for Black history Month.”

The effort to educate the student body on notable Black people was minimal, and Black Canadian history was barely taught, some students never learning anything about it in middle school.

Nanza Malcolm-Joseph, is a notable member of the Black Student Association at Toronto Metropolitan University. They wrote the Peel District School Board’s 2022-2023 curriculum for Black students and was also a student at several PDSB schools.

When asked if PDSB is doing enough to educate students about Black Culture, Malcolm-Joseph stated, “They are definitely not doing enough…it’s always the same rubric of talking about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. It is all about the slavery part of it and never talking about the celebration of Black beauty and Black authenticness.”

Malcolm-Joseph comments on being part of a minority group in school,

"I definitely realized a lot from even just in elementary school that I was pushed towards for high school taking applied classes and trying to push the fact that we couldn’t do like academic courses and so luckily I had parents who were like no you’re not doing that you’re doing academic but a lot of my other friends who were people of color slash black actually did and it did hinder their abilities to go into certain schooling."

Despite the ignorance Bosewell had to grow up around, there were resources at her middle school that made her feel a sense of belonging. It began in 2019, when her middle school started a club called Sankofa Club. Boswell recalls her time there, “Except for Sankofa, which was a Black students club and I loved it. They [Sankofa] did things for Black History Month, more than the school ever did.” She mentions Sankofa Club, an exclusive club for Black students, organized educational field trips for the students. Bosewell, alongside her peers, was able to learn more about Black Canadian history.

When Bosewell entered high school, she was able to find a community there. In the 10th grade she encountered a new teacher, Miss C, who like Bosewell, is also ethnically from Jamaica. “With her and my Jamaican friends, it felt like a great time.” Bosewell reminisced, “I feel accepted, I feel like me. These people feel like family.”

However high school was not without challenges. The discrimination Bosewell and other Black students faced became fierce and the perpetrators were relentless. Young Black girls were facing racism from non-Black peers and misogyny from people within their community and outside of it. “The bad thing during high school was the stereotype, that was very common, were people overly sexualize or demonize Black women.” Bosewell recalls how Black girls were facing despicable discrimination, too much for any youth to handle. “[It] happened so much in [John Fraser Secondary School] and sometimes in [Thomas Street Middle School]. In Fraser, the immediate insults were ‘you are too dark, you are a whore, or you are too fat'.”

When these incidents were reported to staff, whether they happened in school or online by PDSB students, little to no action was taken by staff to educate or reprimand the bullies.

"I mean, I even remember the guys, the boys at John Fraser were completely out of control. I mean, and like, they weren’t even quiet about the things that they would say at all.

I mean, we did have a teacher in contact who would hear these things come out of their mouth, their misogyny, their racism, and she would excuse it. And I mean, how did like, how did you feel about that? Her negligence.

I lost a lot of respect for her. You’re supposed to protect the students, you’re supposed to care, you’re supposed to care, but it’s like it doesn’t feel like you care.

And especially the principal, we had on video students following us and saying the n-word, me and my other friend, and they were literally behind us. We had pictures, we also had videos of them saying the n-word while they were behind us. We showed it to the principal, the principal said, oh you know like I’ll see what we can do with video evidence and everything. And she also knew them because it was a common, like a reoccurrence. And nothing happened to them other than her saying, you guys shouldn’t be saying that."

Original article here.