Commentary
Ontario parents must have been bewildered if not horrified several years back to discover that math was racist. A new school curriculum put forth by the province included a preamble declaring “mathematics can be subjective” and “has been used to
normalize racism.” It urged “a decolonial, anti-racist approach” to mathematics instruction.
It turns out math is fundamentally “Eurocentric,” according to the bureaucrats in charge of educating our children, crafted as an instrument of power by white males to benefit themselves.
Jason To, the Toronto District School Board’s coordinator of secondary mathematics,
created a webinar stating that anyone using the phrasing “2 + 2 = 4” to prove their point is propounding “Covert White Supremacy.” Woke activists have also called math a conduit for “hate facts,” such as statistically illuminating the—nearly taboo—issue of black fatherlessness in the United States or the real nature of the alleged gender pay gap.
As I discussed in
Part 1 and
Part 2 of this series, these disturbing events are all part of the decolonization movement, which regards society as divided between a class of oppressors/exploiters—mostly white male “settlers”—and various victimized/oppressed minorities defined by their (racial, sexual, etc.) identities. Decolonization’s implications can be absurd when they aren’t just plain frightening. If math really is “decolonized,” for example, and disintegrates into contending versions based on the practitioner’s race, sexual preferences, gender, disability, etc., it won’t be long before the newest bridges topple and airliners plummet from the skies.
More than just a fashionable post-modernist dogma, however, decolonization is a revolutionary movement that calls for the violent destruction of Western political and social structures. It’s the intellectual foundation and rallying cry for prominent militant groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, egged on by Ivy League ideologues. Its narrative, intensifying since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, aligns “pro-Palestinian” and “indigenous” rights activists in a quest to reclaim “colonized” territories, equating the Jewish presence in Israel and European presence in Canada with colonial occupation.
In Canada, as I outlined in the previous instalments, decolonization spent nearly half a century in obscurity, but the activism has escalated severely, now including protests at Jewish-owned businesses, threats against synagogues, and the blockade of a Toronto highway overpass leading to a largely Jewish district. We’ve seen death threats, genocidal chants, pressure to shut down Jewish cultural events and theatre performances, and now the “encampments” at
McGill University,
University of British Columbia, and
other campuses.
In the United States, tensions rose when, in their testimonies before the U.S. Senate, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT all
refused to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews on campus. In an almost singularly disquieting weekend at Columbia University last month, Jewish students found themselves not only assaulted but implored to take flight from their own ivy-adorned precincts due to a radical student uprising that declared Columbia the “
People’s University of Palestine.” These actions are underpinned by accusations framing Israel as a colonial aggressor, positioning Jews perpetually as oppressors, never as victims.
As former New York Times writer
Bari Weiss notes, this goes far beyond reinterpreting Western civilization in some university graduate course. Decolonization actively aims for our civilization’s destruction. “Decolonization isn’t just a turn of phrase or a new way to read novels,” Weiss recently wrote in The Free Press. “It is a sincerely held political view that serves as a predicate to violence.”
We see these trends loop back to Canada, such as in church burnings met with mere silence from authorities.
In The Epoch Times, columnist Barbara Kay noted early indicators of potential chaos: “Promotion of permanent victimhood of beatified indigenous people and permanent evil of white Canadians, with the only solution liberation through violence, is a recipe for civic disaster.”
My own view of decolonization has shifted from dismissal as an academic frivolity to recognizing its cataclysmic potential. First: the left’s tendency to rationalize—or even celebrate—the barbarity of a genocidal terrorist movement like Hamas. Second: the notable revival of tndigenous militancy in Canada, backed by students and faculty, inspired by conflicts like Gaza’s. It’s a radical extension of the DEI movement.
It is particularly disturbing to witness videos of students and faculty like
Natalie Knight, an instructor at Langara College in Vancouver and an “Indigenous Curriculum Consultant,” publicly proclaiming Hamas’s orgy of rape, baby-killing, torture, and kidnapping an “amazing, brilliant offensive.”
Such positions reveal a shocking disregard for the basic principles of human life and peaceful coexistence—never mind literacy and numeracy, now clearly under attack by DEI’s and decolonization’s assault on language and standards in nearly all fields. Who cares about the details of how to run a power grid, balance a budget, or ensure smooth immigration policy.
At the current rate of unchecked revolutionary fervour, things are likely to get worse. The most dangerous of ideologies, decolonization’s romanticization of militancy—which, let’s not forget, ultimately means the killing of fellow citizens—disregards its real-world impacts, exacerbating tensions and hindering sustainable, peaceful resolutions.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
