Last week, the leadership class at Clayton Heights asked me to come in and talk about race and leadership. It was a great conversation with a diverse group of students. The students wanted to know about how race and leadership were interwined but it has been a while since I have thought of this.
When I applied for admin positions, it is important to note that not many leaders of color were applying. As the previous five principals hired were white males, there seemed to be a bias. However, to me it was never clear if this was overt or just a function of the fact that “we” were not applying for the leadership positions.
I began the class talk with stories of my upbringing in England in a fairly racist society. We were raised Punjabi but I often tried to hide this fact in society. There were a lot of immigrants families where I grew up but the Caucasian families still ran the show.
When we moved to Canada, I experienced a much more subtle racism. So much that I basically shunned my culture to fit in. I remember hearing about a Muslim comedian who would hide from his mother in the grocery store so as to not be connected to her. I feel I did the same in many aspects of my culture. I made every attempt to hide my upbringing; I did not speak Punjabi or listen to Bhangra music. I was probably the only “brown” guy listening to Depeche Mode and the Smiths. For me, it just made my life easier.
As I near my 50s, I sometimes feel awful that the need to fit in overshadowed all that my culture could for me. I now take my daughters to the Vaisakhi parade and we do go the temple for family events but I still feel like an outsider. The joke that I often give when Surrey would place me at a “brown” school is that I cannot be the great brown hope. I tell our indo families that I want to their kids to look up to me but it feels that is a tough road – I cant walk the walk.
Of course, now I have been moved to Semiahmoo Secondary which at first glance seems like the typical White Rock school but I was walking the parking lot on Thursday and ran into some South Asian boys – for the first time in a while, I felt a connection with indo students. They seemed genuinely happy that I was there but “the Great Brown Hope”?
Some of the leadership students have been emailing me with some salient points and I think they did get what I was trying to say:
“Not only were your stories funny and a great way to start the day, but they also helped me realize the unfairness and hidden racism in the status quo. You brought up some extremely accurate points about hidden racism in Canada that I hadn’t really noticed before. Along with that, your past experience with this unjust treatment also inspired me as I noticed that you always stood up for what you believed was wrong. In spite of what ever odds were stacked against you, you managed to persevere and never got discouraged. As much as we would all like to believe that life is fair for everyone, your stories helped realize that sadly, that is not the case.”
Shifting Gears 
Particularly in K-12 education, there seems to be appreciation for or growing acceptance of student diversity in terms of motivation, passions and learning needs, but there still exists the belief that underneath it all, we are all somehow the same as human beings, share core values and need/want the same things.
Culture is far, far more pervasive and deep than we talk about, which is a shame. Your story here highlights the challenges that people of non-dominant cultures face daily, and point to the privileges implicit in being part of the dominant culture, privilege that the majority of people don’t even know or recognize that they enjoy.