A controversial DEI trainer has been hired by a Canadian school board to lecture on “disrupting racism,” despite being accused of pushing a principal to commit suicide.
Kike Ojo-Thompson will give York Region District Schools elementary teachers and administrators a crash course in “disrupting racism.”
TNC News first reported that the Toronto-based diversity trainer will deliver pre-recorded sessions to staff through an online portal.
The four sessions will focus on “naming and disrupting our norms,” “racism, anti-Black racism, and racial inequality,” “whiteness, white supremacy, and organizational culture,” and “promoting change for racial equity.”
For a total of eight hours, the board told TNC it was working with “award-winning equity advisory firm” Kojo Institute to offer teachers a “comprehensive professional development training program.”
Kike Ojo-Thompson to give York Region District Schools elementary teachers and administrators a crash course on ‘disrupting racism’
The York Region District School Board will have teachers tune in to eight hours of pre-recorded seminars from the trainer
The board said: “This training, developed and facilitated by the Kojo Institute’s expert equity consultants, develops participants’ skills and abilities to confront and challenge racism (and other forms of oppression) and anti-Blackness with governance to take.’
This school board taking on Ojo-Thompson comes in the wake of the suicide of Richard Bilkszto, who committed suicide after meeting Ojo-Thompson.
Ojo-Thompson had turned on him during an April 2021 session after he disputed her claim that Canada – where both lived – is more racist than the US.
In the audio of the session, obtained by The free pressBilkszto is heard saying that perhaps Canada was not “the bastion of white supremacy” as Ojo-Thompson had depicted it.
He pointed out that public schools that serve Canada’s poorest students tend to be better funded than their equivalents in the United States.
Ojo-Thompson turned on Bilkszto and told him in front of everyone else, “As white people, there is a lot going on that is not your personal experience. That will never be the case. You will never know it is so. You will never know it is so.
“So your job in this job, as white people, is to believe.”
Ojo-Thompson – who was paid $7,500 an hour for eight hours of seminars – laughed off the challenge in a subsequent discussion from Bilkszto, who was described as a very progressive man who was praised for his focus on “equality” in the workplace.
The anti-racism trainer was later branded ‘offensive’ by an official government investigation into her antics.
Richard Bilkszto, 60, took his own life in Toronto on July 13 after two years of turmoil following an April 2021 encounter at the school where he was principal. He filed an official complaint and won, and had just filed another lawsuit
KOJO Institute founder Kike Ojo-Thompson. Bilkszto said she accused him of supporting white supremacy because he questioned her comments
And in the next session, she mentioned him again as an example of “white supremacist resistance” in newly released audio clips in which she also laughed while making an example of him.
The late principal’s family says his distress only deepened when his school district’s superintendent, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, further shamed him in a tweet suggesting he was a racist.
The tweet, since deleted, praised Ojo-Thompson “for modeling the discomfort administrators may have to experience to disrupt ABR,” or anti-Black racism.
The week after his death, Kike Ojo-Thompson, the diversity trainer, issued a defiant statement that made no apology for her role in Bilkszto’s death – and even suggested she was the victim.
“This incident is being used as a weapon to discredit and suppress the work of all those committed to diversity, equality and inclusion,” she said.
Bilkszto, who was gay and single, was said by friends to have devoted his life to teaching
“We will not be deterred from our work to build a better society for all.”
Bilkszto filed a complaint with school officials saying he had been harassed.
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario investigated and concluded in August 2021 that Thompson’s behavior was “offensive” and amounted to “workplace harassment.”
But friends said he never got over the humiliation of being labeled a white supremacist, and the confrontation consumed him.
Ontario’s school board and Minister of Education are investigating Bilkszto’s death and whether the obsession with woke policies contributed.
Bilkszto, who was gay and single, is said by friends to have devoted his life to teaching and spent time at a tough, predominantly black school in Buffalo, New York.
He had recently retired in hopes of traveling more, but was convinced to retire and work as director of the Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute in Toronto.