Why are we still talking about Africentric schools????

If people want them, then let them set them up themselves...

After a long and distinguished career in politics and government, Ontario's first black lieutenant-governor gets his ire up when asked what he thinks about people pushing for Africentric schools to help black youth succeed in school.

"They're not living in the real world," former lieutenant-governor Lincoln Alexander says in a telephone interview from his Hamilton home, referring to those who want public funds for such schools as "leeches."

"They can have all the separate schools they want, as long as they pay for it," says Alexander, who was also Canada's first black MP, elected as a Progressive Conservative in 1968. "Why should we pay for it? And why should we be ghettoized? All my life I've been fighting against segregation and all these people want is to be segregated.

"It's crazy ... I know I speak for a whole lot of people."

Africentric schools -- schools with a curriculum and philosophy that emphasize the achievements of black people and culture and reflect "African values" -- are again on the front-burner and creating plenty of noise as the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) deals with a parent-initiated proposal to create such a school for next September.