The Old White Boys Club
You’ve probably heard of the Old Boys Club. It’s not fiction, but all too real! I have personally experienced the power of this club, its reach and its influence in Canada. But I also know that it transcends national boundaries as the 2024 (and 2016) US elections so clearly demonstrate. It is a stunning reality that in its almost 250-year history, the USA which customarily offers itself up as an exceptional beacon of democracy throughout the world, has never had a female president. Canada is little better. If you recall, after electing Kim Campbell in 1993, we ousted her in the subsequent election in a mere four months. But are we really to believe that women are generally less educated, less intellectually capable, and possess less experience, and knowledge than men? Of course not!
The stark juxtaposition between the educated, accomplished, articulate, dignified, and respectable Vice President Kamala Harris and the buffoonish, hyperbolic, frequently incoherent, attention-seeking, foul-mouthed, multiple times bankrupted businessman, alleged-rapist, and convicted felon Donald Trump demonstrates that education, intellectual capacity, and fitness for the job frequently have nothing to do with who actually gets the job, or the promotion, or the accolades…you get my point. Given Vice President Harris’ recent experience, it should be abundantly clear that the Old Boys Club is actually an Old White Boys Club.
My personal experience with this club demonstrates the ways that white men have fought to hinder, harm, and disrupt the progress of women and men of colour. For twenty years I worked as a schoolteacher and Vice Principal in the third largest school board in Canada, the Durham Board of Education. My board inherited me through the Ministry of Health which ran special schools known as treatment centres, psychiatric hospitals, and group homes for children who had psychological and emotional issues which rendered them unsuitable for the mainstream schools. Teachers in the treatment centres had the same or better education than those in the regular system. We also possessed special certification to be able to work closely with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and childcare workers. Our task was to prepare the students to re-enter the regular system.
I worked in the system run by the Ontario Ministry of Health from 1969 to 1975 after which the ministry turned over control of its twelve treatment centre schools to the local school board run by the Ministry of Education. Their plan was to place the schools under the leadership of one principal. As the senior teacher (of four) in my facility and a person with excellent academic credentials and experience, I was a highly qualified candidate for the job, for which I applied. However, I was denied an interview.
Old White Boys Club Rule #1: White men ensure that other qualified candidates are blocked from promotions and positions of authority.
Instead, a white male teacher who had never been a Vice Principal nor worked with special needs children was appointed. I was asked to assist him in running all the treatment centres (code for training and supervising him) on top of my own regular work. Due to the growth and complexity of the work, the principal soon implemented increased release time from my teaching duties, finally requesting that I be appointed his Vice Principal with 50% release time for the necessary administrative demands. The principal and I became good friends and frequently travelled together across the province to train other teachers. Four years later when he was transferred to another school, he submitted a glowing recommendation on my behalf for the vacant principalship. But again, I was denied an interview.
Old White Boys Club Rule #2: White men will create artificial barriers to prohibit people from accessing the fruits of their labour and education.
True to fashion, another white man with less credentials (only two years of experience as a Vice Principal) and no experience working with special needs children was appointed Principal, becoming my direct supervisor. We became friends in a short period of time.
By now the treatment centre program had grown to thirty-eight teachers and eight different locations requiring routine travel. This growth changed our status with the board. We were now an “A” school requiring a full-time Vice Principal. But the 100% release time for Vice Principals which went with such a categorization was not a given for a black man. Instead, my principal had to fight for the reclassification that allowed me to devote 100% of my time to administrative duties.
Four years passed, my white male principal moved on to another school, and I again applied for the Principal position; this time after having trained back-to-back un(der)qualified white men to become my bosses. Yet again, despite the endorsement of my departing Principal, I was not granted an interview. Although the white man who was appointed recognized immediately that the job should have been mine, he accepted the job anyway. He was not embarrassed to state out loud that he did not understand how he had been named principal when I had taught him how to do the job. Again, I was forced to train an un(der)qualified person who jumped over me to take the position that I so richly deserved.
Old White Boys Club Rule #3a: Even so-called good white men who acknowledge themselves as less deserving or undeserving of a position and admit the unfairness of another person’s rejection will not act to correct the injustice.
Old White Boys Club Rule #3b: White men in the club are practiced at ignoring glaringly obvious institutional racism.
The Old White Boys Club is called such because the members rarely allow access to anyone who does not share their identity. One hallmark of their abuse of power is that they make-up or change rules and regulations to suit their ends of keeping unwanted people out. This was certainly the case when they decreed that board employees could not become Principals until they had worked as a Vice Principal at a minimum of two different schools. In my case, this meant that my applications to transfer to other schools (to obtain the requisite experience to become a Principal) were denied on six separate occasions.
Old White Boys Club Rule #4: White men block access to the pathways of promotion and progress for people they want to keep out.
However, when the treatment centre schools attained an “A” status, the shift in the Vice Principal’s teaching release time to 100% finally made my position desirable and with that desirability, the white men came knocking in their quest to take my job. Suddenly, I was called and offered the transfer I had been seeking for seven years!
Old White Boys Club Rule #5: White men will change the rules of the game while everyone is on the field of play and long after the game has started, if it suits their ends.
The job I was “encouraged” to take, unsurprisingly, represented a downward move back to a position with 50% teaching and 50% administrative time. In effect, it was a demotion. I told the powers that be at the board to go to hell!
Old White Boys Club Rule #6: White men will use unethical and illegal practices to move you out of a position that they desire for themselves.
Needless to say, the Old White Boys Club members were not pleased. Max was no longer willing to “play ball” by the corrupt rules of an unjust game. Several of my Vice Principal colleagues called me to warn that I had “shot myself in the foot” and that such a decision would ruin my career. My response to them was “what career”? The white men who ran the school board had made it abundantly clear to me for about a decade that a black man would never become a principal on their watch. I must point out that by this time I was the most educated person in the entire school board with an undergraduate degree in Economics, a teacher’s college certificate, and an MEd, MBA, MIR, CMA, and CFP.
Old White Boys Club Rule #7: Those in the club value keeping certain people out more than letting qualified, successful, deserving people in.
About one month later, I got a call from the superintendent himself, offering me a transfer with a 75% – 25% administrative to teaching load split. I transferred. After one year, my Principal was transferred out to another school and a new white female Principal was transferred in. She had been a Vice Principal for only three years before being promoted to Principal and I had been one for eleven years. This woman was not respected or liked by our colleagues. I understood that she was rewarded with the promotion and sent to the school because of her willingness to uphold the institutional racism of the board. She quickly did what the superintendent wanted her to do and raised my teaching load to 50%. That was 1988.
Old White Boys Club Rule #8: White women often demonstrate their loyalty to the Old White Boys Club and broker access by selling out those in the BIPOC community.
Tune in for Part 2 of The Old White Boys Club and see how Max overcame adversity and systemic barriers by fighting the entrenched institutional racism of his school board.