As you know, I've often done the ol' "this day in (blog) history" gag looking back on a post admiring or reflecting on its relevence.
I admit taking a wary eye to the piece. Traditionally, one of the defining features of the Star's coverage of ghetto crime has been an obsessive desire to pin the problem on white racism or the policies of Mike Harris's 1990s-era government. Not so this piece. Though it gives vague lip service to an alleged lack of "programs" available to youth, the article makes it clear that blame lies primarily with two groups: the boys themselves, and the fathers who abandon them.
(okay okay, I'll link back to one of my own relevant posts: how white and peaceful Toronto looked in 1996)
But it wasn't Steven's dad who decided to reject school and honest employment. It was Steven. In Toronto's poorest (read: blackest) communities, being a working stiff is viewed widely with contempt. Instead, youths want the instant status that comes from dealing drugs, packing a gun and flashing a lot of garish jewellery.
The key point that is too often missed in Toronto and elsewhere is that such self-destruction is the product of a conscious choice. Canadian adolescents are not powerless inheritors of a legacy of slavery or Jim Crow: Most of the city's black families immigrated in recent decades, when anti-discrimination already was well-established in law. Yet we persist in patronizing minority communities by treating their youth as helpless pawns in the thrall of "alienation," "racism," "marginalization" and the like. In her Sept. 27, 2005, installation speech, the Governor-General gave voice to this vague received wisdom when she declared, "nothing in today's society is more disgraceful than the marginalization of some young people who are driven to isolation and despair." It is not "isolation and despair" that cause men to abandon their children -- but rather the disgraceful fact that such behaviour is accepted by certain sub-cultures. The enormous discrepancy in crime rates among Toronto's ethnic communities is matched closely by discrepancies in fatherlessness. Overall, the percentage of Toronto households containing young children that are headed by a single parent is about 19%. Among economically successful minorities, such as Jews, it is closer to 10%. But among Jamaican-Canadians, the figure is an astounding 54%.
(okay okay, two posts: his comment about Jews vs. Niggers made me think of this classic)
Fifteen (well, 14 1/2) years later Kay is still covering much the same beat...
Related: Nigger Toronto produced it's own serial killing rapper.
