RESPONSE TO A COMMENT TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
I see the accusation of racism made simply for having stated facts.
Racism is a form of prejudice, a word which means judging before you know the facts.
Facts are quite the opposite of prejudice: they are real things which require real explanations.
And this is not an explanation surely: "The reason it's people of African descent engaged in the drugs in Toronto is because they've been left to languish in poverty"
I grew up poor and knew many others relatively poor in my generation. Not one of us ever took or sold drugs, nor did any of us ever use a gun.
Indeed, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the tough side of town. The simple fact is that the violent crime rates in Chicago soared with black immigration from the old South and the coming of heavy drug dealing and gun running.
There was a time in Chicago, back in the 1940s or early 1950s, when it was safe to sleep in a nearby park or out on a fire escape. People did this by the thousands before there was much air-conditioning.
No one in his or her right mind would do that today. Indeed, we see significant numbers of heat deaths every summer in Chicago because poor people are afraid to open the windows of their apartments.
Poverty is a function of either a lack of skills to compete in society or a temporary situation under changing circumstances, the last experienced by many immigrants.
People are not "left to languish in poverty." That is a ridiculous statement.
Indeed, in Canada, people of lesser means are treated better than just about anywhere, and immigrants are given privileges they receive few other places.
For example, if you immigrate to the United States, you do not receive free health care. Indeed, in that Darwinian society, you will receive no healthcare until you get a good enough job providing it to you.
Drug dealers are not in poverty: they drive expensive cars and own expensive hand guns. They are people who want to get rich quick without the usual effort, and they do get rich, and they do kill others as part of doing it.
