Alvin Curling was notorious as a virtually incompetent Speaker in the Ontario Parliament. Hearing him talk about his report on black-youth violence makes it painfully clear why that was so.
The man cannot think clearly. For example, in defending the collection of race-based statistics, Mr. Curling talked about the way things can be put to good or bad uses, citing the example of the hydrogen bomb. What on earth were the good uses of the hydrogen bomb?
Every cliché possible concerning black youth and violence was served up by Mr. Curling. His approach is simply not helpful. It gives us no factual basis for dealing with a real problem, the violence of young black males.
Numerous times, for example, Mr. Curling referred to the low graduation rate of black youth in Toronto – on the order of 40%.
That indeed is a vital social fact, but Mr. Curling turns it completely on its head by claiming it is evidence of racism and inadequate public facilities.
He seems totally unaware that this poor rate of graduation is typical of the black youth of his own homeland of Jamaica. Indeed, it is typical of many dominantly black regions and countries, including (predominantly black) American cities and neighborhoods, other Caribbean states, South Africa, and even black neighborhoods in Britain.
Yes, Toronto remains a relatively safe city, but if you keep reciting that you ignore important and threatening trends. The fact is that about as many black young men have been killed by guns in Toronto as Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, and they have been killed only by other black men.
Our overall low violent crime rate – one of the best in North America – is owing to a continued drop in traditional forms of murder and violence on a per capita basis. But this overall gain is partly offset by a new kind of violence Toronto has never known before, public shootings with no consideration for bystanders, simply insanely scary stuff.
In the recent past, the Toronto School Board accepted a “zero tolerance” policy for violence in the schools. It served the interests of other students and teachers who all deserve a violence-free place in which to learn.
As soon as it became apparent that black males overwhelmingly made up the statistics of those penalized under the policy - people of Mr. Curling’s inclination would refer to those “victimized” by it – the policy was dropped. All the earnest representations over the merit of the policy by officials a few years before were reversed instantly after a flood complaints from people of Mr. Curling’s views.
Anyone who understands statistics knows that this kind of argument for policy reversal, the argument that the policy was ipso facto unfair because more of one group’s young men were penalized, is unwarranted in logic.
It is the same kind of thing as trying to explain crime statistics by vague notions like prejudice. Prejudice of course exists – and it exists among all groups – but it is actually a form of superstition no rational person accepts. Hard statistics are not superstition, they are facts.
In America, for example, there is a huge, decades-long body of statistical evidence showing that roughly half of violent crime is committed by young black males, despite black people making up only about 13% of American society. These trends are supported by statistics in other societies also. They are not the product of prejudice or imagination – not when we have millions of statistics – but hard facts to be faced.
Despite these dismal facts, we see that when a bright and talented black man offered himself as candidate for president, the American people embraced him.
Contrary to Mr. Curling’s recitation of clichés, poverty, it can be demonstrated, has little to do with it. We have had generation after generation of different groups coming from other places with almost no resources – poor Chinese, Koreans, Jews, Italians, Irish, and others – and making a success of things without behaving as armed psychopaths on our streets.
My brother and I were raised in extremely humble conditions. We never once thought about carrying loaded guns to school or shooting people on the street. But then we did not have babies at fourteen, we did not drop out of school, we never touched drugs, and we had a mother who set demanding standards for us despite having to work at a demanding job full-time.
Immigrants from Jamaica have transplanted that country's culture of violence and crime (1200 murders a year with a population the size of Toronto where the long-term historical annual rate is on the order of 60) to Canada. This is a crime problem immensely more than it is a general social problem.
There is a syndrome of behaviors we find in every black country and region. The syndrome includes early pregnancy, dropping out of school, fathers who ignore their babies, and general lack of economic success compared to almost any other group you care to name.
Canada is one of the best and most tolerant countries on earth, and I resent the kind of reverse-racism people like Mr. Curling promote and thrive on, blaming Canada for the lack of success in large parts of his particular community. Canada is in fact - with health care, school, and other helps – far more generous to immigrants than the United States and many other lands. And just look at the people in the Caribbean lined up to emigrate to Canada. They aren’t lined up because Canada is an awful place.
No, Mr. Curling offers us nothing helpful, and indeed parts of what he says are destructive to the fabric of our society.
Your past, recent topic of increased poverty in the GTA likely has a related explanation.
Economically-unsuccessful groups like Jamaicans are now concentrating in areas of Toronto. More successful groups, as for example Asians, are moving out to Markham. Likely a close examination of the stats would show these kinds of trends explaining increasing poverty in Toronto.
There is little industrial work in Toronto for unskilled school drop-outs of any ethnicity.
These facts together define a major and growing structural problem for Toronto. Talk about social centers or recreational facilities, while I don't condemn them, is far off the mark of dealing with hard basic trends.
If these trends continue, there is little doubt Toronto will one day begin to hollow out as so many American cities have done. Contrary to widespread notion that America’s phenomenon of “white urban flight” in the 1960s represented racism, it largely was a reflection of middle class people’s fear of living with violence. Indeed, confirming that today, we see the flight of successful blacks from violent old neighborhoods to suburbs.
