Racism on TERB

[Questor]

Please excuse this rather lengthly post, but it deals with an important issue.

In a recent thread about Caribana, someone made an innocent inquiry in the following way: “Hey Everyone, Just wanted to know if there is any terb's people Females and males are going to party all weekend in Toronto?”

What followed was a stunning display of latent as well as explicitly racist attitudes. Some disguised with clumsy attempts at humour. Others attempting to put down the annual event with comments about the violence that does often coincide with the festivities. And to be fair, I must point out that on second reading of the thread, I saw at least as many people standing up for the festival, for Caribbean culture and for black people in general as there were those who spewed out such venom and hatred towards the same. I am trying to understand the fear that these people live with, why they feel so threatened, and why they feel the need to lash out and strike at those who may be a little bit different from them.

When I consider that there does seem to be a surge in gun related violence around the time of Caribana (and I wonder how much media manipulation is responsible for this impression) I do not understand why people seem to focus in on the race of the perpetrators of this violence. It strikes me as quite odd. I haven’t done a scientific study or anything, but I imagine that the perpetrators of the violence could be classified by their age as easily as their race. Let’s face it, the vast majority are in the 18 –25, or at most 18-30 demographic. So where are all the people condemning youth. “God damned young people! They are all good for nothing. Out of control. Hang the lot of them.” So where are the people lashing out with such hatred against young people?

By way of example, let me quote one member, and in brackets, when he refers to blacks, I will write youth. Here is a person trying to justify these attacks on black people. But he doesn’t explain why he feels that the person’s race is the key factor to focus on. I hope this example shows how ridiculous such gross generalizations are.

“I don't see the biggotry <sic> in the comments so far. What you have is comments that you don't like aimed at the black (youth) community.
It's politically incorrect to say it, but the fact of the matter is that a very small percentage of the population is committing a disproportionate percentage of all of the crime.”

So why does he single out black people rather than young people?

Hey, if you want to take it one step further, what about the sex of all these perpetrators…they are all male. Why not blame the violence on males? It seems to me there is more justification in that than in blaming the black people. Once again, to quote:

“Not to slag you friend, I am sure you <sic>a great guy, but the black (male) communitee<sic> in Toronto needs to get a handle on crime.”

Why do these people always pick a person’s race and point it out? Why not his age or gender? Or his marital status? “God damned single people!”

And its not just in this one thread. There was also a recent thread on deportation of immigrants where the racists seem to come crawling out from under their stones.

And for the record, I haven't bothered with Caribana for years. Its just not the sort of thing I enjoy. And I think that immigrants who are convicted for violent crimes a number of times should be deported. So it is not that which I have a problem with. Its the venom and the hatred that comes out when people start to talk about these things. Its very sad that we have such a long way to go in learning how to live together in peace.

By way of closing, I want to make two more brief points. First, what is this “black community” that people refer to? We have black people born here in Toronto. We have black people who have emigrated from African countries. We have black people who have emigrated from the Caribbean. But aside from their race, there isn’t much with which to define them as “community,” except perhaps the degree to which they are denied opportunity in a racist society. It makes about as much sense as talking about the “white community.” There is no white community. There may be cultural groups made up of Portuguese, Italian, British, French, Irish, German, Polish, etc. So why do people talk about the “black community?” And why do they try to put responsibility for the violence in our city on them? There is no “them.” It's only “us.” It's our city.

And lastly, I want to thank those who stood up for Caribana and our black brothers and sisters. We need more people like you on TERB and in Toronto. It ain’t easy trying to argue with so many ignorant, hateful attitudes.

 

[Svend]

Guns, drugs and violence are a growing problem in the Caribbean also, I'm not surprised we get a hint of it in Toronto.
This also bothers most people of Caribbean background, their joyful culture has been tainted by a small number.
Overall, the festival is a benefit to us.

 

[Preferred]

Some people are just idiots, thats about all I can say on the issue.

That is all anyone can say. If people want to be ignorant, you cannot change that.

All i know is that my son and his friends (White, Chinese, East Indian) went to Caribbana, and they had a wonderful time.

 

[childwild]

Interesting post, ignorance is everywhere why would you be surprised that it would not be found on an escort review board?

 

[Pedro Sanchez]

I was there also with many of my black, white, brown and yellow friends. But so far all the shootings at Caribbanna are "Black Youth" targeting "Black Youth" (maybe i'm wrong, but i would like to see an example pertaining to Caribanna where the shooters and victims were not black.) Guess i would be one of those people you consider ignorant.

Too tired of being politically correct.

 

[svtcobra]

I was shocked.. but

Well Thank you for posting this.

When I originaly posted the whole thread. I really didn't expect to read all of the remarks that was left. I truely didn't think about the reaction that I would get.
It really turn my stomach, but then again going by Questor, Nikki, and Sheik comment. I stand with them.

I hope the people that went to the festival did enjoy their time The true essence caribana you have to go to Trinidad or Brazil to enjoy the real life and how it is down there to really get what it is like.

That is all I have to say..

Thanks again Questor for this post.

Svt

 

[Daddio]

Hey, if you want to take it one step further, what about the sex of all these perpetrators…they are all male. Why not blame the violence on males? It seems to me there is more justification in that than in blaming the black people.

<hijack>
Not to diminish the impact of your post but this suggestion puts me in mind of a Family Guy Episode "I am Peter, Hear me Roar!". Peter takes feminine sensitivity training at a retreat for women and comes home more feminine than Lois. He chose to lash out against males at the Million Man March, by pushing Jesse Jackson aside and announcing to all the marchers, "you're the reason there's so much crime in our society and you're the reason there's so much violence and hatred in this country". Of course he was talking about male aggression not African-American stereotypes, but that didn't stop the crowd from chasing him down the street, portrayed with a hilarious aerial shot of one dot fleeing a million dots to the sound of a distant crowd roaring in anger...
</hijack>
I think what people were referring to was the history of shootings that occurred at the festival -- not the source of them being blacks or Carribeans. Unfortunately some people are not going to be able to differentiate between the two. In fact, I take part in the annual UJA walkathon for Israel. I hear the same backlash every year from people that I ask for sponsorship about the occupied territories. I just ignore it. You can't expect everyone's politics to be your own. You cant expect everyone to understand politics.

 

[solitaria]

Crime has a high correlation to education and economics and is by far the best fit if you are going to make generalizations. The next best fit would be testosterone levels and that is why males commit more violent crimes than females and is partly why young men commit more crimes than old men (high levels of testosterone make you braver and cloud your judgment). Anyway, someone that is well educated better understands the repercussions of their actions and has developed their thinking process to a higher level through their educational achievements in all likelihood. Someone that is rich has less reason to do crimes because they are living the good life and have too much to lose. Therefore poor people and what that means in terms of education and economics usually commit more crime for the above reasons. Black people are usually poorer than other types of races and that is mainly because of the hierarchy of power at the top. The same could be said about youth too, it is just that black youth is even more disadvantaged in terms of opportunity and education on the whole than other types of youth.

Racism usually is a fearful reaction to a perceived loss of power or a potential for that loss of power to occur or on the flip side a sly, immoral, conscious attempt to make a play for more power and is invariably self-motivated (it's evolutionary origin perhaps is self-preservation). Racists inevitably want discrimination that benefits themselves in terms of the power and economics of a situation within the reality they live in. That is why through the ages the people in power usually play the masses off of one another with any artificial and arbitrary divide that is tenuous and superficial to any thinking man (mostly religion and skin color or ethnicity but could be height even like in the case of Rwanda or terrorism/Islam in the case of George Bush/America and their quest to stabilize future oil prices and control flow of oil) to gain and seize more power for themselves. That is basically racism and its motivations in a nutshell.

 

[anything_goes]

For my part, I think that there are certainly bigoted people in the world, and that sucks. Hopefully, they don't infect their kids with the same hatred.

However, I think that there are also a lot of misunderstandings, many of which could be solved by the following 2 suggestions:

1) When noting that, say, 3 shootings happened at Caribana, and that all 3 were commited by blacks and against blacks (while no shootings occurred at gay pride, the xmas parade, etc), please avoid generalizing this into "black people are criminals". To do so shows a lack of intelligence.

2) When denouncing people who say "I'm not going to Caribana because I don't want to get shot", please take a second to consider that, if there's a higher than usual concentration of shootings at a particular event, this statement may not come from a racist.

 

[james t kirk]

Thanks for quoting me, don't be afraid to use my user ID.

I stand by my comments. I don't feel that they were racist in the least. There were six shootings last week. Everyone of them was carried out by blacks, and no-one saw anything. Is it racist to mention that fact?

The age old arguement that poverty is to blame for crime is a complete crock of crap. There are lots of poor people who do not resort to crime black white or purple. My grand parents were so poor they had nothing to eat, and lived in an old coal cellar. I haven't heard any stories about them committing any crimes as a result of their poverty. What they did instead was to go out and work.

Here's an interesting link comparing crime rates to poverty levels.

Pan down to chart No. 2

It's interesting that the poorest state - Mississippi ranks 40'th in terms of crime. Florida ranks first in crime.

So much for the correlation between crime and poverty. The statistics don't bear that one out.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-toughcrime.htm

I will leave you with something to think about however, it was written by Jesse Jackson....

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

http://theoccidentalherald.com/printer.php?id=1013

I guess Jesse is a racist too.

 

[johnhenrygalt]

Is it racist to mention that fact?

No. Neither would it be sexist to mention that they were all men (assuming they were), nor would it be "age-ist" to mention that they were all youths (assuming they were).

 

[solitaria]

No. Neither would it be sexist to mention that they were all men (assuming they were), nor would it be "age-ist" to mention that they were all youths (assuming they were).

But what is the point and motivation of the observation?

 

[Questor]

2) When denouncing people who say "I'm not going to Caribana because I don't want to get shot", please take a second to consider that, if there's a higher than usual concentration of shootings at a particular event, this statement may not come from a racist.

LOL yes, there were a lot of people denouncing Caribana for the violence while not actually mentioning black people. I wonder how many would announce they were staying away if it was not a celebration of Caribbean culture but rather naked women mud wrestling, free admission. I bet those same people would take their chances with the violence. Anyway, what violence there is is spread out over a period of several days and all over the city. As was pointed out by some, violence at the actual Caribana parade has been rare over the years. The parade festivities is far from a high risk activity. So why do these people feel the need to denounce the festival? Come on! I don't get the feeling that TERB is filled with risk adverse people. This kind of comment directed at the violence in many cases is just latent racism. People are condemning it for other reasons, false reasons, and they don't want to admit that they would be down there with bullets aflying through the air if it was naked mud wrestling instead of a celebration of Caribbean culture. LOL

 

[Goober Mcfly]

God damn single people.

 

[Questor]

I stand by my comments. I don't feel that they were racist in the least. There were six shootings last week. Everyone of them was carried out by blacks, and no-one saw anything. Is it racist to mention that fact?

The age old arguement that poverty is to blame for crime is a complete crock of crap. There are lots of poor people who do not resort to crime black white or purple. My grand parents were so poor they had nothing to eat, and lived in an old coal cellar. I haven't heard any stories about them committing any crimes as a result of their poverty. What they did instead was to go out and work.

So what's your point James T? Poverty has no impact on violence? Levels of violence in "black communities" are so high because the people are black? They don't have the moral fortitude of your grandparents and are too lazy to get out there and work? ROFLMAO

 

[solitaria]

The age old arguement that poverty is to blame for crime is a complete crock of crap. There are lots of poor people who do not resort to crime black white or purple. My grand parents were so poor they had nothing to eat, and lived in an old coal cellar. I haven't heard any stories about them committing any crimes as a result of their poverty. What they did instead was to go out and work.

You are not thinking very clearly. Most black people that live in poverty don't commit crimes either. The argument is one of correlations and tendencies. If you are poor (and I would say uneducated too) you have a greater motivation towards / (lack of reasoning against) crime and that is the argument and why you see more black people who are poor committing crimes. The causal factor is the economics /education not the skin color although a racist will choose to see it as the skin color and be more than happy to point it out as such. I have given logical reasons why economics and education would give rise to crime can you give me any reason why you think the added pigment of being black would be genetically tied to being more predisposed to crime and how that would work exactly?

 

[Keebler Elf]

Most of the gun violence on the streets involves young black males. Sad, but true.

 

[JoyfulC]

I am an immigrant from the United States -- from the Detroit area (Ann Arbor, actually) -- an area that is very racially mixed, but not all that culturally mixed compared with areas like Toronto or Vancouver or Calgary.

But still, when I came to Canada, it took me years to assimilate and, essentially, become Canadian in my heart. And I had to give up much of my American identity in order to do so.

My husband (born and bred Canadian) and I have come to the conclusion that, best intentions aside, it is a difficult adjustment for both immigrants and the population that they're immigrating into. Both will be changed, in the end.

The US went through a turbulent "melting pot" era about a hundred years ago. I think Canada's peak for this was probably in the late 70s/early 80s. It's just something that has to be gone through. Namecalling and recrimination don't really help. People feel what they feel -- as long as they experience their feelings within the boundaries of laws, then that's acceptable on their way to forming a new Canada. We all need to be patient and perhaps a bit less judgmental of one another.

..c..

 

[Keebler Elf]

To try and attribute crime to any one factor is an oversimplification. There is no silver bullet solution, so to speak. You must look at all the factors. Poverty, lack of education, substance abuse, and culture all play a role in crime activity (and that's by no means an exhaustive list).

If you think poverty has nothing to do with crime, you're a fool. Go talk to a criminologist and you'll learn something. That study that was linked earlier even points out in the conclusion that countries with less disparity of wealth have less crime. But that's not to say poverty is the driving factor. When you combine all the factors together, however, then you see what drives crime.

Btw, I find it amusing that the black community doesn't want racial crime statistics to be kept. They claim it will lead to increased police harassment towards blacks. But then they claim that there already IS increased police harassment. The truth of the matter, which they don't want to admit of course, is that race-based crime statistics will clearly show in black and white (pardon the pun ) what everybody knows but are afraid/unwilling to say: black youth are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in this city. Gasp! "I can't believe Keebler just said that! What a racist!". Whatever. Denial is the first roadblock on the path to success.

The sad thing is that keeping such statistics would highlight the problem and allow society to work at fixing it instead of sweeping it under the carpet.

 

[solitaria]

Btw, I find it amusing that the black community doesn't want racial crime statistics to be kept. They claim it will lead to increased police harassment towards blacks. But then they claim that there already IS increased police harassment. The truth of the matter, which they don't want to admit of course, is that race-based crime statistics will clearly show in black and white (pardon the pun ) what everybody knows but are afraid/unwilling to say: black youth are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in this city. Gasp! "I can't believe Keebler just said that! What a racist!". Whatever. Denial is the first roadblock on the path to success.

Why would you find it amusing that the black community doesn't want it to be shown that black youth are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime?

People will never use racial statistics to improve the disadvantaged conditions of the black person. Everyone knows deep down that black people commit more crimes in our society without statistics but how many people search for the real reasons behind those statistics such as poverty and education and an established hierarchy of power against them so that they can't improve their lot in life nearly as easily as other races? How many people really offer or want to look for solutions in solving that situation even when the black person's disadvantage is their advantage? As they say there are always too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Racial stats if anything will be used to wrongly reinforce the bigoted perceptions behind why black people are disadvantaged and why they should be kept in that position and not really offer solutions on a "path to success" because that is not why people hold racist views to begin with that look to be reinforced.