Canadian History X

People have grown very cynical about the media. Not cynical enough. I am starting this off by pulling back the curtain on something. I have never really spoken of this technique before, though it is accepted practice to do this. Some of you may have guessed this is being done.

Whenever you have something controversial to say, you line up someone to bring credibility to your argument. Usually this is done either in the form of the expert guest or one uses a streeter. A streeter is a caller or video of an average citizen.

The point is to soften the blow of what you are about to say, esspecially if it is politically incorrect or sterotypical, or even downright racist, by having someone from the group you are about to bad mouth either start the topic or agree with your assessment of the topic. It gives you free reign to say whatever it is you want. It is the media equivelant of saying "some of my closest friends are black."

I am sure you have seen it many times over the last few years. After the break we are going to talk to Ahmed, professor of Arab Studies at stuff university A, he'll tell us why it is a good idea to strip search every arab looking person who tries to board a plane. Oh ok, if Ahmed is cool with it, then it must be ok to talk about it.

Now, what happens if we replace Ahmed with Allan?

Think back a few years when the Dean of Harvard tried to bring light to the fact that women consistantly test low on math and science based testing. Rather than discussing this real issue, which has nothing to do with brain power, and possibly finding some solutions, all we talked about was how wrong it was for HIM to say it.

Flash forward two years, a famous female professor says the exact same thing, and for weeks we heard about socialization, focused teaching and tutoring issues in the middle school levels. It took us nearly two years to address the subject, merely because of the messenger.

So while I call it a cynical action on the part of the press, it is also a necessary delivery system....in some cases. It is necessary to have a discussion on some issues to bring them to light. In other cases it is merely window dressing for racism.

Now that we have laid a bit of groundwork, maybe I should get to the point.

This morning, on old white guy radio, a douche....errrr competant host, decided that it would be a great idea to bring light to the problem of gang violance in parts of Toronto. This has become, in his words of course, a serious problem in the black community. Shockingly, his first caller was obviously a black man with a heavy Jamaican accent.

Here;s the problem. He is way off base.

I am about to go out on a limb here and reveal a lot of information. Some of it could actually get me in some serious trouble, but I think it is important.

Toronto has had a gang problem for more than twenty years. I should know. I was part of the problem for 8 of those years.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, the problem was mainly because of white sepremisist gangs. Three of them were running wild in Toronto. They were being supplied by biker gangs and the Italians. The big concern was the influx of certain cultural influences from the United States. You see, this was the New Jack City era. The time of Juice. The time of the glorification of gang culture.

In order to push back from what they feared, the organized criminal groups supported a bunch of diaffected young men and women.

These young white folks turned their hatred outwards. The worst offenders were the White Knights. They controlled a lot of territory in downtown. They were carved out a bunch of hoods by the Italians and the bikers. The Italian group wanted them to push the black gangs in the west end out, and the bikers wanted the core and harbourfront back.

Stuck in the middle of all this was the artist area. A bunch of laid back musicians and whatnot were stuck in the middle.

Violance was bound to happen. Several beatings and two murders happened in 1990. I was there for one of these. My friend Andre was killed by one of these groups. They decided to let me live because I was white. As you may understand, this pissed me off.

In the summer of 1990, and leading in to the fall, several houses and warehouses began to be burned to the ground. Suddenly the white surpremisists were getting beat something fierce. Their territory was shrinking. Two street level crews came to prominance downtown because of this. The DK and the Vanally Park Boys. The DK w2ere a bunch of pissed off disaffectedd youth influenced by a coupe of cultures. One was of course the NWA, public enemy sort of thing. The other was a punk culture. This anarchy laiden thing.

Anyway, violance insued as they fought each other for dominance. When things looked like they could not be controlled, the Italians stepped back in and Backed the Boys. The DK went the way of the bikers, which was a bit natural given the family ties some members had.

Everyone was fighting with the Triads. The Triads had the entire heroin trade sewn up. The bikers had amphetemines and the Italians had coke.

By 1998 things had exploded. The Italians had nearly wiped out the DK. The two survivors...well three, scattered to the winds.

Most of the violance west of Yonge street was blamed on the Vanally Park Boys because they were always getting caught jacking grandma.

The ineter gang violance though was always between the surrogates, the Italians rarely got dirty. The bikers took a hands off approach, offering only cheap product and all the wweaponry an army needed.

Anyway, my knowledge of what happened between 1998 and 2008 is somewhat sketchy. Bits and pieces.

What I can tell you is that, anyone who thinks gay people are pussies is an idiot. Anyone who thinks serbian gangs are acting on their own knows nothing about who actually controls things.

Flash forward to today. I assure you scarborough is not controlled by black gangs. They are the tools of two people fighting it out on a national level.

The bikers and the Italians are at it again. My brother is a victrim of this to some extent. You see he was living a lie. A lie he couldn't live with anymore. He was playing both sides. No one knew he was old school biker tool. Her was partnered with the mob on his business ventures and the old school ties might have gotten him killed if anyone found out.

The point I am making is that the violance has a source. It rarely is what you think it is. The thing that causes this behaviour is always poverty, family disorder, abuse, and drugs. The players on the street level change, but it is always the poor and disaffected. They are used and abused by the organizedd crime factors in any given environment, just as they are in the military.

How many rich people do you think are infantry grunts? Same thing on the front lines of urban warfare.

The problem I had with what doucheman had to say is that he blamed all the violance on the lack of black fathers. Seriously, I am not kidding.

What hurts is that he is correct to a certain extent. Positive, strong male role modeling is one cause of the problem. Remove the need to prove oneself, to medicate oneself, the define oneself in a way that provides some center of control and esteem and you remove the canvas chicken hawks have to paint on.

It is the people who get rich of the crime of the streets; the ones who provide the set with the moral authroity to break the rules are the real problem.

There is no way to treat this problem by attacking the source of this misuse of our youth. The powerful will always protect themselves. What we need to do is remove the incentive and motivation of the youth.

We are far beyond blame at this point. Saying it is the fault of boys having children is to deny the reality that we as a society have the power to correct this.


If we provide the proper rolemodeling, we make a difference. Yelling at those who are not doing the job merely allows those that are providing it to continue to steal our youth. We say to a deadbeat dad, or an absentee, or abusive parent. We tell them that it is their fault. We tell them to step up. We rarely provide them the tools needed. All we do is make them feel worse.

While our eyes are diverted to a symptom of the problem, the chicken hawks swooop in and become the role models. The chicken hawks whisper in the ears of our youth that they can be strong and powerful, they just have to do everything they are told. Then daddy gives them some new toys to play with.

Where are the role models. Where are the real men and women who can step up? Where are the people who can give their time, their experience to our kids. They are our kids. Like it or not, we have them, and we need to do something with them.

All I heard this morning from a frightenedd little man was we need to blame bad parents and punsih the kids more harshly. At no point did this person take any responsibility for perpetuating a system the creates the poverty and socia disease that ferments in our youth. At no time did he step up and say, we need to do something. He merely said we need to blame everyone who doesn't look like us.

I suppose you can try treating cancer by cutting it out. Sooner or later it comes back. Until we develop a cure for it, we need to irradiate it, and we need to reduce carcinogen consumption.

We need to treat our kids as if they mkatter, and we need to step in front of them and show them there is a way; a better way.

Or we can just get a black man to say other black men are to blame. This should make us feel better until we can move out of the neighborhood.