Rallying Blacks to Their Common Cause
Young black men, Canadian citizens living in Toronto, as elsewhere in the country, have been found to be victims of racial profiling. Young black men are more likely to be stopped and interrogated by police than are young men with Caucasian appearances. Coincidentally, young black men have been implicated in far greater numbers than their 'white' counterparts in egregious anti-social activities. Such activities include gang membership, drug dealing, crimes of violence, and gang-related killings.This accounts for the big surprise, that young black men appear to be singled out for suspicion. Life is truly unfair. Mothers of young black men readily identify the problems they have with their sons, succumbing to the lure of 'easy money' and boredom with the education-and-jobs route. Peer pressure and sheer material envy play their part in all of this. As does a cultural or social construct whereby too many black families are headed by single parents, fathers being conspicuously absent in their social and familial responsibilities.
There is the added element of families pulling together. It's the old human response to criticism emanating from outside sources. You can criticize, blame and scream at one of your own, but let an outsider do that, and suddenly everyone comes together in outraged defiance of outside interference. So when a crime is committed, although word gets around in the community and much is known, never a word is said to assist law authorities. Disclosure of information to an outside authority by a member of the community is verbotten.
It's not just the social stigma within the community of harbouring a turn-coat, regardless of the nature of the crime involved, but the loose-and-easy manner in which threats are delivered to ensure that word does not leave the community to enable policing authorities to follow a trail, make an arrest, and for the justice system to take its course. The result being, naturally enough, that crimes are committed, both within the community and on occasion without, with few being called to account.
A situation which of course encourages the further commission of crimes with the certain knowledge that the police and community workers are hampered by lack of community support in their endeavours to find solutions to the problems. The black population is conflicted, unwilling to live in fear for and of their own; anxiously reluctant to lend themselves to assisting the authorities. Yet incapable of doing anything themselves meaningful to arrest the situation.
And then comes along young black activists, determined to find solutions, to encourage young blacks to assume higher values, to take responsibility, to eschew law-breaking and the commission of crimes - while at the same time blaming the white community for focusing too heavily on deleterious black activities, and blaming black youth for everything that seems to go awry. A group is established, calling themselves New Black Youth Taking Action, for the purpose of advocating on behalf of black youth.
One of their focuses is on the disproportionate numbers of black students facing expulsion in area schools as a result of a zero tolerance (for anti-social behaviour) provision in Ontario's Safe-Schools Act. The acceptable code of behaviour in social situations, in the public sphere, should be looser for black youth than for all others, evidently. They advocate, of all things, he creation of separate schools for black children. Black children should be held to a different standard of ethics and public demeanor than all others.
And in a move to educate and empower young blacks, Nkem Anizor, president of the group, invited an American, Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the New Black Panther Party (no relation whatever to the historical Black Panthers) to speak at a rally planned to take place at Queen's Park, and a later talk at Ryerson University to students there.
The plans of mice and men do often go awry, and in this instance, Canadian border officials refused entry to Mr. Shabazz. His socially unpalatable brand of black pride, unfortunately, includes incitement to hatred and racial stereotyping of the most incendiary manner, along with the commendation of the efficacy of killing police and blowing up 'Zionist' supermarkets. Inciting to hatred and such degrees of racial disharmony are not only frowned upon in Canada, but they are also against the law.
"The black community has no political maturity in Toronto, and our first weak little attempt to have a rally is being lambasted and blown apart because one group does not like who we chose," according to Ms. Anizor, full-time activist, one-time University of Toronto biology graduate. Sob for the 'first weak little attempt', and clarify, please do, the identity of that 'one group' who took offence at libelous and incendiary group characterization, please do. And she does.
"What's to blame is the power of the Jewish lobby to influence politicians, to influence media, to influence whatever it took. Because it took one letter, one press release from B'nai Brith and the firestorm began", she helpfully explained. As for Mr. Shabazz, he added: "Canada is on Malik alert. B'nai Brith has won this one, and I'm starting to see the power of the Jewish lobby in Canada, full force. I thought Canada was free.
"I was coming to preach a message of love and solidarity among black people. I had a very positive message and I'm very disappointed that, instead, they would choose to muzzle my voice, which leads me to believe that they have something to be afraid of. I come from a land where free speech is a benchmark, and I didn't realize that there's no free speech in Canada, that certain parties can choose who gets to deliver a message. I think this is evidence that black people are being oppressed in Canada."
Malik Zulu Shabazz, a colleague of the irrepressible Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam is reported also to have claimed that Jews stayed home en masse from the World Trade Center on 9/11, and to have said, on the topic of police aggression, that "The only solution any time there is a funeral in the black community is a funeral in the police community." At the Queen's Park rally people carried placards, one of which read: "Don't snitch Rich' Steele," a reference to Richard Steele, a key witness to the Boxing Day 2005 killing of Jane Creba, a white teenager, shopping with her mother, who was shot dead by a young black man.
Why on earth would a young and intelligent black activist feel she is doing any good for her community by bringing a racist social provocateur to speak to troubled youth? Of course her own response was hardly malice free and her racist credentials came flowing out of her own mouth. Jews were always in the forefront of the civil rights movement, marching alongside blacks in their struggle for equality during Dr. Martin Luther King's epoch-changing peaceful political movement for equal recognition. Just as they were fiercely and actively supportive in South Africa's struggle against Apartheid.
Is this indicative of the best the black community can aspire to in their latest struggle?
Labels: Canada, Human Fallibility, Justice
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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