Racism is worse than it was a generation ago, while there are fewer resources and structures to counter this great evil than existed in years past.-- Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling, Toronto Star
"That's an outright lie" is the phrase that immediately comes to mind. But these are both decent men so I'll just assume that it's just an error albeit, in my mind, a ridiculous one.
I've lived in Toronto my entire life. I know lots of people and I rarely hear a racist remark. This just sounds like an excuse for an endless spree of violence by a bunch of young guys from a few social housing neighbourhoods in Toronto.
My cousins used to live in one of those neighbourhoods. I use to go there often when I was a boy and there was nothing to be afraid of. So, in this case, I would say the criminals rather than their environment are primarily responsible for their crimes.
McMurtry and Curling say the opposite. But they offer no proof at all.
Does the government have to spend money on these guys? Yes. But not to battle racism. The many articles about kids who have been stabbed and shot reveal that many (and perhaps most) of them come from fatherless households and some (and perhaps many) of them appear to become unwed fathers when they are in their teens, themselves.
Here's a quote from an article by Lynda Hurst in The Toronto Star from December, 3, 2005.
"My father had four or five kids with different women and twins with my mum. I never saw him, so I really had no dad. My mum gave me my values. When the time came, I could easily have gone the same way as him. But I made the conscious decision not to do that. I tell men that they can break the norm. I did.""We want to start teaching parenting, but when we say that, people don't want to hear it. They want to point the finger, lay blame."
-- Wendell Gibbs, assistant pastor of Scarborough's Heron Park Baptist Church
