Anytime Donald Trump talks about "The African Americans", he always mentions "inner cities". Anytime people say "Black Lives Matter", racists or the ignorant respond with "What about Black on Black crime?" then mention Chicago.
There have been a number of high profile shootings throughout Toronto over the past week.
Here's how those things are related and what we can do about it.
1. Inner cities are an outdated term, meant to signify poor areas with low resources. Here's how they came to be and how Black people mainly ended up in them, via Slate.
2. Black On Black crime is really just a racist dog whistle. The "Black on Black" crime rate is about 93%. No one talks about the "White on White" crime rate, which is about 86%. Given the VAST social discrepancies in favour of "Whites", you should be more afraid of Chad than Tyrone. That is, if you think crime is tied to colour and not proximity. Fact of the matter is, it's all about proximity. And classification and who holds the power to classify? Like...1.2 million dead Muslims isn't a stat that's added in when we talk about "White" crime statistics despite these guys being responsible.
With that being said, there are more and more studies showing the link between poverty and violence. When you take areas like the above mentioned redlined ones and invest in them, violence starts to disappear.
To bring this close to home: There have been a rash of shootings across Toronto, most of them happening in or around some of our most distressed neighbourhoods.
Our Mayor is forcing almost every city department to arbitrarily cut 2.6% from their budgets to stick by his election plan of not raising taxes (despite Toronto being a relatively low tax area, compared to surrounding municipalities).
Almost every department except for police, who have one of the highest budgets in the city at over $1 BILLION dollars. Despite these shootings, crime is still way down in the city.
He's putting this forward as proof that he is being "fiscally Conservative" despite also pushing forward with spending another $3.2 BILLION dollars to build exactly ONE subway stop (that will be underused, costing more money for the city in the long run) in Scarborough.
Here's where the rubber hits the road for politicians and where most of them fail: If you want to fix violence and crime in our "inner cities", you INVEST in the neighbourhoods and the people in them, not the police.
Of course, this is alot harder to do, when you take into account that the people that support "tough on crime" measures also tend to be very racist and as Donald Trump's rise has shown, playing to racists pays off bigly when it comes to politics.
Now, do I think John Tory is out here purposefully playing to racists? No. Do I think he's a Conservative ideologue who thinks being "tough on crime" and being "Fiscally Conservative" will play well to a certain demographic, despite both positions being respectively counter productive and bullshit?
Yes.
p.s. Yeah, yeah, I know I supported him too (never endorsing any politicians again)...but really? Mayor Doug Ford? Is that what you wanted? lol
KB