Gangs, the media, and the myth of community
by Simon Black
April 17, 2006
The so-called “internal cleansing” of the Bandido motorcycle gang got me thinking about gangs and guns in the white community. What drives so many of my community members into motorcycle gangs?
Is it the failure of the white family structure? Too many single mothers and absent fathers? What about heavy metal music? Surely the culture promoted by bands like Metallica and Korn have an affect on the behaviour of white men. Maybe we should ban their concerts?
Or am I on the wrong track: Could it be my community’s creeping materialism and its shift away from family values that is the real problem at the root of the motorcycle gang phenomenon?
I ask these questions to illustrate the absurdity of the media’s fixation with the so-called “black community” when it comes to Toronto’s gun violence. On TV, the radio, or in one of Toronto’s daily newspapers, use of the term “black community” is pervasive.
Black Torontonians are culturally diverse: they are Jamaican and Nova Scotian, Bermudans and Afro-Brazilian, Somali and Senegalese. The assumption that a culturally heterogeneous black population constitutes a “community” has negative consequences for how Toronto — its citizens, politicians, and police — deal with gun violence.
Sure, there are common experiences that link black Torontonians by virtue of their skin colour. You’re more likely to be pulled over by a police officer or face racism in the school or workplace if you’re black. But the shared experience of racism is not enough to constitute a community out of a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. And this myth of “community” has functioned to put the burden of responsibility for gun violence onto black Torontonians. A black Torontonian is no more responsible for gangs and guns than I am for the actions of the Bandidos or the Hells Angels.
The myth of community is perpetuated by the media’s tireless search for the authentic voice of “black leadership.” Who the media anoints with this title often depends on the message they’re seeking to convey to the public. Throughout this recent period of gun violence the Toronto Sun has turned to a few black church leaders whose mantra of family values and community decay fits perfectly with the self-help conservatism of the newspaper’s editorial board.
When no black ministers are available for comment, the Sun turns to other so-called “black community leaders” such as Toronto city councilor Michael Thompson. Surely, the Sun surmises, a black man who’s grown up in the squalor of Scarborough has special insight into the behaviour of troublesome black youth. To the Sun’s delight, Thompson’s contribution to the gun violence debate was to recommend a stop-and-search policy that accepts racial profiling as a legitimate police strategy.
In the 1990s Dudley Laws was the media’s go-to man for the authentic black perspective. In recent months, youth activist Kofi Hope (of Black Youth Against Violence) has emerged as one the media’s stars of black authenticity. The Toronto Star profiled Hope as one of the city’s “10 (citizens) to watch” in 2006. Hope helped organize the BLING (Bring Love In, Not Guns) conference, a welcomed initiative which brought youth together to discuss issues of gangs, guns and violence.
Although Hope advocates for more participation of youth in the development of their own communities, according to his Star profile he also sees the rise in gun violence amongst young blacks as linked to consumerism and hip-hop culture and the shunning of community and family values. This is something to be proved sociologically, not taken as truth. Unfortunately, activists like Hope and Laws have little control over how their positions are articulated by the media.
The authenticity game reached preposterous new heights when Premier Dalton McGuinty grandstanded with Boston minister Rev. Eugene Rivers, who came to Toronto to share his knowledge about black-on-black (never referred to as poor-on-poor) violence. After meeting with Rivers and other members of Toronto’s “black faith community,” McGuinty stated that he “was very heartened that representatives of the faith community have decided that they’re going to take on still more responsibility for the black community when it comes to addressing the issue of crime and guns.”
The premier seems quite willing to download his own government’s responsibility onto a “community” that will clean up its own proverbial house and take ownership of social problems.
What the right Reverend Rivers said to The Toronto Star must have been music to McGuinty’s neoliberal ears: “This is a family conversation. It requires that the black community come together, stop making excuses, move beyond rhetoric, the race card and focuses on how do we as a community become more accountable?” Such a statement could have come from the Sun’s editorial pages or some other conservative commentator.
Activists like Hope are stuck in a catch-22. By organizing a conference such as BLING or speaking on behalf of a “community,” many well-intentioned campaigners have accepted the media’s framing of gangs and guns as a black problem. This does little to challenge racist views amongst the general public that are in part generated and perpetuated by the media’s coverage of Toronto’s gun violence.
Yet if there is no attempt to address the social problems faced specifically by black youth because of their skin colour, then racism and social exclusion will go unaddressed. Racism fuels higher drop-out rates among black high school students. In addition, black Torontonians, especially black youth, are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the city’s poor and unemployed.
But take all the articles and reports about Toronto’s gun violence, replace the words black with poor, race with class, and an alternative picture of the issues emerges; one which challenges the frame in which many Torontonians now think about gangs and guns and one which also challenges the idea that a “community” should take ownership of social problems.
No white Torontonian will be approached by the media for special insight into the Bandido massacre or why white men participate in motorcycle gangs. As it sits now, in the eyes of the public, gangs and guns are a “black” problem. We need to work to disarticulate the link between race and crime, while continuing to insist on the racialized nature of poverty and social exclusion that can lead to despair and criminal activity.
This article originally appeared on www.rabbble.ca%
Simon Black is a PhD candidate in political science at York University in Toronto.