Ho-hum; another report blames crime on racism

It’s the kind of thing you can set your watch by. A particularly heinous episode of violence takes a young life in a predominantly ethnic school; the community is aghast; activists demand action and the government trots out a couple of its has-beens, lavishes them with large amounts of money to table a report blaming the whole thing on poverty and racism.

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Everyone lauds the report as a breakthrough in understanding those poor minorities who, because of our callous attitude towards them can’t help but kill each other wholesale and then the report is promptly filed away with the thousands of other such reports until the next time some gang bangers decide to kill each other in a particularly gruesome manner. It’s all too predictable, but had the report, titled “Roots of Youth Violence” by Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling, reported what it really should have reported, there would have been hell to pay. Besides, blaming the “roots of youth violence” on poverty, lack of housing, hopelessness and a racist society will draw a lot less heat than blaming it on where the blame actually lies. Can you imagine the outrage that might have erupted if the Roy and Al Report had cited such “root causes” as homes where numerous siblings all with different absent fathers and aunties and sisters and grandmammas looking after the kids? What if they cited so-called urban culture with its glorification of misogyny and violence displaying the trapping of gansta culture with bling and hos and homies? And it’s easy to blame the violence on poverty because that can relate back to the concept that ours is a racist society and it is the racist attitudes of employers that keeps those living in disadvantage from advancing beyond menial minimum wage jobs. Besides, who wants to sling hash at Wendy’s for $8.75 an hour when you can make that much per second selling rock? There are no answers as easy as those cited by the Roy and Al Report, because no one, least of all the government, wants to do the real heavy lifting. Sure, blame it on the inherent racism of citizens so open that they turn themselves inside out to be accepting and inclusive of those from foreign cultures. Blame it on a society that will forego any mention of Christmas in public, lest it offend someone who doesn’t necessarily do Christmas. Blame it on the Americans, because after all, they’re the ones with the gun culture. Blame it on anyone but those responsible. Responsibility (or should I say, lack thereof?) is one of the “root causes” of youth violence that the Roy and Al Report did not mention, lest they offend the tender sensibilities of those who blame all of life’s problems on others. But then, it’s unfair to blame Roy and Al for their Report, given that in order to write the report they had to go into the community they were reporting on to verify that indeed racism was the problem. Of course, everyone they asked agreed that it was racism, how else could one explain the sub-standard housing, the low incomes, the lack of self-respect, and the paucity of two-parent families? (Oops, scratch that last one!) But then, I would wager if one went into a meeting of women’s rights advocates and asked if male violence was at the root of all women’s problems, chances are the answer would be a resounding “YES”. So would asking a group of convicts if they were wrongly convicted. The sad thing is that killings like those of Jane Creba or Jordan Manners will continue to plague us in ever larger numbers so long as the so-called “root causes” are blamed on the innocent and those responsible are given a free pass. Instinctively we all know the answer to these problems, but we do not have the moral courage to insist that the problems be solved. Bill Cosby and Louis Farrakhan agree on very little, but somehow they’ve both come out in favor of jailing drug dealers for a long time and encouraging men to stay with the children they sire. Both also support the importance of working hard to acquire a good education. So why is it that all our politicians only seem to see racism as the “root cause” of all these problems?