Where are all the fathers - gun violence in Toronto

[August1991]

What does slavery and Jamaica have to do with the lack of fathers' participating in their children's upbringing in Canada in 2007?

Our memories are not inherited -- like the Neadertal in the "Clan of the Cave Bear" books. So how does slavery, generations ago, affect a single mum in Toronto today?

It doesn't that's how. Just another damn excuse to not raise kids properly.

Good question.

The Great Depression and unemployment were major events in the life of most Canadian families. In 1932, the unemployment rate peaked at 20%. The experience of the "Dirty Thirties" colours debates on this forum. Many leftists believe that without government, we would be impoverished. This idea comes from this event in our history. (Another example? WWII was a major event for many Canadians, and others. Bush Jnr and Blair are fighting in Iraq because they feel that it's better to oppose danger early.)

Now, imagine the calamity of slavery. How would that experience affect people, and for how many generations? If your great-grandfather had been sold, separating him from his wife and children, do you not think that this would affect your family story?

I have heard that it takes five generations for such stories to be forgotten. In perhaps another generation, Germans will forget about the dangers of inflation.

In how many generations will Albertans forget about the NEP? (Now, compare the NEP to forcibly separating fathers from children and wives. For how many generations would Albertans remember such a federal policy, if it existed?)

Argus has written in the past about this issue and made mention of some loophole or technicality in immigration laws that essentially made it possible for a large number of Jamaican nannies to come to Canada. I can't recall the specifics of what he wrote, but it made sense at the time and seemed like a plausible (more plausible than slavery, at least) explanation for why there is a disproportionately high number of single mothers in Toronto's Jamaican community.

The principle of Canada's immigration law is family reunification and yet this nanny programme exists for urban, Liberal-voting upper middle class families. They can legally hire a cheap nanny to take care of their kids - while separating the nanny from her own family.

With that said, Philippinas take advantage of this programme and yet we rarely see gun violence among Philippino immigrants.

Is the implication that the US was the last to abolish slavery or that we reluctantly joined with progressives in Europe and Canada?

The first Northern US state to abolish slavery was Vermont in 1777 (technically, before it was even a state), 26 years before the practice ended in Canada....

Liam, this is not a contest to see who was first ethical in the 19th century by 21st century standards.

White men bought and sold black people in the US as recently as 1860, separating mothers from their children in the process. That's all I really meant.

A hundred and eighty years ago! Given these people tend to have children at about fifteen that seems to me to be something on the nature of ten generations ago. So even if August's bleeding heart liberalism is to be believed about the recovery time they're still waaaay overdue.

Argus, I won't go bleeding heart on you.

No one alive today has an excuse, not in Canada or America. Nor can we point a finger.

Given the right circumstances, you or your children or your grandchildren could learn to speak French fluently and even forget English. And then, your descendants would forget that you spoke English, or had been a slave.

Most Europeans alive today descend from slaves or savages in Roman times. This fact has been forgotten, several generations on, in our family histories.

Sometimes, we should forget the past and move on to the future. Our descendants will eventually.

I'll return though to a point: the British slavery in Jamaica and the French slavery in Haiti were particularly horrific for family life. Even the US south was not as bad and Brazilian slavery, after the Atlantic crossing, was not so horrific.

[betsy]

Because we colonize them whenever they get uppity. And besides, your stats aren't true...the majority of gun deaths in Vancouver are caused and received by "Indo-Canadians."

Uhhh..OK...why must Asians in Vancouver tolerate such uppity crime rates, along with higher rates by Whites!

The crime rates by asians and whites are miniscule compared to the high rates of blacks.

[betsy]

It does, however, seem that there are disproportionate numbers in ethnic gangs (per capita of each race).

Correlation doesn't equal causation.

What is the correlation you're talking about? Correlation to what? Drea is talking about percentages. Proportionate representation.

[Argus]

Anywhere in Canada, in the US, in Australia or Britain, in France or throughout Europe. Any area with any kind of sizable number of Blacks is an area of high crime. It's certainly true that particular cultures - ie Jamaican - are far more crime and violence prone than others, but is there a larger "black culture" at least in the Western world, which is in large measure responsible for aggravating that?

Actually, it invites another perspective. Anywhere in Canada or in the US with a sizable number of "Whites", there will be higher crime rates compared to Asians. Why must Asians tolerate such crime and violence from Whites. What is wrong with "White" culture?

Nice immitation of an indignant, self-righteous, politically correct knee-jerk!

[Argus]

Because we colonize them whenever they get uppity. And besides, your stats aren't true...the majority of gun deaths in Vancouver are caused and received by "Indo-Canadians."

Uhhh..OK...why must Asians in Vancouver tolerate such uppity crime rates, along with higher rates by Whites!

My understanding is most street crime in Vancouver is being commited by Asians.

[Drea]

I don't give a rat's patoey what happened generations ago to your family -- apparently my ancestors had some run in with the Nazis...took away my inheritance (a big brewery in Austria) This has no affect on me today though. I am not going to use it as an excuse "poor me my ancestors were *insert atrocity here* so therefore I am useless.

Give me a break.

[ScottSA]

The Great Depression and unemployment were major events in the life of most Canadian families. In 1932, the unemployment rate peaked at 20%. The experience of the "Dirty Thirties" colours debates on this forum. Many leftists believe that without government, we would be impoverished. This idea comes from this event in our history. (Another example? WWII was a major event for many Canadians, and others. Bush Jnr and Blair are fighting in Iraq because they feel that it's better to oppose danger early.)

Now, imagine the calamity of slavery. How would that experience affect people, and for how many generations? If your great-grandfather had been sold, separating him from his wife and children, do you not think that this would affect your family story?

With respect, of course it would affect my family history. It would more directly affect my father and mother, both of whom grew up during the in depression era Ontario and dustbowl Saskatchewan respectively. Their parents struggled to maintain a farm and a station master's income respectively.

And of course it affects and informs discourse and actions today. But I don't hide money in my mattress or drive jalopies to California in search of work just because Steinbeck's protagonists did. If I were caught on the road in a jalopy on the way to California tomorrow, I could not reasonably claim that I'm following lemminglike in the foorsteps of the dispossessed from the depression, and that I can conceive of no other life because it occurred. It informs my history with the knowledge that economic crisis can happen and has happened, but it does not determine my future nor my actions.

WW II informs our collective western history, in the sense that we have learned, or some of us have anyway, that appeasement rarely works and that modern total war can destroy societies. After all, to ignore Santayana's observation would be stupid. But that doesn't mean that we bomb Berlin or Tokyo every chance we get because WW II determines our actions.

The depression and WW II happened within living memory and 1860 is generations out of living memory. Slavery does not determine the actions of Blacks. Slavery cannot reasonably be blamed for single motherhood.

[August1991]

I don't give a rat's patoey what happened generations ago to your family -- apparently my ancestors had some run in with the Nazis...took away my inheritance (a big brewery in Austria) This has no affect on me today though. I am not going to use it as an excuse "poor me my ancestors were *insert atrocity here* so therefore I am useless.

Give me a break.

Drea, this post of yours illustrates precisely my point. I suggest you think again when you state that it has "no effect on me today".

The depression and WW II happened within living memory and 1860 is generations out of living memory. Slavery does not determine the actions of Blacks. Slavery cannot reasonably be blamed for single motherhood.

I'm not sure I would compare an event such as the Depression and the experience of slavery. And I'm not trying to assess blame or point any fingers: I'm merely trying to explain a phenomenon.

Mordecai Richler said that he was incapable of going to Germany. Jews today are vigilant in a way that they were not in 1925. It would be difficult to explain the existence of the State of Israel without reference to the Holocaust.

I'm venturing the idea that a consequence of slavery, even generations later, is the difficulty to maintain a family. Of course many people overcome the inherited experience of the past.

In some ways, I think posters here don't quite understand how devastating slavery is and how it affects all human relations. I recently read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs's autobiography. The book is remarkable because, from the past, it seems to answer the question in the OP.

[ScottSA]

I don't give a rat's patoey what happened generations ago to your family -- apparently my ancestors had some run in with the Nazis...took away my inheritance (a big brewery in Austria) This has no affect on me today though. I am not going to use it as an excuse "poor me my ancestors were *insert atrocity here* so therefore I am useless.

Give me a break.

Drea, this post of yours illustrates precisely my point. I suggest you think again when you state that it has "no effect on me today".

The depression and WW II happened within living memory and 1860 is generations out of living memory. Slavery does not determine the actions of Blacks. Slavery cannot reasonably be blamed for single motherhood.

I'm not sure I would compare an event such as the Depression and the experience of slavery. And I'm not trying to assess blame or point any fingers: I'm merely trying to explain a phenomenon.

Mordecai Richler said that he was incapable of going to Germany. Jews today are vigilant in a way that they were not in 1925. It would be difficult to explain the existence of the State of Israel without reference to the Holocaust.

I'm venturing the idea that a consequence of slavery, even generations later, is the difficulty to maintain a family. Of course many people overcome the inherited experience of the past.

In some ways, I think posters here don't quite understand how devastating slavery is and how it affects all human relations. I recently read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs's autobiography. The book is remarkable because, from the past, it seems to answer the question in the OP.

I can certainly understand Mordecai Richler's feeling, because he lived through the times. If slavery had been in full swing in 1960, I could understand the correlation between single motherhood and slavery too. But I would not understand an explanation from a Hindu that he beats his wife as a consequence of Sutti being abolished well out of living memory, or from an Irishman that he must steal because the Potato Famine taught his people that they have to steal to eat. One might argue that the Holocaust was more profoundly disturbing to Jewish culture than slavery could ever hope to be to African tribal culture, but I don't see Jews dispensing with fatherhood as a result. And by this argument, Australia ought to be suffering similar effects from the family separations of transported criminals to Botany Bay.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in this argument is that Jamaica and Haiti stand virtually alone as an atomised society, and Black society in the rest of the Carribbean, not to mention Barbados, just doesn't have that problem. Yet they all got there as slaves.

[myata]

This should definitely be one of the (many) approaches to the problem: Star story. No matter personal issues, real or induced, the cost of this behaviour should be reasonably high to make at least some who are capable of reasoning to perhaps seek better options in their lives. Not the only approach by far. But the society should send a clear and persistent message that that kind of violent behaviour will not be tolerated.

[ScottSA]

This should definitely be one of the (many) approaches to the problem: Star story. No matter personal issues, real or induced, the cost of this behaviour should be reasonably high to make at least some who are capable of reasoning to perhaps seek better options in their lives. Not the only approach by far. But the society should send a clear and persistent message that that kind of violent behaviour will not be tolerated.

Making the cost high would be paddling. That should be brought back as a deterent...by all accounts it worked.

[margrace]

Twin boys were raised by the abusive alcoholic father. One became a grade a Citizen, the other a down and out gutter drunk. When asked why they were this way they both replied, with my upbringing what would you expect me to do.

Some people rise above their past, others don't. I wonder how many of these fathers under discussion here were picked up in the massive raids and arrests yesterday in Ontario.