Brampton residents have a point. If you look at Ferguson, Missouri, where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement, minorities make up at least two-thirds of the best in brampton population, but the police department is predominantly white. The disconnect between the community and racial representation on the police force is a problem afflicting many American cities struggling with police brutality in African American and Latino communities.
Professor Jeffrey Reitz, director of University of Toronto’s Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies, doesn’t believe municipal governments, who are challenged by limited access to tax revenue, alone bear the blame for failing to integrate the different ethnic communities in Brampton. He says the national multiculturalism program, which has a mandate “to build an integrated and socially cohesive society,” was cut by about a third to $7-million a year under the Conservatives. The national multicultural program not only provides funding to organizations to take on projects and events promoting multiculturalism, but also undertakes public education initiatives that promote diversity and help break down barriers like Asian Heritage Month and Black History Month.
“Back in the seventies and eighties, it was much more funded than it is now even without adjusting for inflation,” Prof. Reitz said. “I don’t think the whole burden should fall to municipal governments because multiculturalism is a national program with national implications.”
Canadian cities may boast that they never fell victim to racism and avoided the kind of white flight that led to the destructive segregation in many large cities south of the border. But the Brampton story reveals that we have our own version of white flight, and before we figure out how to manage hyper-diverse and increasingly polarized cities like Greater Toronto, we need to reflect on our own attitudes about race and ethnic diversity.
In Chicago, white flight played a crucial role in making it one of the most segregated cities in America. When blacks began moving to the city from the deep south during the first half of the 20th century, political leaders used racially restrictive covenants to dictate where black families could live. Even after the Supreme Court struck down these covenants, homeowners associations maintained the status quo by discouraging members from selling to black families. It wasn’t until white families began moving out in droves, that black families began moving in, eventually creating the predominantly black South Side.
In what many consider Chicago’s most dangerous neighbourhood – Englewood – the white population dropped from 89 per cent to 31 per cent between 1950 and 1960. Today, it is 98.5 per cent black, 0.6 per cent white and 0.4 per cent Latino.
With business and industry following the white population, neighbourhoods like Englewood succumbed to violence. Public schools in Englewood today are among the worst in the city. At one high school in Englewood, which was the subject of a This American Life documentary, 29 teens were shot in one school year alone. Even as I was reporting on life in this neighbourhood, high schoolers would lift up their T-shirts and their pants to show me gunshot wounds like seasoned war veterans.
