[URBAN NOTE] "John Tory's racial blind spot"

[rfmcdonald]

NOW Toronto's Jonathan Goldsbie is critical of John Tory's attention to structural racism, highlighted most recently by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement has never been ambiguous about its primary focus: anti-black racism as it manifests in policing and other instruments of the justice system. For John Tory, mayor of Toronto and member of its police services board, to jump straight to "underachievement" and unemployment when discussing the group is alarming.

If he's unaware of Black Lives Matters' aims and concerns, then he's irresponsibly disengaged from one of the largest and most pressing conversations in this and most other cities. If he is aware of its aims and concerns but instead chooses to shift the question to one of academic and economic failure, then he's implying that until black people's circumstances improve, the way that police treat them won't change. Either way, he seems to suggest that "trouble finding employment" stems directly from "underachieving" or "dropping out of school," rather than a combination of social barriers including race.

This attitude might have been adequate 10 years ago. It probably would've been acceptable 20 years ago. And it could've been downright progressive 30 years ago. But it is simply not good enough for a mayor to espouse this now.

During the 2014 election campaign, Tory was famously asked by a Global News reporter whether white privilege exists. Tory, known for his tendency to pile qualifications on top of qualifications, was unusually definitive in his answer: "White privilege? No, I don't know that it does."

It was a bad answer then, and it's only become a worse answer since.