Peel Regional Police called out for Discussing Reality
Activist mindset results in cognitive dissonance
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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)
Front line officers with the Peel Regional Police force are in the trenches fighting crime and face the reality of that every day on the job. They don’t have the luxury of pretending the world is like they wish it were. Ivory tower academics and bureaucrats, on the other hand, live in the world they choose to believe in. The problem is that, even for them, the real world has a nasty habit of presenting itself from time to time. You can’t entirely escape it.
A case in point was a recent presentation by the Peel Regional Police delivered to senior administrators at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board (DPCSB). The topic was student safety and included information about gang activities including photos of local criminals and a video by a local (black) rapper which evidently included the word “nigger” in its lyrics. Local “anti-racist” activists objected to the presentation as racist, complaining that the photos of gang members were all of young black males.
So do the activists have a point? Blacks make up less than 10% of the Region of Peel, so why only show pictures of black street gang members?
While Black people make up approximately 9% to 10% of the population in Peel, they have historically been overrepresented in police use of force incidents. In 2024, Black individuals were involved in 28% of all use of force incidents by Peel Police. This either means that Blacks are more often involved in violent crimes, or that the police are racist and are targeting blacks for use of force arrests while turning a blind eye to some similar crimes being committed by others. Since only 43% of the Peel Police force is white, that seems unlikely. Data shows that Black individuals are overrepresented as both accused and victims of violent crime, including homicide. When a Black person is a victim of a violent crime, the perpetrator is usually someone they know, in other words, usually a Black person.
It is widely accepted that gangs often target young people for recruitment, luring them with a false sense of family or financial stability. Once involved, members are pressured into roles such as drug dealing or acting as lookouts. Thus, it stands to reason that young people from poor and/or unstable homes are far more susceptible to overtures from criminal organizations.
Reports indicate that Black Canadians in Ontario experience high rates of poverty. Economic inequality is a noted issue, with Black residents facing higher unemployment rates among those living in poverty compared to non-racialized individuals.
This aligns with the poorer attendance and lower academic achievement, along with higher rates of disciplinary incidents by black students in local schools, all of which activists attribute to “systemic racism”.
Following the complaints about the Police presentation, the Director of Education for the DPCDSB issued an apology due to the presentation having included a rap song, by a black rapper, which included the word “nigger” saying this had caused harm and distress. To whom, exactly? Fragile White “anti-black racism” allies? Head-in-the-sand Black “anti-racism” consultants?
The director also stated that the presentation “reinforced harmful stereotypes” by only depicting “Black identifying” youth (how does she know they are “Black identifying”? Did she ask them?). The fact is stereotypes exist for a reason, but anyone with half a brain knows that people need to be seen and evaluated as individuals.
For their part, the police stated that the individuals shown and the video presented are real people from the community, and that these individuals are bona fide violent criminals who represent a serious risk to vulnerable young people in the Region of Peel.
In a statement, Education Minister Paul Calandra called the presentation “an unvarnished, accurate reflection of the growing risk to youth in Peel Region.” This is very refreshing because politicians almost always cave in to the activists and regurgitate the activist talking points.
Calandra added that the presentation was intended to inform educators about how these criminal organizations recruit teens. He also stated that making people uncomfortable is an unavoidable consequence of raising awareness of the issues facing kids in their school system.
What the police are saying is that the criminal organizations which are most prevalent in recruiting and criminalizing youth in the region happen to disproportionately be made up of Black people and are recruiting mostly Black kids. If community activists believe that is false, then why don’t they provide evidence to the contrary? I for one would welcome that, because it would provide actual evidence that the police force is racist in its approach to fighting crime, a claim those activists have been making for years without providing a shred of evidence to back it up.
For the “anti-racist” educrats and community activists, the cognitive dissonance resulting from this incursion of the real world into their postmodern-inspired mindset is clearly causing them consternation. They truly believe the only reason for disproportionately high rates of violent crime and overall lower academic achievement among Black people is “systemic racism”, and they don’t want to hear otherwise. Meanwhile they’re doing nothing to address the socio-economic causes of those issues.
Those root causes have to be acknowledged and addressed. No amount of “diversity, equity and inclusion” programming or language policing will improve outcomes for Black kids.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Ontario Government to take action on Student Absenteeism
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If you can't find any white rapper gangs or white gangsters then make some. We must have equity.
We have the same issue when talking about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (etc.). The vast majority were murdered by family members, ie other Indigenous people, and yet they are spoken of as if there’s a mysterious and malign non-Indigenous force at work.