Why the ‘Minstrel’ Foundation?

Why is this Regent Park organization bearing the name of white supremacy?

by Steve da Silva
Basics Issue #12 (Jan/Feb 2009)

The Minstrel Foundation is a Toronto-based music education charity that has as its mandate “to secure and expand the opportunity for inner city young people to study and excel in music.” While this cause seems praiseworthy enough, this organization needs to seriously consider changing its name.

For those who are not familiar with the word ‘Minstrel’, in a North American context the word’s most common usage traces back to the “Minstrel Shows” of the 19th century where white actors with blackened faces would tour around the country and lampoon and caricature the behaviours of Africans. Later, after the Emancipation Proclamation in the U.S. where slaves were set “free”, these white theatre companies would often enlist Africans directly in playing out their own ridicule. Some have considered today’s corporate media giants like BET or MTV to be promote modern forms of Minstrel, since those black entertainers who get the most play propagate the most destructive values for black people.

If we choose to trace the word further back into history, we find that Minstrel is etymologically derivative of the Old French word menestral, which meant both entertainer and servant, and tracing further back from the Latin word ministerialis, it meant servant. Therefore, whichever way we play it, the word ‘minstrel’ carries a connotation that implies subordination and is offensive to whosoever the term may be directed at.

Is the message that this organization is sending to Toronto’s “inner city” youth that they only have a future in entertaining people born into privileges greater than their own? Is it not enough of an affront to the minds of these youth that they are constantly being seduced with the images of role models as basketball players, rappers, and scantly-clad women in music videos?

The Minstrel Foundation is greatly offending Toronto’s racialized working-class masses by carrying out their charity work under the banner white supremacy. On December 25, 2008, I personally emailed a letter to this organization expressing these sentiments (see our website for a copy); but they have not responded.

If this organization chooses not to account for its actions, this should be a sign to Torontonians of the attitudes contempt, ignorance, and indifference that people of privilege hold towards historically (and presently) oppressed peoples. A disguised racism is far more menacing to us than an overt one.
The racist “Darky” iconography illustrated on this Toronto-based Minstrel show poster appeared on sheet music from the 1870s through the 1940s.

No Love for ‘One Love’ from Mammoliti

Thug Councillor Mammoliti Justifies 20-Cop Beat Down of Businessman Edward Allen of Steeles / 400

by Bryan Doherty
Basics #11 (November 2008)

Someone is standing up against Toronto’s most racist city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and is making headlines for it. North York club owner Edward Allen has been one of many targets of Mammoliti’s ongoing campaign to push people he doesn’t like out of his ward. The councillor is known for accusing particular families and businesses of breaking the law and egging on police to harass them. This time, his efforts at low-intensity forced migration resulted in twenty cops beating up a Black business owner who is now preparing to sue the police and the city for damages.

Edward Allen, Jamaican-born father of eight, runs One Love bar and restaurant at Steeles and Highway 400. Although the establishment recently lost both its restaurant and liquor licenses, Allen kept it open as a hang out for friends. In the early hours of October 29, police came knocking at his door, asking why he “hadn’t got out of town yet”. The cops say Allen kicked up a fuss by locking himself in a room and breaking bottles. But they deny any fault on their part for dragging him out to the parking lot and proceeding to beat him up.

Mammoliti told the Toronto Sun last week that he welcomed the opportunity to present the evidence against Allen’s infractions. Without extending an ounce of sympathy for the man’s injuries, Mammoliti defended what he sees as his successful representation of a diverse constituency.

What was Mammoliti’s response to the accusation of racist targettng? Get this:
“I’ve been just as tough with visible minorities who aren’t black.”

The Politics of Baby-Snatching

by Bryan Doherty
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)

So the Canadian government doesn’t want babies to be raised by racists? Five months ago Child and Family Services in Winnipeg removed a 7-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy from their mother because it was felt the children’s emotional well being and safety were at risk due to their parents associations and conduct. The mother, who can’t be named as it would identify the children, has been all over the news claiming she’s no nazi – just proud of her white race. Her home is decorated with white supremacist flags, posters and, slogans. One day her 7-year-old daughter went to class sporting a classic nazi symbol – the swastika – drawn on her arm. Her teacher scrubbed it off and sent her home. Before the mother of the grade-schooler sent her back the next day she was sure to draw the white supremacist images back on. Children’s Services were alerted and the mother was left childless.

The mother has a long history in white supremacist organizing. When she’s not on the internet ranting about how she has to raise her children in a city “infested by Indians” she might be found out postering Winnipeg with white supremacist propaganda. Her children are likely being raised to hate everyone that doesn’t share their skin colour and political views. But are her attitudes much different than the Canadian society she lives in?

Child and Family Services objecting to parents raising their impressionable kids with racist views may seem like objecting to racism itself. But Canada is one racist country. The systemic discrimination based on the race of families and children runs right through all levels of power: governments, police, social services, schools, health, etc. This country was built through racist policies that continues to this day. Is Child Services going to be carrying out visits to police officers homes after they shoot unarmed young men of colour? Will politicians that under-fund social housing and then sell off the land to condo developers have their children taken in the middle of the night? What about all the children of soldiers that are busy occupying the lands of people oversees – do they go into foster care? Is racism really the issue here? We aren’t going to let this one case fool us into thinking racism is honestly being tackled by either Canadian social services or the government.

Let’s not be fooled into thinking that the Canadian government is opposed to fascism or the racist ideas that support fascist governments. Canada’s genocidal reservation system against the Natives was where apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel first learned how to colonize. And the Canadian government has no problem supporting governments whose policies are genocidal and whose governments are pretty close to fascist: U.S.? Israel? What about the authoritarian Karzai government ruling under Sharia law in Afghanistan that Canada is propping up?

The solution to racism isn’t to take away the kids of racist parents, even if their parents advocate the most despicable ideas history has known. The point is that these ideas are the outgrowth of living in a society born out of slavery, colonialism, endless imperialist wars, and class exploitation with racial divisions between the classes. Capitalist society is riddled with all of these contradictions, and racism is an ideological expression of these contradictions. Without making apologies for racists, ultimately the fight against racism must be the fight against capitalism.

Vaughan / Oakwood: Profile of a ‘Mixed Income’ Neighbourhood

by Louisa Worrell
Basics Issue#10 (Aug/Sep 2008)

On Sunday, June 1, 2008 at approximately 11:30 pm more than 50 Toronto cops raided the studio/home of hip-hop artist Kama Kazie, allegedly for drugs.

A couple days later the bar/club across the street Town Talk was raided for the same reason.
Neither of the raids were fruitful, no arrests were made and no drugs were found at either site.
A couple days later on June 3, there was a “community” meeting organized by a group known as 5-Points Community Action, regarding a shooting that had happened May 24 on Belvedere, just off of Vaughn and Oakwood.

Although Vaughn and Oakwood’s ethnic make up is predominately Jamaican and Chinese, and is considered a mixed-income neighbourhood, the attendees of the community meeting did not reflect this reality. The meeting was attended by pre-dominantly middle-class white residents who expressed concern about “community safety”. And this is the reality of mixed income neighbourhoods: put wealthy homeowners who are concerned about their property value alongside deeply exploited workers and the unemployed, and what you get is a conflict. It should be clear who the police are going to side with in this equation.

To be sure, the June 3 meeting was attended by the police, with much discussion about the local business Town Talk at 616 Vaughn Rd. People at the meeting expressed concern that criminal activities such as drug dealing were going on at the bar. Only one of the community members who spoke had actually been to Town Talk, but there was a clear sentiment that the bar made people at the meeting uneasy. One attendee, Samantha Goldsilver, was quoted in the Toronto Star saying: “It’s just a bunch of hoodlums hanging out late at night,” she said of one of the bars. “If you drive by at one in the morning there’s people out on the street drinking and people who live on the street feel very intimidated. They feel like they’re walking a gauntlet to come home.”

It’s too bad that some of the hundreds of Jamaican-Canadian patrons of the restaurant weren’t invited to the meeting – they might have had a different opinion.

Tragically, on July 21, 2007, 21 year-old Kimel Foster was gunned down outside of Town Talk and since then Toronto police have heavily patrolled the bar’s vicinity. But a higher policing of the youth cannot be a solution to a problem that is social and economic, such as alienating curricula in Toronto schools and a lack of decent employment opportunities for young workers.

Furthermore, the police routinely set up RIDE programs right down the street from the bar on busy nights, further harassing community residents and patrons of the bar.

5-Points Community Action is currently rallying their members around stopping Town Talk from serving alcohol on its patio, despite the fact the Town Talk already has a license to do so.

It’s clear that the current organizing of middle-class homeowners in the community is suiting the agenda of the police, given that both are working together to marginalize and intimidate the non-white working-class residents of the community. It’s time for Vaughan and Oakwood’s working-class residents to organize as well. We must demand an end to police harassment and intimidation in our own neighbourhoods!

Racist Politicians Fight Baggy Pants

Scapegoat ignores poverty and oppression as source of violence

Lawmakers in several U.S. cities are implementing laws that would see youth with baggy pants fined or even thrown in jail. Toronto school oficials have publicly considered similiar bans in school dress codes.

Punishments for wearing saggy pants in several US cities ranges from fines, community service, to six months in jail. In Trenton, New Jersey getting caught with your pants low may soon result in not only a fine, but also with an assessment from a city worker of ‘where your life is headed’. Atlanta Councilman C.T. Martin defends the law by saying baggy pants “has the potential to catch on with elementary school kids”. Adrian Harris, 43, a founding member of rap group Cold Crush Brothers sees it as “a form of rebellion and identity” and not a source of negativity or violence.

What is clear in all of this is that politicians like to ind scapegoats for violence and poverty. In this case, its once again hip-hop culture. If these politicians were sincere about providing opportunity and hope for youth, they would focus on how to provide jobs, afordable education and recreational activities instead of criminalizing how kids dress.