The Mayor's Hypocricy, Jordan's Vigil, Apartheid........

Good grief, enough politics

Another heartbreaking loss and more calls to end violence. Let's not wait for the next one

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

If you go to torontosun.com, click on the "video" icon and watch "Candlelight vigil for Jordan Manners," you'll see a revealing clip of Toronto Mayor David Miller toward the end.

Miller had just finished speaking to an evening vigil in memory of Manners, the day after the 15-year-old was fatally shot inside C.W. Jefferys Collegiate.

During his remarks, the mayor made some political statements about banning handguns and that the city had raised taxes to invest in communities like Jane-Finch, where the shooting occurred.

The clip shows Miller waving off reporters as he leaves, saying he doesn't want to talk, that his remarks were for the community.

When my colleague, Joe Warmington, notes he's the mayor (which is why the media want to talk to him about his political comments), Miller gets testy.

"I am, that's true," he responds, walking away, and then, pointing his finger adds, "but you gotta respect their grief," with emphasis on the word "respect."

Excuse me? "You gotta respect their grief?" Who's "you"?

Reporters covering the story, or politicians making hay out of it?

As for respecting their grief, maybe we should do something about it.

This story's been going on for decades in places like Jane-Finch.

There's an awful shooting, the victim's grief-stricken mother begs for an end to violence and everyone agrees it must stop. Then comes the blame game. Then we wait for the next awful shooting and the cycle repeats. Last week, Jordan's heartbroken mother, Laureen Small, ruefully observed: "I feel like a celebrity with all the cameras. Will I still be a celebrity a month from now? A year from now?" Answer, anyone?

Last week, I wrote Toronto's dirty little secret, our "apartheid-lite" is that we don't really care about these tragedies, as long as it's blacks killing each other in Jane-Finch.

It provoked a lot of reaction -- some thoughtful.

Then there were the people insisting, some using obscenities, that I was calling all whites racist. Uh ... no. I said it was a societal issue, not an individual one.

Others angrily informed me that factors like racism and poverty are irrelevant because (a) the violence is solely due to young black men impregnating women and abandoning them, thus creating a criminal underclass of gangs and guns and (b) the solution is to deport black people. Hey, no racism there, right?

Some were mad I'd argued nothing will change until we get as upset about the murder of Manners as we did Jane Creba, also 15, on Boxing Day, 2005.

Creba, I was informed, was "innocent" while Manners wasn't, although no one could explain (I asked) what he'd done to deserve being gunned down in school. Police have said Jordan's murder wasn't gang-related.

Others complained blacks don't report black criminals to the police. Actually, the cops praised the local community the next day for coming forward with information after charging two 17-year-olds with Jordan's murder ... but what would they know?

How many blacks do these people -- along with some white newspaper columnists who make similar comments -- actually know, since they're apparently experts on black "culture"?

I've met hundreds of blacks over the years after being asked by the Sun to liaise with the community. Most are good people who are deeply concerned about the gangs that attract a minority of black youths. Many are trying to change things -- often without much outside help.

One reader sarcastically asked what I was doing, since I claimed to care so much.

I told her about the charity I've worked with for 14 years founded by my Jamaican-born friend, Lloyd Seivright, which has donated millions of dollars in medical supplies across Canada and around the world for decades, funds 10 annual university scholarships (one sponsored by the Sun) for deserving, financially-challenged students of all colours and holds an annual Christmas party for needy families, regardless of race.

I asked if she'd like to make a donation. Oddly, she hasn't replied.