Systemic racism affecting the TTC?

[thettctransitfanatic]

In a city where 3 of the 4 major newspapers tend to lean right, (some more than others), it amazes me that anyone still argues that there's a left wing bias in the mainstream media.

In any case, the fact that racism has become a left/right issue is part of the problem.

And even CP2Ford is right. You can try dispute it, but they tend to lean right on the scale, not left.

 

[lenaitch]

Too many people made noise and TTC decided to do what most agencies have done, they're no longer collecting that information.

So, now we'll never know if it was racism at front-lines (specific officers or groups of officers), management (directing to monitor specific locations), board (through poorly thought out policy), or coincidental (low income persons commit fare fraud more often; happen to include more black than the general population*).

* this in itself is a problem, but not necessarily one with TTC procedures.

There are too many variables to properly correlate the enforcement data with accurate transit or population demographics. Another possible reason for the skewed data might be that issuing a warning was the path of least resistance. 'You're only charging me because I'm xxx' is heard every single day in law enforcement. If default numbers are as high as they say they are, they probably simply can't write a ticket, make court notes, etc. for every single contact and still provide the expected coverage.
Back before portable digital data networks, most law enforcement agencies that captured 'warning' data (many did and probably still do not), officers simply recorded the information in their notebooks. This is necessary both for accountability - a record of exercising authority; and for performance management - so officers don't just claim a random number. The problem with that was it was impossible to know previous contact history; the subject could have been warned 100 times or never been stopped before. It was also only manually and labouriously searchable.

It seems agencies are damned if they do capture this information and damned if they don't.

 

[TheKingEast]

Making actual arguments is hard. Keep trying, I'm sure you'll get there one day.

I've learned that debates about race (especially on the internet) are a complete waste of time. These topics tend to bring out certain people. as long as you feel you're right, that's all that matters.

 

[Neutrino]

I've learned that debates about race (especially on the internet) are a complete waste of time. These topics tend to bring out certain people. as long as you feel you're right, that's all that matters.

Sounds like every progressive I've ever met.

 

[thettctransitfanatic]

Sounds like every progressive I've ever met.

Every. Conservative. Ever.

 

[Neutrino]

Every. Conservative. Ever.

Lol. The extreme ones, sure. But thankfully they are far from the reins of power. Meanwhile, the progs are actually very (overly) represented in academia and the public sphere more broadly.

 

[OneCity]

While I'm not a big fan of the direct racialized political angle here as it creates a false sense of hatred. I do hope that focussing directly on race will hopefully spur a greater conversation of the culture issues and lack of supportive mentorship for residents of any colour born into financial handicaps and cyclic broken family structures. Unfortunately many stuck in this cycle do happen to be of certain cultures. The data in the article can also be viewed that many that were screened were part of events and let off easier. Which is the reverse of racism.

We do need to do far more in all aspects of life to help residents of the City who are handicapped financially and are surrounded by a toxic culture. Alienating officers and other as racists is not a reasonable approach when dealing with these issues and a very unfortunate politics being played.

 

[jje1000]

Too often activists make a blanket condemnation that an entire group/organization/city/country is anti-something (i.e. xxx has an anti-yyy-problem, xxx- has has systematic yyy,) which is sensationalizes the issue. Moreover, some of these terms are fairly vague (i.e. anti-, systematic, micro-aggression) which makes them more or less problems that can last indefinitely, and all of these approaches benefit activists and extremist reactionaries by transforming an instance into an issue of power dynamics (see the whole U of T Sandy Hudson claim & counter-claim).

IMO a majority of the population more or less lie towards the middle, and issues nowaday are often times more nuanced and indirect in reality rather than the social crises that some inflate them to be. Now on this issue- does discrimination still exist in various forms? Yes, and we must look to deal with it, even in some usually overlooked groups and places. But Toronto ain't (and never was) no sundown town, as some make it look like.

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, said the TTC data is “very representative of what we saw with carding and the police,” and shows Toronto’s public institutions “are constantly pushing away our young Black males in our society and making them feel as if they don’t belong in our city.”

He said if Black people are being stopped by TTC officers at higher rates than other groups, it sends the message to Black residents that they have no place in public spaces like the transit system.

“It’s like you have to think twice if you’re a Black male taking public transit in this city,” he said.

He called for the TTC to improve its anti-bias training and make hiring decisions to ensure its enforcement unit reflects Toronto’s diversity.

On an aside, it's also not really accurate to categorize media on a pure left-right issue- some of them can lean left-right on various issues (i.e. the Globe is fairly supportive of immigration, but leans to the right on some fiscal issues). In fact, I think the left-right binary spectrum is also problem in itself whereas issues are compressed to a left-right binarity whereas they may be more multi-partisan in reality- but that's always been a problem, and an entirely different topic IMO.