The black elephant in the room

Dalton Higgins.

Thinking outside of the box. Pushing envelopes. And buttons.

While these cliches might sound hokey and trite, they still carry much weight in most of my analysis around civic engagement. The answers to voter apathy and civic disengagement are sitting right there in front of us, and I am no rocket scientist (though as a toddler I’m told I had a penchant for all things Stars Wars).

Torontonians from all stripes will always be less likely to engage civically for a few clear reasons. When you don’t really see yourself represented in the corridors of City Hall, on a simple, base level, it interferes with your ability to dig deeper (or vote). Or rally those around you to collectively clog up ballot boxes.

For example, my early knowledge of politico living and policymaking comes from seeing Zanana Akande being elected by the NDP (at the provincial level), and her looking like me, and speaking like me, as a proud African-Canadian. In the realm of public school trustee’s, it was seeing another African-Canadian, John Mills push forth some ideas that I could relate to, on a micro level, in my ‘hood. With former City Councillor Rob Davis, it was the same thing. He lived in the neighborhood. I bump into him at the local area bodega. It’s all good.

This doesn’t even mean I would be racially bound by some unwritten contract to vote for these candidates. It just means that getting my hip-hop generationers out to the polls – which also means forsaking a few hours of watching BET - is within the realm of possibility. I’d like to think these might be some of the same reasons my parents and most of the other kids I grew up with, and around, who came from racialized groups watched City TV - if you were black, and of African descent, Jojo Chinton was The Man (not that Man). So you tuned in.

And that’s the reason why many of my friends might "auto tune" out of local area politics, like T-Pain. It seems too Baby Boomer aligned. So, if you're youth-ey, of colour, into digital culture, are equally versed in hockey as you are in hip-hop like I am, are forward-thinking and have your pulse on the genuine community’s beat, what candidate truly represents those interests?

Maybe no one. Or the lesser of a few evils. Adam Giambrone? Surely you jest.

I'm still constantly amazed at how in such a world-class cosmopolitan city like Toronto, we do an incredibly fabulous job of tip-toeing around these kinds of hard issues, around aggressively diversifying the political landscape, running candidates who aren’t born between 1946 and 1962, aren’t blah and yada.

I’d like to think that a change is gonna come, in a Sam Cooke-ian kinda way, but progress in this area in Toronto has been glacial.

About Dalton Higgins

Comments

[Sonny Yeung]

Dearest Dalton; we met at the Reference Library for the Black History Month Q & A. I am a candidate in my 30s and would be open to change from the usual Shakespeare to "Hip Hop Hamlet" for example...
Earlier last month I raised a question at a Hart House event on how to apply Malcolm X & Luther King Jr. to today and in Toronto. The response was one of identity politics.
Cadigia Ali is a woman of colour running in Ward 2 for council. I am neither black nor white but I see the barriers facing discrimination. Like you, many times I go to events and I am the only person of non-European origin...BTW - I can do spoken word & karaoke(smile)

[Walt Widla]

Hi Dalton
Your question to your peers is fascinating in that amongst the candidates for mayor right now, on the surface, it seems that nobody represents their interests. For the most part all of the "name" candidates are merely the same old thing in newer wrapping.
Unless some young gun steps up and steals the hearts of the city it may be safe to assume that your generation will once again quickly tune out, and another opportunity for change will be lost.
Now, about that black elephant in the room. Do you think it is even remotely possible that some middle aged white guy can perhaps represent your generation? Just because he fits the stereotype of the typical candidate in this election is it not possible that such a person can also represent the interests of your generation? To help answer this question I would like to better understand just what these interests are. I would like to think that a less fortunate black kid is no better or worse off than a less fortunate Asian kid, or even (please don't tune me out here) a less fortunate white kid. The common thread between these kids is that they are all "less fortunate". So, my challenge to you is to define more clearly than you did above, just what it is that your "hip-hop generationers" want representation on?
The reason I ask this is because I'm the campaign manager for George Babula, one of the lesser known candidates for mayor. George is the face of a group pf older white guys who grew up in the Parkdale neighbourhood a thousand or so years ago and just couldn't take the crap coming out of City Hall any longer, so we decided to do something about it. There is still some rebel fire burning in our expanding gut. We all have jobs so this is not the driving mechanism behind our action, we just want to bring some meaningful change to how this city is being run.
We grew up in a time when life was much simpler and prejudices were rare. We are mostly immigrants or children of immigrants so we still remember and understand the challenges faced by new arrivals to the city and the country. Sure things are different today, but maybe not quite as different as your generation may think.
George and his Parkdale Party are bringing a completely different way of thinking in terms of how to run this city. For details of our platform please visit us at www.parkdaleparty.com.
You never know, once you better define "the interests of your generation", George Babula and his Parkdale Party may prove to be the best of the bunch to represent those interests.
Best regards
Walt Widla

[Denis McKee]

Mr Higgins raises a valid concern, that visible minorities are not well represented in the public arena of politics. However, like the Star's Royson James, he implies the usual weak argument that older white people are to blame for this situation. He fails to explain how this happens and why visibile minorities are unable to change the situation.
Perhaps he could explain why the Jane-Finch community with it's huge majority of visible minorities containing many educated, articulate and politically savvy people cannot organize and elect representatives at the municipal, provincial and federal levels as has happened with its school trustee.
With only 8% of the riding/ward population, Canadians of Italian heritage manage to get elected at all three levels. The same applies in Markham which has a huge majority of Chinese citizens and has only two visible minorities on council.
All political parties are crying out for residents to get involved and if visible minorities do not make the effort, then who is to blame. The citizens of Bramalea got involved and now consistently elect visible minorities at all levels of government and much more representative of its population.

[EM]

Great to see the Star including the voice of Dalton Higgins - a mentor, colleague and friend to many hip hop heads, culture aficionados, media personalities and city builders in our diverse city. Also great that Dalton is taking us back and acknowledging work from some key African-Canadian pioneers in Toronto. Would love to hear Dalton weigh in on the arts as a vehicle for civic engagement, especially for the youth demo. Look forward to the next blog!

[David Paolini]

Ahhh, the Hip Hop Generation. Whenever the issue of Hip Hop is brought up I can't help but think back to the days of Style Wars and the early 1980s. That Hip Hop Generation was as multicoloured and vibrant as the art, music, and dance that they produced. Italian kids painted trains with Puerto Rican kids, while Black kids b-boyed with Jewish kids. In your article you seem to assume that the Hip Hop Generation represents youth of colour, who are into BET and T-Pain. I believe a vast amount of Toronto youth, who consider themselves to be a part of the Hip Hop Generation, would take offence to you using the words Hip Hop in the same sentence as T-Pain and BET. They would probably go so far as to say that BET and T-Pain have nothing to do with 'real' Hip Hop. I think I went off on a bit of a tangent, just thought I'd throw my two cents in.