Rational Radical

The day 14-year-old Ravi Dharamdial was stabbed to death, police entered Brampton’s Harold M. Brathwaite Secondary School looking for a young black suspect. Students were on edge. Some of the school’s black pupils were especially concerned: They feared a backlash from students of South Asian background, says Brathwaite youth worker Everton Clennon. “The black students in the school are scared to begin with,” Clennon says. “They have to watch their backs when they’re walking around the school.”

Dharamdial’s killing was the 24th in a record series of homicides in Peel Region this year, and raised questions about racial tensions in Brampton. Strains are being fed by a sharp increase in visible minorities, culture clashes in the home, “seething anger” from black youths feeling discriminated against, and a dearth of services and activities to channel restless young hormones.

It’s often said that schools reflect their community. Clennon, for one, sees tensions in the hallways of Brathwaite, a 6-year-old school of 1,500 students in north Brampton. They culminated like a scene from a Greek epic poem, with each group selecting a “champion” for a one-on-one battle, Clennon says. The fight took place on a Thursday in May during fourth period, unbeknown to teachers and witnessed by a large group of students skipping classes. The next morning, the black fighter entered Clennon’s office at Brathwaite, where he jointly runs a provincially funded program to help at-risk pupils stay in school. “The whole right side of his face was completely destroyed. Picture someone in a boxing ring after one of those heavyweight fights; one eye is closed, his mouth and lips are completely engulfed, and my first comment to him was, ‘What are you doing here? You need to be at home,’ ” says Clennon. An hour later, the South Asian fighter also showed up voluntarily to discuss the incident. He had barely a scratch. Yet he had lost the fight, knocked out cold by one punch. The fight didn’t resolve tensions between the two groups, but Clennon says the school has since been spared further violence.

Peel District School Board trustee Suzanne Nurse says the city is experiencing “growing pains.” Its population increased by 33 per cent between 2001 and 2006 and now stands at about 432,000. Seven years ago, whites were 60 per cent of the population. By 2006, visible minorities were 57 per cent. South Asians are the largest visible minority: 32 per cent of the population, more than doubled in the past five years. Blacks are second at about 12 per cent – up by 66 per cent. No other minority forms more than 3 per cent. Some refer to the city’s South Asian and black communities as “two solitudes.” But Nurse, who represents north Brampton, says high schools are spearheading bridge-building efforts.

“If we do not keep pushing towards greater understanding on both sides, we could run into a problem in the future,” she says. “I think there’s enough smart people in this area who recognize it could turn into something explosive.” Peel police note that 24.5 per cent of those charged with violent crimes in 2007 were youths, up 5 points from the year before.  Community workers say problems reflect wider trends: Youths are more likely to be armed and bent on defending a perversely exaggerated respect. A badly interpreted look is enough for a fight. “They embrace gangsterism,” says Joan Manning, counselling manager for Brampton-based Rapport Youth & Family Services. “That’s where the new power is.”

The lack of youth services is seen as an aggravating factor. “There’s no place for young people to hang out and feel safe,” goes the refrain.  The need is especially acute in north Brampton, where new subdivisions meet open fields. Dissected by wide boulevards, poorly served by transit and lacking libraries and community centres, it offers a sense of windswept isolation. “The homes were built without thinking of what a community really needs, or what a community is,” says Brathwaite principal Linda Galen. A sports centre opened nearby, but most youths stopped going when user fees were imposed. Not surprisingly, they gravitate to local malls. But black teens have at times been barred from entering in groups, Karanja says.

“A lot of youth have told us they’re not welcome at any public place.” She once sent a summer employee out to buy stamps. He returned hours later, after being questioned by police seeking a black robbery suspect. “You can imagine how angry that young kid was,” Karanja says. “There’s a lot of seething anger among young people about the way they are perceived and the way they are treated.”

The black community also battles what Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell has described as an urban myth – that families from Toronto’s troubled Jane-Finch area are being subsidized to move to her city and are responsible for a spike in crime. The black community is a mix of immigrants and former Torontonians, most of them homeowners. In 2005, 10 per cent of Brampton residents lived in poverty, according to the Social Planning Council of Peel. Youths from Indian, Pakistani or Sri Lankan backgrounds struggle with culture clashes, often at home. At a packed community meeting on safety in north Brampton last weekend, they complained that parents are clueless about the power of peer pressure on everything from “snitching” bans to clothing.

Baldev Mutta, executive director of Punjabi Community Health Services, insists racial tensions aren’t the issue they were five years ago. Jacqui Buckeridge, program supervisor at India Rainbow Community Services of Peel, says divisions within the South Asian community tend to disappear when there’s a confrontation with black people. It then becomes brown versus black: “In high school, racial divide kicks in and it kicks in hard.” Nurse, who represents schools in three north Brampton wards, including Brathwaite and Sandalwood, says overcrowding creates its own pressures. At least six new schools have opened in two years. Four more will be built by 2010.

Sandalwood Heights is barely a year old, yet it has a dozen portable classrooms. Designed for 1,200 students, it has almost 2,000.  “Teenagers have this thing: You step on my toes, all hell breaks loose. Sandalwood is a very full school; it’s 1,970 kids. So just trying to get down a hallway can be challenging,” Nurse says. Forty-six Sandalwood students were suspended in September, none for having weapons, says Sylvia Link, a board spokesperson. On Oct. 22, the day the 15-year-old suspect in Ravi’s death was arrested, Sandalwood principal John Chasty told students that, “The violent actions of one person do not reflect on others here at the school. It’s understandable to feel angry, but reprisals and more violence will not bring Ravi back,” he added. “Through this difficult time, I want you to remember that we need to find non-violent ways to deal with our feelings.”

Some 80 per cent of students at Brathwaite are South Asian, the rest mostly black. Galen insists the school is “fairly well integrated.” “Have we had racial tensions? Yes we have, but … I don’t think we’re any different from any workplace or community anywhere in the GTA that invites people from all countries.” She says the school uses cultural diversity to enrich the curriculum and provides a safe place with after-school programs.  “I often say to kids when they come in here, if they’ve been in an argument or fight or whatever, ‘What kind of community do you want to live in? Do you want a community where everyone rises up because somebody’s different or somebody said something?’ ”