Dear Editor:

You can call me crazy or anything else you want  but the reality is in this Toronto it seems that whenever the Black community builds something that’s the envy of the world, there are a couple of Black people around who will want to mash it up, cut it down, give it away  or do any number of things to it. However, if  that same thing were owned by a different community, it  would have been an object of celebration. I t  would have been promoted, admired  and shown as examples to the rest of the world as a thing of greatness.

Do you remember when  Taste of the Danforth  was launched many, many moons  ago ? Do you remember  how  proud  the Greek community was  when  50,000 people made their way down to the Danforth to celebrate with them? To eat and drink and be merry with them ? Now Taste  of Danforth  welcomes a million visitors annually and  the  numbers keep growing. And the organization that has running it from the day it started, is still in charge of it. And you can bet that the City will not try to dismantle this great Festival  by defunding  it. There are  several  other festivals  in the  Greater Toronto Area that have  also prospered  over the years.

Now what am I  driving at?  Am  I  about  to discuss the ill-fated Caribana Festival which for 40-plus years  was built by the Caribbean Community and then taken away from us with the White tool called defunded and given to friends of the city so that they could make money and fill their pockets, leaving the community high and dry?  No, this is not what I  want to talk  about. Instead,  let’s look at  the African Canadian legal Clinic (ACLC).

The ACLC was started  more  than 20 years ago  by Margaret Parsons, fresh out of university.  Margaret made her way down to Eglinton Avenue West and got people to sign up for the service then. Then she recruited lawyers for the  clinic, her pushing them to do great things. Soon the clinic grew from  one location grew to seven -from Toronto to Peel and Durham, looking after the needs of Black people across the GTA. The  clinic became well recognized as she brought cases to the United Nations in New York and Genève  and to the Canadian Supreme Court of Canada

Other communities such as the Greeks  and the Italians have their own legal  community organizations s to represent them and she Margaret thought that  the Black community  also needed to have its own. And what a wonderful job that she has done over the years! But just like Caribana, the ACLC  has been defunded.

WARNING : If you, as a Black person, choose to build  an organization in the future, do it outside of our community because if you choose to operate in this community success means the you may become the  victim  of  Defunding. In the Black community success can put you on the fast track to losing what you have built. Success means that you are a target for the kill.

Of course, I sincerely hope that this does not happen but successful organizations such as Tropicana and the Jamaican Canadian Association had better watch out because now that they are successful, the community and government, whether City or provincial or federal, may be looking at them as the next to be defunded. Hey, this is what white privilege is all about.

Yours truly,

Malcolm Regis