Kevin Gosine, Brock Associate Professor of Sociology, wrote a piece recently published in The National Post about the bonds formed within marginalized communities.

Gosine writes:

The proliferation of gun violence in Toronto this year prompted troubling responses during the city’s recent mayoral and city council campaigns.

Now dethroned city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti publicly dehumanized Toronto’s Jane-Finch neighbourhood this summer, figuratively invoking genocide when he characterized residents of the Jane-Finch community as “cockroaches” who should be sprayed so they’d be forced to “scatter.”

Then there’s Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy, the far-right media personality with documented links to white nationalism who placed an eyebrow-raising third in the mayoral race.

The ever-controversial Goldy built a campaign on the premise that Toronto is in a state of urban decay, a city overrun with gang-related violent crime while police and city officials, supposedly wary of accusations of racism, are reluctant to take “proper” measures to address the crisis.

She went so far as to advocate the return of police carding, a practice whereby law enforcement officers are able to question and investigate racialized citizens without just cause.

The underlying theme of these political candidates? Racialized, low-income people subscribe to inherently pathological and deficient cultures and, as such, threaten the social order.

Rather than reversing the retreat of the welfare state, providing supports to communities and investing in public housing, the solutions of Mammoliti and Goldy include displacement along with greater surveillance and incarceration of the marginalized.

Continue reading the full article here.