LET'S SKIP THE HYPHEN

A Criminal Is A Criminal: The Appalling Death Toll In The Lower
Mainland Among Young Indo-Canadian Men Is Not A Matter Of Culture Or History

More than 100 dead. It's a meaningless stat that won't even touch the
morning newsprint if it's from Iraq, Rwanda or Myanmar.

But it's not about some Third World war zone -- the killing fields
are here in neighbourhoods like Newton, Richmond, South Burnaby and Port Moody.

In less than two decades, more than 100 young men have been gunned
down in the streets, in clubs, in front of their homes and in busy
public areas. Their trade: Drugs. Their age: mostly 20s and early
30s. Their hyphenated label: Indo-Canadian.

For nearly a century, British Columbia's predominantly
Punjabi-dominated South Asian community has flown under the radar, a
quiet minority identifiable by the turbans worn by the men and the
flowing salwar-kameezes of the women.

The community prospered through an immigrant work ethic and a united
family approach to business.

But a shift occurred within a small segment 10 to 15 years ago with
the illicit appeal of drug money. Some say this shadow first arose
from political factions trying to raise money for an independent
homeland back in India. Others point at a deeper dislocation of a new
lost generation enchanted by dreams of quick money.

In a single decade, the adjective "Indo-Canadian" has become glued to
a new family of nouns such as "gangs," "shootings" and "violence." As
a result, a new generation of young people is growing up to discover
the meaning of terms like "racial profiling" and "under suspicion."

So, enter a recent federal report called "Group of 10: Integrated
Community Response to South Asian Youth Violence," written by a group
of Indo-Canadian counsellors and social workers.

The report claims to have found the root of the problem. It blames
the killings on a South Asian culture that teaches violence as "an
acceptable and culturally sanctioned means of resolving disputes."

The report further states that this belief comes from "observing role
models at home and in the community engage in physical violence," and
from a "misunderstanding of the role of violence in the history and
beliefs of Sikhism."

A number of peripheral reasons are also given: Experience of racism
and marginalization, sensationalistic media coverage of the South
Asian community, and family roles in which boys get to run free while
girls are home-bound.

For all the good intentions of the group, these reasons fall short of
adequately explaining the violence.

First, the vast majority of the dead are not immigrants who grew up
in India, but rather second- and third-generation Indo-Canadians who
grew up in this country and in our public school system. They have
more knowledge of John A. Macdonald, the exploitation of Chinese
railway labour, and the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series than they do
of Sikh history, and its ostensibly violent roots.

Arguably, second-generation kids who grew up in a lawful and peaceful
place like Vancouver should be far less prone to violence than people
who grew up in poverty and the unstable social setting of India.

Secondly, the report suggests that these young men felt alienated
growing up in a racist society -- which is a reasonable conclusion.
Regardless of its multicultural jargon, Canada was no haven of
tolerance in the 1970s and 1980s.

Still, this does not explain why the same world of violence is absent
from other large Indo-Canadian communities in Ontario and Alberta.

After all, Toronto has a larger Punjabi community than Vancouver and
it has not experienced all these killings, and the second- and
third-generation kids who grew up in Ontario come from similar
working-class conditions where parents held two jobs and zealously
followed the same faith.

The report also fails to address the advantages and opportunities
many of deceased young men had in their lives.

In 2005, 74 people were killed in Toronto, mostly in poor
neighbourhoods with a large population of Jamaican immigrants. In
Vancouver, in the same year there were 67 homicides -- many
Indo-Canadian related.

Most of the men gunned down came from middle-to upper-class families,
not poor inner cities projects.

They came from stable two-parent households, where the family owned
its own suburban dwelling. Many of the families extended into
networks of uncles, aunts and grandparents.

These parents weren't living on social assistance and they certainly
weren't users who exposed their children to drugs. These kids didn't
grow up on East Hastings, or in areas with vast amounts of street
trade and pimps, with crack pipes littering playgrounds.

Unlike gang recruits in South Central Los Angeles or Chicago's South
Side, many of the dead young men were high-school graduates, some
even college and university alumni holding down day jobs for the
family business or working as elementary and high-school teachers.

The fact is that most of the dead young men had all the support to
walk the straight path and succeed in life, and this made little difference.

To blame parents, culture and, most of all the Sikh religion, is
misleading and wrong. These young men were not any more agents of the
Sikh faith than Hell's Angels are of Christianity and its violent history.

In fact, these thugs and bullies had more values in common with
weekend hockey dads who attack referees, and television personalities
like Don Cherry who cheer on a good old-fashioned fight.

These were young men who sought the fame and rush of power that comes
from holding a gun to the world's head -- not too different from
their counterparts in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Hong
Kong, among others.

Most were probably over their heads when they were lured by
established criminals and they were probably too short-sighted in
thinking they could walk away from a few payoffs of muling marijuana
and cocaine.

As this gang culture becomes better organized, the deaths and random
violence will decrease and all this will become a non-story. It is
moving in that direction now.

Those who will seek out this world will find their way to the other
side and Indo-Canadian gangs will earn their patch and melt away
quietly into the criminal underworld with all the other groups:
White, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Mexican.

But for now there is no organization and so today we have the
"crisis" of the Indo-Canadian male and federal reports fingering
parents and culture for being too lax with their sons.

These men made a choice to pursue a criminal lifestyle. It was their decision.

There is only one necessary response -- exercise the rule of law.
They are like any other criminals, regardless of their hyphenated
persuasion: Chinese, Indo or white.

In a pluralistic society it is undemocratic to treat criminals any differently.