Black parents are often lulled into the false sense of safety that a suburban bedroom community provides. We are taught that if we can provide our children with “more than we had” and send them to certain schools, they are protected from criminal elements.

But the recent viral story of the five Black boys who went missing from places like Whitby, Pickering, Brampton and found in remote northern towns caught up in the drug trade, is a chilling wake-up call that any child, particularly our sons could be lured into doing something they never imagined.

Teneile Warren is a community advocate and the equity and inclusion officer at the Waterloo Region District School Board and says Black youth experience a vulnerability that their families and caregivers often misunderstand. 

“I call it the lived experience gap,” says Warren. “As I’ve been supporting families through conflict resolution and advocating for Black youth, I have noticed a pattern and so I turned to the data. The current Black youth population (15-24) is largely born here, but many of their parents are immigrants who didn’t experience this education system, didn’t have to ‘find’ themselves in Canadian schools. It can create a distance between the child and the parent, especially if the parent isn’t willing to acknowledge this difference,” says Warren. “Black boys talk about the pressure in the locker room to allow other kids to say the N-word for example, “If I don’t do it, I don’t have friends.”

“I am a Jamaican; I was raised and educated in Jamaica. I wasn’t searching for role models or examples of who or what I could become as a Black person. Now as a parent, I have to be intentional, recommending books and experiences to my kid’s school so that Blackness is reflected. I will probably have to do that for their entire educational experience. The village we had back home doesn’t exist here; you have to create that village and everyone needs to know their role,” says Warren. 

“If you are a Black boy growing up, let’s say in Nigeria, eating Nigerian food, experiencing Nigerian culture, it is a completely different experience than being a Black Canadian boy with Nigerian parents going to school in Brampton. He is experiencing what is called third culture— raised in an environment different from your parents during your most vulnerable years of development (0-16). Your experiences in the workplace are not the same as your child’s at school,” says Warren. 

Warren spends a lot of time talking and engaging with youth and has heard from many Black boys who feel a sense of invisibility in their school, in their homes and are impacted by the lack of spaces in the community to get the support they need. 

Warren said they once asked a former student what we get wrong about the Black boy experience and his answer was heartbreaking, “He said how can I matter one minute and then mean nothing the next? He talked about only being noticed when he messed up and no one could see anything but that mistake. He told me that some kids can’t shake that off,” says Warren.

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As a father and community advocate, Clayton Greaves expresses deep concern for the safety of Black youth, arguing that systemic neglect places them at greater risk. "Our children receive less attention, and our children don't seem to do well within any of these major systems,” he said. 

According to research by Justice Canada, the bullying that Black youth face from both students and teachers is often not believed or taken seriously by school administrators. “Youth then take it upon themselves to address these problems, which may lead to verbal or physical altercations.” The research explains that for white youth, these events are often written off as “boys will be boys” but for Black boys, schools are quick to involve police and a simple fight ends up in assault charges. “This differential treatment likely results from pervasive stereotypes of Black youth as angry, aggressive, violent, and prone to criminality (Rogers & Way, 2016; Jerald et al., 2017).”  

Dr. Lance McCready is an associate professor at the University of Toronto, whose research focuses on the health and well-being of Black men and boys. 

McCready says that even the slightest challenging behaviour is assumed to indicate that the boy is destined for jail. “And I mean, sometimes we’re talking about a minor altercation with a peer. And these kids are viewed and treated as if they are an adult.” 

Warren says they once asked a group of teachers to name a time when they were afraid of a Black child and every story was about a Black boy. “Author Hari Ziyad coined the term misafropedia - a fear and disdain for Black children,” says Warren. 

McCready agrees, and says that many teachers operate on the fear that a Black boy will become violent or aggressive towards them. “We don’t see teachers having that unfounded fear of violence when it comes to white students,” he says. 

Warren says that when Black youth behave in ways similar to their white counterparts, they don’t receive the same grace. “It impacts their sense of self-worth. It tells you that you’re different and you are valued less. We hear often about the adultification of Black girls but not the adultification of Black boys because we impose the expectations of manhood on boys quite early. This means toughness, or shouldering responsibility such as finances, being ‘cool’, even showing ‘sexual prowess’,” says Warren.

The Justice Canada report also highlights the fact that Black youth who are newcomers to Canada may also experience mental health issues stemming from difficulties adapting to Canadian society. They may experience “... exclusion tied to having a mother tongue other than English or French, having an accent, migration-induced stress, or trauma from experiencing war or other threats to national security in their country of origin. When these mental health issues are not appropriately addressed, Black students may act out or show behavioural problems in schools.”

Furthermore, the report shows that when white children “act out” they are likely to get a mental health referral. Whereas Black youth in Canada are four times more likely to first enter the mental health care system through the emergency department. 

Black youth are too often handled by the CJS (criminal justice system) instead of receiving supports that address their needs.

McCready says most teachers are not willing to create environments that Black boys can fit into, they rather have them fit neatly into whatever stereotype they’re comfortable with, like sports. 

“One of the very narrow ways Black boys are valued is athletic prowess,” says McCready. 

And think about it, the high school athlete gets a lot of attention. Teachers are ensuring they eat, have extra homework resources, and get high-fives in the hallway. They are treated as a prized possession. Sports is one of the few ways that Black boys feel valued. So if you don’t make the team one year or were never athletically inclined, you have very few other options to feel “worthy.” 

“I’ve talked to teachers who’ve admitted to me that they have a Black male student who sits at the back of their class and they have not spoken to that student for the entire term,” says McCready. 

Added to that, there are low and limited expectations of success for Black boys in schools. You will hardly find a teacher encouraging them beyond basketball, says McCready. “Where are the suggestions or expectations for Black boys to join writing courses, or robotics, or cooking classes?”

Once the child becomes disengaged and there is no social connection, they become vulnerable to dangerous external forces. 

“These dynamics make Black boys vulnerable to being trafficked because some older guy is going to come along and say hey, I have something for you to do. Look, you can be really good at this,” he says.

Detective Constable Martin Douglas, a veteran officer with TPS’s Engage 416, says there are several ways in which Black youth are manipulated by older men in their communities. 

He describes a scenario he’s observed where an ice cream truck will pull up to a neighbourhood and there’s a guy who is buying for everyone. He is demonstrating to the kids that this is something to aspire to - to be the guy who can pick up the tab.

“Lately, what we’ve been seeing is guys coming into the neighbourhood with these fireworks known as Roman candles. They give them out and encourage the kids to play a ‘game’ of war. But what they’re really looking for is the kid who has the tenacity to go up to their friends and ‘shoot’ them with these fireworks. Then that kid becomes their target.” 

Douglas also points to “crash out culture” amplified by social media, the glamorization of fast money. “How do you tell a kid to avoid fast cash, when they’re making more money than they’ve ever seen? At this age, everything is now for now. Their teenage brains crave immediate gratification.”

Douglas emphasizes the powerful influence of social media. He’s done over 100 school presentations to youth warning them about drug trafficking but says, “It’s hard to course-correct a young brain bombarded with images of wealth and success,” he says. “They start with low-level scams and quickly escalate into dangerous territory.” 

Marcus recalls that before his son took off, he noticed fake iPhones stashed in his room. His son also was bringing home expensive clothes and sneakers, but brushed it off when confronted.  

Det. Const. Jeff Saunders from the Missing Persons Unit in Thunder Bay who worked with Marcus to find his son says, “Regardless of what they’re doing, it’s still a youth. And these kids have no idea what they’re getting into. It’s human trafficking.”

McCready believes the issue of boys being trafficked into the drug trade will continue to be difficult, mainly because a lot of parents don’t really know how to have this conversation with their sons. “They’re often not able to acknowledge that their son is in a school system that holds low expectations for them and assumes they are more likely to join sports or crime before they become a scholar or a writer. Are you asking your son how he feels about that?” 

McCready is also not surprised that none of these boys will talk to their parents about what happened to them. “If you admit that you’ve been trafficked, then your masculinity is compromised,” he says. He encourages parents to unlearn some of these gender norms that are harming our boys, and have real conversations with them. 

McCready refers to an old parenting adage that “Mothers love their sons but raise their daughters.” He’s alluding to the misguided idea that boys are easier to parent because they don’t need much ‘attention’. 

It’s another thing that parents need to unlearn. We have to listen intently to our boys, especially when they are seeking advice or empathy. We not only have to protect our sons from criminals, but we have to protect them from the systems that are at times making them easy targets for criminals. And we have to do this collectively, and hold each other accountable. Your parent group chat is going to have to get a lot deeper.

Warren reflects on participating in a Black parent panel discussion, where they were asked what our children need most. “My answer was and still is an intergenerational community invested in their success. These systems were not built for us. The targeting of Black boys isn’t new, which means the vulnerability isn’t new. Black boys need to be sent the message that they can be boys, they can be vulnerable, they are inherently good,” says Warren.

“This whole notion of the village, we've lost that,” says Greaves. “People want to say that we have a village, we don't have a healthy village. The village can't exist in a corner structure that we have, where individual needs outweigh the needs of the community. If we, as a group, don’t do it for ourselves and our boys, then it will not get done for us," he warned. 

With files from Shellene Drakes-Tull.