It really isn’t that simple. The north didn’t have as much strict segregation but in a way it was because they didn’t have to. Economic pressure reinforced by subversive hiring practices, prejudice in housing and hostile attitudes kept black communities tight knit and localized which meant you didn’t have to have specific “Colored schools” because they were created by these forces squeezing folks together into controllable blocks of population.

In the South the fall of segregation had a number of nasty fallouts which harmed black communities as well. When they merged the systems there was a historicly significant loss of black teachers. People got up in arms over really stupid questions like “What if my menstruating daughter had a black male teacher” and that prejudice ensured that a lot of the teachers who understood the challenges of being black in America were no longer in a position to help students.

This meant that effectively in the North segregated schooling continued to be a thing in practice but not in name while in the South it wiped out infrastructure that was helping black students succeed. It was handled incredibly poorly and was not unambiguously good but it did change a lot of the legal categorizations and is considered a win.

Technically that was a calculated movement of it’s time. They wanted a black character in a role that spoke to an easy childhood concept of authority to imply that power dynamically having black people in a dominant respected role in social spaces is a normal thing one doesn’t need to get upset over. Hence the whole friendly cop thing.

They were aware through the gay black actor they had in the role that police was something minority communities had issues with but the hope at the time was that more diversity in the force would be a solve. It’s naive from a modern standpoint but they did try.

It was sad that they purposefully kept the gay part of the actor’s identity under wraps. They knew they were asking him to do something harmful by keeping his private life strictly secret but the actor agreed that he was doing something he deemed worth the sacrifice.

It’s not nessisarily skewing the narrative, it’s just not providing context. Terrorist acts have a narrow definition in Canadian law. This guy could be a spree killer motivated by racism but unless that killing is for premeditated ideological, religious or political reasons to coerce a specific result or change of policy from the population / Government it doesn’t fall under the definition.

No manifesto or claim of reasoning or connections found to groups that claim responsibility - no terrorist designation.

A terrorist attack has a narrow definition in Canadian law where it is specifically part of a premeditated ideological, religious or political attempt to influence government policy or to intimidate a section of the public to a specific end. Basically if this guy didn’t have a manifesto or ever stated his reason within this rubric and was not part of a group that has specific aims then it follows under a regular old spree killer homicide unless it was racially motivated in which case it is also a hate crime.

Whether one uses cars or guns is not a factor in determining what counts as a terrorist act. The reporting on this has not been great ar clearing up this point.

There’s a very specific rubric for what counts as a terrorist attack in Canada. Probably the level of calculation and premeditation involved was a factor and that he’s not a part of an ideologically organized group that is trying to influence behaviour of a government or political body.

A spontaneous hate crime made against a population is technically not a terrorist attack by Canadian definition. To count you have to have done it for a narrow slice of very specific reasons.

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“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.

Hey can we not do this?

While there is an endemic issue with toxic variations of masculinity that looks at sex as a tool of domination erasing the experience of people who have been assaulted by women and other gender minorities isn’t the way to go about this. There are lots of ways to get this point across without turning around and being gross towards other groups affected by abuse.

Sloganizing these issues in this way doesn’t make the allies needed to combat abuse.