Drake is a private citizen, not our city’s own Batman
He’s a rapper, an actor, a business mogul. But some would like him to become Detective Drake.
Toronto Police are investigating the death of Anthony (Fif ) Soares, a good friend of the rapper’s, who was gunned down on Sept. 14 outside an apartment building.
Writes the Toronto Star’s Betsy Powell: “. . . Senior police officials are privately expressing dismay that ‘Toronto’s biggest champion’ — as a city press release called him last year — has so far ignored a homicide detective’s request to encourage witnesses to step forward to help solve his friend’s killing.”
Powell is a seasoned and respected reporter and her piece is journalistically sound — “Police Claim Thing.” But journalism, especially in Canada, is steeped in whiteness and our newspapers repeatedly employ well-worn tropes of Black criminality. The article is no exception.
After citing the police’s request and concerns, Powell aims to add context to a shooting two years ago outside MUZIK nightclub during an after-party hosted by Drake. In this, Drake’s own lyrics appear twice: once to convey complaints made after the MUZIK shooting and the other is an anti-gun lyric.
It is not an overreaction to take issue with the use of rap lyrics in the piece. In 2016, University of Windsor researcher Dennis Tanovich found that rap lyrics were used in 36 Canadian criminal cases in the preceding decade. In 16 cases, the lyrics were used as evidence of guilt.
Imagine believing that Jay Z has exactly 99 problems, then imprisoning him if he admits to having one more or one less. Rap lyrics written by Black artists are considered confessions in front of juries, and indeed, readers.
Slowly but surely, Drake is condemned not just by his own words but also by the actions of his friends and staff.
The last half of the article is devoted to Drake’s so-called “criminal associations,” referencing two rappers with criminal records. The headline that ran inside the paper said, “Friends of rapper have criminal histories.”
Citing a number of incidents, it mentions a run-in Drake’s security had with Shawn Mendes, an assault allegation against his security from 2015 by an autograph seeker, and a heated-butnonviolent encounter between a photographer and Drake’s entourage.
The spectre of the Black Thug looms large. Unmentioned, however, is the way the Black community is overpoliced and is thus overrepresented in the prison population.
Accusations of guilt by association have harmed Black people. It is a form of trial-by-media that has become casual journalist practice. (Muslims are now included as targets of this particular exercise.) Thus, disparate events having to do with Drake’s staff are somehow plausible evidence of the refusal of Drake himself to send a tweet.
Repeatedly, it is reinforced that being celebrated by and within the city requires a higher standard from Drake. The mayor is quoted saying that a tweet is a “fairly simple request.” (As many others have noted, the Toronto Police do not have an impeccable track record on protecting witnesses so it is perhaps not such a simple request.) Readers are reminded that Mayor Tory also gave Drake a key to the city.
A key to the city does not make Drake our city’s Batman. He is a private citizen and public figure. In neither capacity is he a police detective.
His supposed refusal to tweet is never framed in empathetic terms; as of Monday, it was a mere two days after the death of his friend. As Huda Hassan noted in Flare, “To particularly ask that he commit to this labour during a time of mourning is a reminder that Black people are never granted the humanity to endure pain or, at the minimum, peacefully mourn our loved ones.”
It is this lack of humanity that troubles me. It is also part of a pattern.
In Racial Profiling in Canada, Carol Tator and Frances Henry reviewed the research on Black representation in the press. They found that “the media’s approach to covering African Canadians is itself a form of racial profiling.”
Foiled by his own music, his morality and citizenship questioned by the mayor and the police and their claims validated by the press, Drake is found guilty. No wonder he doesn’t comment when asked. He’s already been convicted in absentia.