Antoni Shelton grew up in the Jane-Finch corridor, what he calls the 'hood.

Like thousands of other kids from Jamaica, he arrived in the mid-1970s after the Trudeau government relaxed immigration laws to allow for family reunification. It meant many women who had come here as domestics could finally bring their families, and Toronto saw its first real influx of black people.

The Jane St.-Finch Ave. W. area was a nightmare then, as many Torontonians reacted with fear and stereotyping to the growing number of visible minorities. But in some ways, it's worse now, says Shelton, who has just stepped down as executive director of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations.

``You felt personally, like, `Get out, you don't belong,' '' says Shelton, who is now an executive assistant with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Shelton says he got lucky. His father moved the family to Brampton.

Many kids who didn't get out fell through the cracks and are still struggling in an increasingly divided black community where those who made it have little in common with those who didn't.

A poll for The Star by Goldfarb and Associates reflects that unease. It found blacks are highly concerned about discrimination in Toronto and are more likely than any other ethnic community to have personally experienced it.

The survey of 187 blacks was part of a larger poll of 1,575 people from eight ethnic groups for The Star's Beyond 2000 project, a year-long study of greater Toronto's growing ethnic and cultural mix.

Seventy-one per cent of blacks surveyed think there is discrimination and three-quarters of those say there's a great deal or a lot of discrimination. Only 3 per cent say there's very little.

``Alarmingly,'' says Goldfarb, that trend extends to their children as well. Thirty-five per cent say their kids have been victims of verbal assaults or taunts, and 10 per cent have been physically abused.

Jamaicans surveyed are even more concerned about discrimination than blacks in general. Eighty-eight per cent of Jamaicans surveyed say there is discrimination and almost two-thirds have personally experienced it.

Nearly three-quarters of Jamaicans believe they are treated unfairly by police and two-thirds by Canada Customs and the courts.

And while 59 per cent of all blacks surveyed say they are treated unfairly by the media, that jumps to three-quarters for Jamaicans.

Possibly, the survey says, ``the black community in general and Jamaicans in particular feel that the media feed on negative stereotypes and generalizations'' about illegal behaviour of individuals in the community.

Their complaints are bolstered by the responses of other ethnic groups who all said they believe black Torontonians are most likely to be targeted for discrimination.

About 40 per cent of the 343,000 members of the black community in greater Toronto are Jamaicans, according to the 1996 census. Another 40 per cent have African origins, while the rest are from other islands in the West Indies or are Canadian-born.

Shelton remembers summers as the worst time in Jane-Finch, hanging out with the other kids outside the stifling apartment buildings because there was nothing else to do.

``You're living in the 'hood and the whole thing gets played out every day, especially in summer,'' he says. ``I had four brothers and the odds are that one or two of us would have been lost to the issues we can begin to see now. You roll the dice and the odds are two will get lost to that.''

Marcia Brown, a 28-year-old single mother of three young girls, sees that discrimination played out every day from her Chalkfarm Dr. apartment near Jane St. and Wilson Ave.

Black kids hang out in the lobby and around the high-rise complex and are constantly hassled by white security guards who use racial epithets, she says. Recently, they beat up a 16-year-old and turned a dog on him.

``It's not right to beat up a 16-year-old and let a dog bite him just for hanging around,'' she says. ``These kids are angry, but whatever you are, you would think that's prejudice.''

When another teenager dared to question the guards, demanding to know what he was doing wrong, they called the police and eight squad cars showed up, she says, ``just for one kid.''

``I don't want my girls to grow up here,'' says Brown, a telephone operator for Rogers Cable. ``I don't let them play outside. Sometimes you hear gunshots and fights. I want to move to Mississauga or Brampton, but with rent controls gone, I can't afford it.''

She laments the fact that ``when something bad goes on, people just think, `They're Jamaican.' I don't think that's right. I think everybody is completely different. Sometimes when they find out you're Jamaican, they think you're bad there and then. But there's a lot of good people out there working really hard.''

Jobs are a huge issue in the black community. One in four surveyed are not working and those who are feel they are not given the same opportunities as others for pay increases and promotions.

Half of those surveyed have an annual income below $35,000 and one-fifth earn less than $20,000. While most African blacks arrived in the 1980s and '90s and are still adjusting to the language and workforce, Caribbean blacks have been here longer and have no language problem.

Unlike other ethnic groups, the second generation is not adjusting any better than the first and the problem is their colour, says Frances Henry, an anthropologist and renowned expert on the Caribbean community in Toronto.

``They suffer discrimination more than any other group,'' says Henry, who is white. ``They are the real butt of racism. Even though they don't have a language problem, they are still going to experience discrimination problems and so will their children because their skin is still black.

``It's not language or religion, it's colour and that doesn't disappear. It's not going to go away until a whole lot of things change.''

The Harris government's scrapping of employment equity legislation and the dismantling of all the anti-racism initiatives that were part of the defunct anti-racism secretariat was ``the worst thing that has happened in years,'' she says. ``Those laws were helping the disadvantaged, particularly people of colour, get considered for jobs. But all of that has been done away with.''

Discrimination is ``rampant in schools,'' Henry adds. ``There have been a lot of good education initiatives, but they don't touch down into the day-to-day experiences in the classroom.

``It's a vicious cycle. The more a group is discriminated against, the more marginalized they become. If you are discriminated against in school, you drop out. Then your chances are less and the cycle repeats itself.''

The shooting death of 3-year-old Breanna Davy in the Jane-Finch area June 13 only served to galvanize the stereotypes about blacks, community leaders say. While blacks were as appalled as anyone else about the shooting, they feel the entire community was blamed for the actions of one person.

``Everyone buys into it,'' says Worrick Russell, head of the Caribbean and African Canadian Chamber of Commerce. ``Killing a 3-year-old is not something any society accepts. But the whole black community is labelled because of it. When a white person does something horrible to kids, we don't label the entire white community.''

He stresses there have been many improvements in the black community in recent years. The dropout problem has decreased significantly because high schools stopped streaming children into academic and non-academic programs in Grade 9.

Crime has also decreased significantly since 1995, he says, and judges have become more sensitive to race issues. Police officers are also more careful because they know they will have to face those judges in court, he says.

As well, ``a lot more organizations are becoming more serious about putting services in place for youngsters,'' he says. ``We have to go out and do things for ourselves. There's a real need for consciousness on the part of the community.''

When blacks start getting involved in politics, things will change, he believes, just as they did for the Italians and Jews in previous generations.

Ilias Abdurahman, 32, came to Toronto from Ethiopia 10 years ago, unable to speak English, but through friends got a job as a pizza-maker right away and studied English during the day.

Now, he works in shipping and receiving, is married with two young children and says he's never had a problem with discrimination.

``I don't know why everyone is complaining about race when we were treated so badly where we came from,'' he says. ``Everything is 100 per cent better here. I don't have any fear of being discriminated against. I'm not saying everything is perfect here, but over-all, Toronto is a wonderful place.''

David Grant, 49, a business analyst from Barbados, echoes the sentiment. ``I'm sure there are stereotypes, but I don't really let it be a problem,'' he says. ``My attitude is, `That's their problem.' I go about my business and try to be respectful of other people.''

He admits: ``I think if you survey professional blacks and non-professionals, the answers would be dramatically different. It all depends on the people you associate with.

``I like my culture, but I truly believe in the corporate world, there are no differences. It's a difficult balance. I'm a person who thinks the cup is half full.

``I love Toronto, I think it's the best city in the world,'' Grant adds, ``but there are a lot of people who don't appreciate it.''

How the poll was done The telephone survey of 1,575 adults across Greater Toronto was conducted by Goldfarb Consultants between Feb. 12 and March 14. It polled about 150 people from eight major ethnic groups, including the Italian and Portuguese communities and six visible minority groups - Caribbean and African blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, south Asians, Filipinos and west Asian/Arabs. For comparison purposes,a random sample of 402 Torontonians was also surveyed. The poll was commissioned for The Star's Beyond 2000 project, a year-long study of Greater Toronto's growing ethnic and cultural mix and an exploration of many quality-of-life issues that will affect the lives of all its residents in the next millenium. Results from the total sample are considered accurate within 2 percentage points, 19 times in 20. The margin of error is higher - about 8 percentage points - for individual community results.

While 91 per cent of the blacks surveyed were satisfied with Toronto as a place to live, just over half were only somewhat satisfied and one in 10 not content.

Shelton believes his own family wouldn't have done as well if they arrived in Jane-Finch today.

``Then, at the end of the day, there were problems, but there was an openness to deal with them and we took advantage of that,'' he says. ``But Queen's Park doesn't take responsibility for that anymore. They say, `It's not our problem, it's their problem.' ''

Largely because they got out of Jane-Finch, he says, all his brothers have been successful. One is a doctor and head of the emergency department at Women's College Hospital; another runs his own business; a third is a Class A mechanic and the fourth is a financial planner with an M.A. in business administration.

Those who didn't leave haven't done as well. While many black parents succeeded in bettering their lot in life by coming to Canada, many of their kids haven't.

``The aspirations of their kids have fallen by the wayside,'' Shelton says. ``Some of them are doing extremely well, but some are not. I think there's a high level of concern within the Jamaican community around those who are not doing well.''

Shelton says many of the remaining problems are confined to poor Jamaicans in the Jane-Finch area.

``Many middle-class West Indians are doing quite well, but a huge segment of Jamaicans at Jane-Finch have been demonized and society has been allowed to shirk responsibility.

``This is quite a different approach than the '80s and early '90s when there was more of a sense we have to address the underlying issues that are leading to these violent gangs.''

When Shelton recently tried to get a $60,000 grant over three years from a Toronto charitable foundation to work with vulnerable young people, getting them interested in the arts, he was turned down.

``I was astonished,'' he says. ``We were trying to take the guns and knives out of their hands and give them a paintbrush or a basketball and these 30 or 40 leaders of business turned us down.''

The dismantling of employment equity means that accents, language and colour are resurfacing as barriers to employment for disadvantaged blacks, Shelton adds.

``There's a real danger we're back into a marginalization process right now. The message is, `Just treat everyone the same and whoever falls through the cracks, too bad.' ''

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