Linda explains that there are true and false generalizations, as well as contexts in which it is okay to generalize and contexts in which it is not, in which one must look into individual characteristics. The discussion then turns to what the difference between a stereotype and a true generalization is.
Ken then attempts to get to the root of the problem of profiling: how do we develop racist, homophobic, and gender stereotypes? Linda explains that our material environment, various experiences, and culture in the sense of entertainment, for example, are all factors that lead to these stereotypes.
At the same time, Linda explains, it is misleading to talk about assuming stereotypes as if it was an automatic response mechanism produced by an environment over which we have no control.
Indeed, says Linda, we should take more collective control than we do over our environment, and furthermore, in individual terms we can choose where to live, what to do, what information sources to seek out, and thus we can have an impact on the environment that may change our associations between skin color and criminality.
Ken wonders whether it is really just the media and culture that shape these stereotypes, because the mind seems to be built to reason according to stereotypical generalizations. Linda agrees, but also explains that while we need this ability as a survival skill and while it is a good mechanism of judgment, the way we put this ability to use in all cases is not necessarily good.
Ken and Jenann welcome audience participation. Linda discusses new research on the subject of racial stereotyping and profiling. Questions regarding whether we should even hold people responsible for racial stereotyping, whether people use the new research and terminology to make apologies for profiling, and whether we are responsible for specific cognitive frames are discussed. Martin Alcoff, Linda. Risse, Mathias, and Zeckhauser, Richard. Skip to main content.
This included counselling their children to behave a certain way, having rules about how their children dress in public and limiting when their children are permitted to go out and where they go.
Parents felt that these strategies and coping mechanisms are necessary to prepare their children for potential incidents of profiling and to protect their children from the negative consequences. This type of experience cannot help but have a profound effect on a child or young person as the fear of racial profiling and the consequent need to alter his or her behaviour becomes ingrained in his or her psyche.
The section of the Report entitled Changes in Behaviour has a more detailed discussion of socialization of young people to cope with profiling; however, it is important to note here that these types of experiences during formative years are likely to have an even more significant and lasting impact on a young person than on an adult.
No one would argue that public faith in institutions and systems such as the criminal justice system, law enforcement, customs and border control and the education system is a cornerstone to democracy, order and a harmonious society. All of these institutions require citizens to work positively and cooperatively with them to maximize their success in fulfilling their mandate.
For example, a strong justice system requires citizens to have confidence in the fairness of the process; community policing relies on individuals trusting the police and being willing to work with them; and, teachers can only function effectively when they have the respect of their students. The section entitled The Existence of Racial Profiling has a more detailed discussion of the specific importance of good community and police relations, based on the experiences of various jurisdictions in the United States.
However, racial profiling seriously erodes public confidence in these institutions. Numerous submissions described an increased personal or community mistrust of law enforcement officials, the criminal justice system, the education system, customs officials, store and mall security and society in general. Therefore, the issue of mistrust is not just specific to one community; it permeates all sectors of society.
Mistrust can be engendered by personal experiences, witnessing an incident of profiling, knowing someone who has experienced profiling or simply due to the widespread perception that profiling exists in society. And, as discussed earlier this mistrust is heightened by unwillingness on the part of the institutions to acknowledge the concern and engage in a constructive process to address it.
Participants also explained that their mistrust of institutions can be compounded by the knowledge that the institution lacks racial diversity or that its members are not given in-depth and ongoing anti-racism training. As indicated earlier, the inquiry covered all forms of racial profiling and did not target the police. However, the institution that was most commonly identified as having lost the faith of an individual or community were police agencies across the province.
Many submissions described a shift in perception about policing as a result of even a single incident. Other submissions indicated that a number of encounters had led an individual to lose trust in the police. Many parents described feeling that they needed to warn their children or other young persons in their families to be careful around the police.
They are their friends. I can't confidently say that now to my grandchildren. I don't know what kind of reaction they will receive. I used to feel that it was safe. I no longer smile or acknowledge police officers.
I would like nothing better than to be able to say to my grandchildren -- remember to smile at the police officers when you see them -- they are your friends. Turn to them when you are in trouble. One very moving submission came from a young school teacher who described being surrounded by police cars, being ordered out of his car in the middle of the street and being asked if he had any drugs or weapons in the car. While one officer checked his identification, another searched his vehicle.
This occurred in the middle of the day, in the community in which this man teaches. He felt like a spectacle, humiliated and very concerned should any of his students or any of their parents witness the event. This man had experienced numerous other police stops and searches in a very short time period leading him to feel very frustrated and mistrustful of police.
He described the impact of these experiences on his ability to instil trust of the police in his students. Some of the words that were used to describe the effects on relationships with police included: suspicion, distrust, anger, antagonism, hostility and fear. Many described fearing for their own safety when interacting with police officers and some said that, rather than feeling that the police were there to protect them from crime, they felt the need to be protected from the police.
Parents in particular described feeling terrified that their children, particularly their sons, could come to harm every time they leave the house. One mother described the trauma of learning that her son, a University of Toronto student, was reading a book while waiting for the subway in the station near his home when he was pushed to the ground by two law enforcement personnel.
Comments were made to the effect that he could not be a university student and that he could not afford to live in the upscale neighbourhood. This same type of fear was reported by Stephen Lewis in his report on police-visible minority relations. And, a recent survey of youth in the Toronto area reported a fear of treatment by police. In fact, we have talked a lot about how some members of our community are fearful of police. We have a connection between police states and repression.
Where they have seen abuse and they experience abuse here they say, yeah, cops all over the world are just exactly the same. And this does not contribute to the kind of diverse cultural understanding, acceptance and involvement that this country is supposed to stand for. When discussing feelings of mistrust, most participants also mentioned that they lack faith in the processes that have been implemented to receive complaints against the police or other institutions such as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
Participants stated that they felt they were prevented or discouraged from filing complaints, that they lacked confidence in the complaints process as they perceived it to lack independence and that the outcome further compounded their sense of mistrust or injustice.
About three times I tried to put a complaint in to police. I found no way to get any justice. There would be little guarantee of victory and any award would not cover legal costs. I filed a complaint through the appropriate police services review board.
The result was totally unsatisfactory. The reviewing officer merely compounded my humiliation by affirming that the police were not at fault. How foolish of me! The justice system only protects those they choose to, the rest of us are castaways, the ones not worthy because of either our social or economic background.
I will not do so in the future, either. However, if there is a problem that absolutely requires police assistance and I can request help on the phone anonymously, so they can't see that I'm Black, then I will. This in turn causes a negative backlash in the community.
This is part of the reason that the police force gets very little cooperation when dealing with the Black community. If a person does not feel valued by the system, you will in turn see how that person can become a negative force.
There are good cops, but the bad ones make us mistrustful of all police. It makes it hard for them to solve crime. Being interrogated and thoroughly searched eight out of nine times is not the same as being searched from time to time or being treated fairly. It is being targeted. It is imperative that to ensure people crossing the border respect Canadian laws, our Customs and Immigration Officers recognize that ethnicity, accent, country of citizenship, style of dress, or make of vehicle does not indicate criminal intent or criminal activity.
Aberrant behaviour becomes the norm for those who have no reason to respect the law. This does not serve the greater public good. These consequences of racial profiling have been confirmed by the experience of jurisdictions in the United States.
James concludes that the adversarial nature of police stops contributes strongly to Black youth hostility towards the police.
While police agencies are negatively impacted in their ability to effectively serve the public by allegations of racial profiling, the effect on the individual who develops a mistrust of the police and criminal justice system can be even greater.
A criminal defence lawyer has written:. It perpetuates a cycle whereby youths lose respect for the law; this in turn leads a small number of them to act out. The mistrust of police was also cited as contributing to an unwillingness to pursue a career in policing. Before I understood their job to protect the building, but now if I see a guard I want to avoid them and walk away. I don't have respect for them. In the context of the education system, many parents reported feeling that they have lost faith in teachers and school administrators.
They indicated that this loss of confidence makes them feel uncomfortable sending their child to school and that they must seek out opportunities to transfer their child to another school or take them out of school altogether for home schooling. In either case, major inconvenience can be the result, not to mention the disruption to the child. In addition, parents reported their children mistrusting the education system as well as losing respect for their teachers. He is very intimidated and traumatized by the issue.
He gets anxious in the presence of the school officials. There is no trust after what they did to him. He stays clear of authority figures. The trust is broken. Focussing on his studies has become pressured and difficult. He is very uncomfortable in an environment that should be conducive to learning. I am angry and very frustrated and cannot take it any more.
I have taken my child out of the school system and placed him in my mother's care and he is now doing home schooling. But I truly feel uncomfortable leaving her at the school but feel like I have no choice at this time being a single mom. I feel betrayed, manipulated and abused. This is how I feel. It is an uphill battle. Ultimately, it is society that is most harmed if racial profiling results in the loss of confidence in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the education system and other institutions.
As demonstrated by the impacts of profiling outlined above, the social cost of creating a mistrust of institutions includes a lack of respect shown to people associated with them, greater acting out against those institutions or the law, and an unwillingness to work with those institutions, for example by reporting crime, acting as witnesses, etc.
The American experience has shown that these are tangible results of racial profiling and that eliminating racial profiling can result in bridges being built between the institutions and communities, to the greater good of all:.
Many other U. Communities rally behind the approach, showing that if [law enforcement] authorities can use their power transparently and selectively — focusing [sic] not on whole classes of young people, but on clearly dangerous offenders, and even then judiciously and with fair warning — support for [law enforcement activities] will be forthcoming. It is public policy in Ontario, as expressed in the preamble to the Ontario Human Rights Code , to foster a province in which all persons feel an equal part of the community and able to contribute fully to the development and well-being of the province.
And this feeling exists for recent immigrants as well as for persons whose families have been here for many generations. Many participants in the inquiry reported feeling like an unequal or less worthy member of society as a result of their experience of profiling.
This realization was described as a humiliating, dehumanizing and painful one:. I've gone to school in Canada since Kindergarten and being "Canadian" is the only identity I have. It became painfully clear at that moment that there were two levels of citizenship. Those of Caucasian descent, and those from other countries.
I would never be able to be a full Canadian citizen -- one that was treated with all the privileges of being a citizen. It was a very dehumanizing experience. I wish I could feel like my Canadian citizenship rights and status as a Toronto dweller were as secure as my White colleagues.
This behaviour causes an enormous amount of self loathing. It continuously causes one to feel somewhat inferior. Individuals who felt that they had accomplished much and were contributing significantly to Canadian society contrasted their sense of value added to Canadian society with how Canadian society appeared to view them. They felt that no matter what they do and how successful they are, they are still assumed to be part of an undesirable element of society and this was very distressing to them.
I am also a homeowner and professional. I contribute to society as much as other Canadians. But [as a result of being followed by security] I felt that I was not worthy to be in their store. I am respected by my students and peers, but [because of the inappropriate questions I was asked by Customs on returning from Jamaica] I was made to feel like a second class citizen.
And this made me feel less than a human being. And this shows that my contribution to Canadian society is not valued. Persons who have immigrated from other countries also described a profound sense of not belonging as a result of experiencing profiling. They described it as a sense of being rejected by mainstream Canadian society and being told that they would always be considered an outsider.
Some immigrants also told of a sense of disillusionment or betrayal as they had come to Canada to escape an unjust society and expected that they would be treated equally here. One account that clearly illustrated this came from a woman who immigrated to Toronto from Chile. She had participated in a demonstration and was arrested along with other demonstrators.
When her lawyer emphasized that she had been a Canadian for 27 years, the Justice of the Peace emphasized that she was born in Chile. As a result, she spent four nights in jail, simply because of racial profiling. The Justice of the Peace Review Council investigated the case and determined that the comments by the Justice of the Peace were inappropriate and he was required to issue an apology. But, this did not change the fact that a decision was made that resulted in this woman spending four days in prison.
The initial charges were eventually withdrawn. She described the feeling that this experience left her with in the following words:.
Persons who identified as Muslim, Arab and South Asian described feeling unwelcome after the tragedy of September 11, There was a significant reluctance on the part of members of this community to come forward with their accounts due to a fear of potential consequences. Nevertheless, some of the examples the Commission heard included:. We have heard so much hate and incitement to hate post September 11, but we thought we could face it all as long as our children were protected.
When our daughter came home crying, we knew we had lost our strength to go on and to stand up to racial profiling. It was simply becoming overwhelming. We are not sure what will be next. Youth of color have been victims of racially-motivated bicycling stops, " In April, , the ACLU joined a suit against Eastpointe, Michigan , representing 21 young African-American men who were stopped by the police while riding their bikes there.
The ACLU argued that the bicyclists were stopped in this predominantly white suburb of Detroit because of their race and not because they were doing anything wrong. In a memorandum to the Eastpointe City Manager, the former police chief stated that he instructed his officers to investigate any black youths riding through Eastpointe subdivisions.
Police searched many of young men and, in some cases, seized and later sold their bicycles. Police logs and reports in Eastpointe have identified over incidents between and in which African-American youth were detained.
These dogs, lethal weapons capable of biting at pounds pressure per square inch, and their handlers have been implicated in a vicious form of racial profiling that has led to legal action:. California Los Angeles - The ACLU of Southern California compiled reports on the hundreds of mostly blacks and Latinos who were bitten by Los Angeles Police Department dogs from , charging that the dogs trained to "attack and maul," were routinely sent out in non-violent situations.
In , California state highway patrol canine units stopped almost 34, vehicles. Only 2 percent were carrying drugs. Maryland Prince Georges County - The Washington Post reported that in May federal prosecutors charged a county police officer with releasing her police dog on an unarmed Mexican immigrant as part of a pattern of using and threatening the use of the dog on people of color.
Despite being the subject of four lawsuits, twice being guilty of making false statements to a supervisor, and five prior instances of releasing the dog on suspects who weren't resisting, and being flagged by a departmental "early warning" system, the officer remained undisciplined in any substantive way. In the Post reported that thirteen police dog excessive force suits had been filed in Prince Georges circuit and federal courts, in addition to five others that ended in judgement for plaintiffs or settlement.
Of the total, ten alleged repeated bites of suspects once under police control, or while cuffed or on the ground.
South Dakota Wagner - While not involving the use of physical canine force, the issue reached a new low when school officials and police led a large German shepherd drug dog through classrooms in suspicionless drug searches of Yankton Sioux K students, some as young as six years old. Dogs were trained to attack and bite suspects regardless of their actions, even against alleged shoplifters, gasoline siphoners and jaywalkers. They also reported that in that year, 40 percent of police dog attacks were against African Americans, and that 91 people had received police dog bite injuries requiring hospitalization.
The following states appear to require independent reasonable suspicion for dog searches: Alaska, 4 Illinois, 5 Minnesota, 6 New Hampshire, New York, 8 Pennsylvania, 9 and Washington.
TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey said she was refused buzz-in entry to a store even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt. After calling from a pay phone and being assured the store was in fact open, a third try failed as well New York City. S, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said she was followed around a store and required to show her key at a hotel, unlike whites who entered before her New York City.
Professional basketball player and Olympic medalist Sheryl Swoopes was kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant, while whites who arrived after her were seated before her Houston, Texas. After making several purchases, they went to the cosmetics counter to redeem a coupon. A white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it, emptying the bag onto the counter.
After finding the receipt for the items, he shoved the goods and the empty bag back to her. When she complained about his actions, the guard ordered them to leave, and threatened to call the police and have them forcibly removed.
Hampton eventually called her husband to the scene and the situation escalated. Supreme Court declined to hear Dillard's appeal. The store chain, based in Arkansas has also faced dozens of racial profiling lawsuits, claiming harassment and false arrest, in other states including Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas. So if you stop black men, say many police officers, you'll catch more criminals.
Still, even if blacks do commit more crime, profiling is a horrible thing for America to do, says Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy. In an article in the New Republic, Kennedy acknowledged that the staggeringly high crime rate for young black men is a "fact, not a figment of the media's or police's racist imagination.
Yet when I asked him if focusing on young black men was part of good police work — since a disproportionate number of young blacks commit crimes — he answered "no. It's one of the things that makes racial minorities distrust the police and that makes their work more difficult," said Kennedy.
Ashraf Khan is an American citizen who was born in Pakistan. He is not an Arab. He was already seated on a flight that was going to take him to his brother's wedding, when he says a Delta Air Lines pilot asked him to deplane. Khan, I want you to pick up your luggage inside the plane and I don't want you to fly with me on this flight.
Me and my crew make a decision that we are not secure flying with you," he says he was told. Delta later issued a statement saying it is wrong to act solely based on race.
That "is exactly what our enemies are striving for: the end of our open, diverse and tolerant way of life," the company said. There's another complication.
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