I woke up on May 27 to the CBC playing on my alarm clock. The morning news was carrying a breaking story: Kingston police had collected statistics on racial demographics and found that black people were 3.7 times more likely to be pulled over and questioned than white people.
I couldn’t help but feel a little blasé about the whole thing. You would be hard pressed to find a black person in Canada who does not know another black who was the victim of some sort of racial profiling, be it a woman followed around a little more closely in a clothing store, or a man pulled over by the police for a D.W.B.—Driving While Black.
Kingston Police Chief Bill Closs made the move to collect race-related data based on several accusations made by the black community that they were being unfairly targeted.
Chief Closs should be commended for airing the Kingston Police’s dirty laundry, because as history shows, these complaints are often ignored or given little attention. I’m certain that if similar data were collected in other Canadian cities we would see comparable results.
It wasn’t long after this broadcast that Kingston was swept up in a media frenzy. Chief Closs was interviewed by several national television shows discussing the implications of this study.
The entire nation was intrigued. A Canadian police force was finally admitting to something that black communities had understood to be common practice for years.
And yet the obvious question remains: what are they going to do about it?
Black communities—not just in Kingston but all over Canada—remain cautiously hopeful that these statistics would create change.
In the discussions that followed the unveiling of the Kingston data, people were cautiously avoidant of that dreaded R-word. Of course Canadian society is far too polite to use, let alone practice, an ugly thing like racism.
People held up their arms in defence of our golden Canadian multicultural ideals of fairness and equality for all people, regardless of the colour of their skin. We can’t be talking about racism here, they argued. We must be talking about good, old-fashioned common sense.
In fact, a 2003 study in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice has frequently been cited as evidence for the justification of racial profiling.
The study, co-authoured by Scot Wortley, author of the Kingston study, found young, black men to be more likely to be involved in violent crime than their white counterparts.
So if the findings of this study are to be transformed into policy, doesn’t it just make sense to target this group to ensure that our streets are safe? Is it not just good policing to ensure that young black men are not up to no good if the statistics indicate that they likely are?
Those who hold this viewpoint have a seriously skewed definition of equality.
Even if this study’s results are accurate and young black men are indeed responsible for a higher proportion of violent crime, I do not believe that a free and just society can permit the restriction of the rights of all members of a particular group because of the actions of a small minority.
Furthermore, a frequently overlooked finding of this same study identifies young whites as more likely to be drug users, and older white men as more likely to be engaged in white-collar crime.
Yet police departments do not seem to be targeting white people in our communities for suspicion of these activities.
Canadians must ask themselves why this is the case.
The racial profiling of black people is part of the larger dynamic of our failed multiculturalism. Instead of a nation with many different cultures experiencing equal privilege and access, Canada continues to institutionalize and reinforce systemic forms of racism. This means advantage for some, and disadvantage for many.
Poverty, lack of opportunity and the historical disadvantage of black persons are factors that may intersect to increase a person’s likelihood of engaging in criminal activity. A discussion surrounding the crime rates of blacks must include recognition of the relevance of these factors in some segments of the black community and suggest practical and comprehensive solutions for these problems.
The Canadian society that I wish to be a part of respects each person for who they are and does not ascribe characteristics to individuals based on fear of the “what if.” It is now evident that police officers are using race as a tool to evaluate the risk that a person places on society.
This discrimination cannot continue to be excused by our society. Canadians of all racial backgrounds must not sit passively while blacks are unjustly targeted.
I fear for the future of a society that uses “just in case” to justify the violation of the rights of a group of people.
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