In October 2002, the "Toronto Star" ran a series of articles alleging that Toronto police target young black men when making traffic stops, causing a crisis in the community and amongst politicians, policing officials, and other public authorities. Despite thorough statistical evidence, the Toronto Police Association sued the "Star", claiming that no such evidence existed. That lawsuit was ultimately rejected and the issue of racial profiling - the policing technique of including race in the profile of a person considered likely to commit a particular type of crime - was thrust into the national spotlight. In this volume, Carol Tator and Frances Henry explore the meaning of racial profiling in Canada not only as it is practised by the police, but also as it is manifested in a broad range of societal institutions. Tator and Henry approach the crisis over racial profiling by examining the issue from two different perspectives.
First, they examine the discourses of policing officials, politicians, government bureaucrats, judges, media, and other public authorities to demonstrate how the White elite communicate and reproduce existing racialized ideologies and social relations of inequality through their everyday interactions. Second, the authors analyze the narratives of the victims of racial profiling. These stories 'bear witness' to the lived experience of ethno-racial minorities. The sheer number of racial profiling incidents that Tator and Henry document stands as a testament to the systematic racism in Canadian law enforcement today. Each story, connected to hundreds of other similar stories, exposes a deep schism between the perceptions of police and other public authorities who deny the existence of racial profiling, and the lived experience of racialized minorities.
This fascinating, ambitious, and highly readable book provides a detailed analysis of racial profiling in Canada. The authors expertly blend complex theoretical ideas about racial profiling, racism, racial ideology, and power differentials with interesting accounts of how racial profiling unfolds in everyday life, in police actions, police discourses, media descriptions, and other counter-discourses. I am not aware of another book in Canada that addresses these issues in such a powerful way.-Peter Li,