Recently, there has been an increase in the awareness and exposure of racial profiling in the media. Racial profiling refers to police stopping and targeting civilians based on race or skin color (Reid, 2014). Although the practice of racial profiling may not include the actual use of force, because certain groups are targeted more often, it makes them vulnerable targets to harassment or worse, death. Black and unarmed men have been shot and killed by police officers which has lately gained media attention, especially the recent death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson. Michael Brown was shot multiple times by a police officer, which was an event which raised a lot of controversy in the media (Desmond-Harris, 2014). Racial profiling is …show more content…
an issue in Canada and in many other countries. Racial profiling has serious implications in regards to the relationship between police services and communities, in particular ethnic minority groups that feel they are being discriminated against. Furthermore it affects how the police are viewed and treated by the civilians, and how much trust and confidence they have in the people who are expected to keep them safe. The report will begin by discussing how racial profiling and stories involving racial profiling are covered by the media, suggesting that media coverage is based on inaccurate portrayal of events and racist stereotypes. Discussion of Media Coverage The media is often the most important source of source of news for people. Recently, there has been an increase in the awareness and exposure of racial profiling in the media. Although this increased awareness of the issue is positive, the media coverage is more complex and bias than many people realize. Before the issues get covered by the media, decisions are made as to which events are covered, what happened, who is responsible, what must be done and how it will be presented to the people. This influences the version of the events that will be presented to the public, which is often inaccurate and based on racist stereotypes. First, the source of the news should be questioned. The police are often the main source of crime news. After a crime has occurred the police often respond to media questions regarding the event, and the information they provide is usually seen as legitimate and accepted as the truth (Manning, 2001). As Manning (2001) argues, the claims and statements that the police make are accepted as reality and are rarely questioned or criticized by the media, the experts and the public. Moreover, he argues that statements made by police officials in regards to the event that occurred and to violence generally, lack empirical support and create an inaccurate and an excessively violent image of crime. This results from the symbolic power that the policing institution possesses in society, which makes the police accepted as a legitimate source of crime news and the only legitimate crime fighters (Manning 2001). Manning’s perspective on media coverage can be seen when closely analyzing the stories about racial profiling as covered by the media. For instance, the article “Boy, 11, Among Dead in Gunplay, Family Appeals to Witnesses”; “Four Die Across City” refers to the killing of a 11 year old Black boy in Toronto. These articles contains testimonies from police officers mentioning how they are attending to calls, arresting the suspects, and commenting on how the obstacle to effectively doing their job of finding the perpetrator is due to the lack of cooperation from members of the community. The explanation they provide for the lack of cooperation between the police and community is fear of retaliation from gangs. The Sergeant remarks that “people obviously don’t care” and the victim’s family pleads for witnesses to come forward and for the “community to take charge” (Medley, 2007). In other words, the media and police are sending the message that members of the community, not the police, are the ones responsible for the lack of cooperation between the police and the community. As Manning explains, “the police cautiously have to monitor and defend their own conduct and feed into the stereotype that the major source of crime is in the streets and committed by people of color” (Manning, 2000 pg. 333-335). In fact, nothing is mentioned about the social disorganization in these communities, which is largely a product of government policies and social structures that discriminate against Black people. Moreover, nothing is mentioned about the tensions between the police and the Black community rooted in racial profiling and the ongoing racial discrimination of Black individuals by the police. This example clearly shows how media coverage of events is tainted, and the versions of crimes that are presented are not always accurate. Another factor that largely affects media coverage of news relating to racial profiling are the racial stereotypes which are often perpetuated in the media (Wortley, 2013).
Black people are often stereotyped as violent, dangerous, criminal, drug dealers and gang members (Wortley, 2013). For example, in the well-known case of neighbourhood watch captain Mr. Zimmerman who shot a Black unarmed boy, Trayvon Martin (Ralph&Chance, 2014). The media tried to justify the shooting by trying to find evidence of the victim being involved in drugs and other illegal activities to make him look like less of a victim and more of an offender. According to the stories covered by the media, the boy was looking and acting suspicious before he was shot by Zimmerman (Ralph&Chance, 2014). In fact, in most cases of racial profiling, the police officers and those involved will claim that the victim was acting suspicious when in fact they had no basis to stop, question or search them, besides their skin color (Ralph&Chance, 2014). The media is reluctant to show the Black and people of ethnic backgrounds as the victims and the police as the bad guys; and often cover the news in ways consistent with racial stereotypes (Manning, …show more content…
200). National Significance Racial profiling in Canada is a national issue that has recently been receiving a lot of exposure as it has many implications. First, racial profiling has serious implications in regards to the relationship between the Canadian police services and our ethnic minority groups that feel they are being discriminated against. For instance, studies found that black residents are more likely than white residents to see police misconduct as a problem in their communities (Tuch&Weitzer, 2008, p.414). As long as these groups feel they are being treated unfairly by the police, the credibility and legitimacy of police services among those groups will not be fully achieved in Canada (Ben-Porat, 2008, p. 412). This will have serious implications for the effectiveness of policing, including less desirability to cooperate with police services as a witness or a victim (Ben-Porat, 2008,p. 412). Poor community relations also affects police officers’ ability to prevent crime and apprehend criminals, as people who are hostile to the police are less likely to report violations to the police (Tanovich, 2010). Thus, since police depend on the support and cooperation of the community, tense relations between the police and community can greatly undermine the overall efficiency of the police in general. Not many studies have been done on racial profiling, as Canada refuses to disclose racial data and statistics, including which race gets stopped most frequently by the police.
This makes it extremely difficult to know to what extent racial profiling exists in our country (Tanner&Wortley, 2005). Many have argued that this is an effort by Canada to attempt to cover up the issue of racial profiling and acknowledge its practice. Nonetheless, an empirical study that was done on racial profiling in Canada supports that racial profiling does exist (Tanner&Wortley, 2005). In a survey conducted in 2001 of 1,200 Toronto high school students, indicated that 50% of the Black students have been stopped and questions by the police on more than one occasion within the past two years, compared with 23% of Caucasian, 11% of Asians and 8% of South Asians” (Tanner&Wortley, 2005). A more recent study, the Kingston Pilot Project showed very similar results. This study was done in Kingston, and is so far the only study in Canada that allowed for the recording of racial information by the police officers of the people they stop. For a year, Kingston’s police officers were expected to collect detailed information including the race of the people they stopped and questioned. Findings of this study indicated that Black individuals were three times more likely to get stopped than Caucasian individuals in both traffic stops and pedestrian stops (Marshall&Wortley,
2005). International Significance Racial profiling is an issue that has recently been receiving a lot of exposure internationally, and more empirical research is being done on the topic. For instance, in a fairly recent study that compared trust levels of university students in the police in Nigeria, Canada, United States and Bangladesh; findings indicated that Canadian students had the least amount of faith in their police, and were most likely to feel that the police need to show more respect to the people they encounter in comparison to the other countries (Baker et al., 2010).
This relation believes that the “law shapes --and is shaped by-- the society in which it operates (Elizabeth Comack,2014) As people our interactions and experiences are administered by our social positioning in society, and that social location is conditioned by three key elements: our race, class, and gender. These three elements have been used to divide, separate and categorize society. (Comeck,2014) . Racial profiling is something that I believe is extremely evident in Canada. Racial profiling is defined as targeting individuals for law enforcement based on the colour of their skin, which can lead to practices like carding. (Chan, 2007). Carding is a police practice that involves stopping, questioning and documenting people in mostly non-criminal encounters. (Chan, 2007) Stopping people on the street for no reason to ask them who they are, and what they are up to is outrageous and can have fatal consequences. On September 24, 2014, at 10:00pm Jermaine Carby was sitting in the passenger seat of his friend’s car while out for a drive. They were pulled over for a traffic stop in Brampton by a Peel police officer. This police officer went around to the passenger’s side and asked Carby for his identity so he could card him. When conducting this street check the officer discovered the Vancouver had a warrant for his arrest. Allegedly, this is when Carby started threatening officers with a large knife. A knife that witnesses nor
The justice system is in place in America to protect its citizens, however in the case of blacks and some other minorities there are some practices that promote unfairness or wrongful doing towards these groups. Racial profiling is amongst these practices. In cases such as drug trafficking and other criminal acts, minorities have been picked out as the main culprits based off of skin color. In the article “Counterpoint: The Case Against Profiling” it recognizes racial profiling as a problem in America and states, “[In order to maintain national security] law-enforcement officers have detained members of minority groups in vehicles more than whites”…. “these officers assume that minorities commit more drug offenses, which is not the case” (Fauchon). In relationship to law enforcement there has also been many cases of police brutality leaving young blacks brutally injured, and even dead in recent years, cases such as Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddy Gray just to name a few. Many of these young men were unarmed, and the police involved had no good justification for such excess force. They were seen as threats primarily because of their skin color. Despite the fact this nation is trying to attain security, inversely they are weakening bonds between many of its
...between them and the “Others,” though after 9/11 this “innocences” of living in an harmonious world was no longer due to the actions of the ‘terrorists’ (Street, 2003). The inquiry report on racial profiling from OHRC was serving a purpose to demonstrate anti-hegemony which delineates as the refusal to give permission to all that is wrong, encourage the knowledge of different cultures, and oppose to a single powerful group from ruling the system (Stand, 2014). Informing Canadian’s on racial profiling is a great start to raising consciousness, however knowledge is not everything. Knowledge without answers is only awareness and in order to change racial profiling individuals need direction. Perhaps OHRC could present a new report with answers to end racial profiling or at least where to begin, because with proper guidance racial profiling can be modified and destroyed.
Gender and Race play the most prominent role in the criminal justice system. As seen in the movie Central Park 5, five African American boys were charged with the rape of the a white women. In class decision we’ve discussed how the media explodes when it reports cross-racial crimes. The Central Park 5 were known everywhere and even terms were being made up during the process such as wilding. Also, during one of the class discussions it was brought up that victims of crime are of the same race of the perpetrator. However, the media likes to sensationalize crime of the victim being of a different race, because it makes for a good story. By doing this, the media does create more of a division of race. As seen in the video Donald Trump was trying
While the stop and frisk program ultimately seems like a great idea and that it will help residents of New York City feel safer while on the streets, there has been much controversy with this program. The issue of racial profiling is largely discussed when talking about NYPD’s stop and frisk program. Besides police officers targeting lower income neighborhoods, more stops are of African Americans or Latinos than of whites. These stops often end up with a higher arrest rate. Of the 685,784 stopped last year, 92% were male and 87% were African American or Latino (Devereaux, 2012).
Racial profiling is the tactic of stopping someone because of the color of his or her skin and a fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior (Meeks, p. 4-5). This practice can be conducted with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, the number of people in the car and the race of the driver and passengers. The practice of racial profiling may seem more prevalent in today’s society, but in reality has been a part of American culture since the days of slavery. According to Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, racial profiling is an old concept. The historical roots “can be traced to a time in early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to ‘take up’ all black persons seen ‘gadding abroad’ without their master’s permission” (Meeks, p. 5). Although slavery is long since gone, the frequency in which racial profiling takes place remains the same. However, because of our advanced electronic media, this issue has been brought to the American public’s attention.
One of the biggest reason stop-and-frisk should be abolished is in hopes to decrease such blatant racial profiling that has been going on under the name of “stop-and-frisk”. In 2007, 55% of the people stopped in New York were blacks and 30% were Hispanic (“Update: Crime and Race”). When checked again in 2011 a total of 685,000 people were stopped by the police of that 685,000, 52.9% were African Americans, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white (“Racial Profiling”). There is a story of an innocent victim of the stop-and-frisk policy, a man by the name of Robert Taylor. Police in Torrance stopped the elderly man and claimed he fit the description of a suspect that was linked to a robbery. But there was one simple problem; Taylor is a light complexioned, tall, 60 year-old man and the suspect was believed to be a short, dark complexioned, stocky man in his thirties; nothing like Taylor at all (Hutchinson). His shows that the police do not always stop people based on the right reasons, they tend to stop people based on the color of thei...
One discriminating practice used by police officers is racial profiling. This is the police practice of stopping, questioning, and searching potential criminal suspects in vehicles or on the street based solely on their racial appearance (Human Rights Watch, 2000). This type of profiling has contributed to racially disproportionate drug arrests, as well as, arrests for other crimes. It makes sense that the more individuals police stop, question and search, the more people they will find with reason for arrest. So, if the majority of these types of stop and frisk searches are done on a certain race then it makes sense that tha...
In the article “Point: Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement is Unjust”, Adele Cassola determines that racial profiling is an extensive problem in policing across Canada. She identifies that racial profiling is based on stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and cultural background with African-Canadians, Arab-Canadians, and Aboriginal Canadians being targeted most frequently. Racial profiling is not unique to law enforcement and immigration, Cassola asserts, “it is a wide spread problem within other institutions and establishments as well” (2009). She discovered a survey that showed Toronto's African-Canadian secondary school students were stopped four times more frequently and searched six times more frequently than their non-black classmates. In an article from the Toronto Star newspaper in 2002, Cassola notes that African-Canadians were subject...
For the past few years there has been an ongoing debate surrounding the issue of racial profiling. The act of racial profiling may rest on the assumption that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to commit crimes than any individual of other races or ethnicities. Both David Cole in the article "The Color of Justice" and William in the article "Road Rage" take stance on this issue and argue against it in order to make humanity aware of how erroneous it is to judge people without evidence. Although Cole and William were very successful in matters of showing situations and qualitative information about racial profiling in their articles, both of them fail at some points.
Racial profiling in the dictionary is “the assumption of criminality among ethnic groups: the alleged policy of some police to attribute criminal intentions to members of some ethnic groups and to stop and question them in disproportionate numbers without probable cause (“Racial Profiling”).” In other words racial profiling is making assumptions that certain individuals are more likely to be involved in misconduct or criminal activity based on that individual’s race or ethnicity. Racial profiling propels a brutalizing message to citizens of the United States that they are pre-judged by the color of their skin rather than who they are and this then leads to assumptions of ruthlessness inside the American criminal justice system. With race-based assumptions in the law enforcement system a “lose-lose” situation is created due to America’s diverse democracy and destroys the ability to keep the criminal justice system just and fair. Although most police officers perform their duties with fairness, honor, and dedication, the few officers who portray to be biased then harm the whole justice system resulting in the general public stereotyping every law enforcement officer as a racial profiler (Fact Sheet Racial Profiling). When thinking about racial profiling many people automatically think it happens only to blacks but sadly this is mistaken for far more ethnic groups and races such as Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, Native Americans, and many more are racially profiled on a day to day basis. Many people believe racial profiling to be a myth because they see it as police officers merely taking precautions of preventing a crime before it happens, but in reality racial profiling has just become an approved term for discrimination and unjust actio...
Tator, H., & Henry, F. (2006). Racial profiling in Canada: Challenging the myth of 'a few bad apples'. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.
Racial profiling in America, as evidenced by recent events, has reached a critical breaking point. No longer can an African American, male or female, walk into a store, school, or any public place without fear of being stereotyped as a person of suspicion. Society constantly portrays the African American
Over the past centuries, Black community in Toronto have encountered and persisted violence and discriminations in many different ways. Racial profiling and carding are the two major roots of police brutality. Police officers often have biased perceptions and negative feelings about certain races. Carding can be defined as random police checks that target young African-Canadian men. Police might detain a driver for driving a specific type of vehicle or driving in certain areas that they have assumptions about. “This practice was a systematic violation of the rights of people in our communities, especially of racialized youth” (CBC ABC National, June 1, 2015). Carding results in police abusing their power which leads to assaults, shootings and death. However, police have said
This definition leads us to discussion on what racial profiling has been over the years and how it cannot be combined with other aspects of discrimination. Racial profiling has been solely based on, (1)The use of race, ethnicity, or national origin and not (2) the use of an individual’s behavior or information that helps apprehend somebody who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity. (1) provides different investigative methods( race, ethnicity or national origin) while (2) tells us about investigative methods and the goals or outcomes of these investigative methods and uses specific information on suspicious activities like individual’s behavior. Including this contrast in the definition raises two problems. Even though, because of these classifications, this article would be concentrating on combining above two opinions which contribute to profiling. And concentrate why more blacks have been stopped in driving as compared to whites or more Muslims of Middle Eastern origin were stopped at airport as compared to other people.