Race relations in Canada

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There is a widespread belief that race relations in Canada are characterized by tolerance and compassion,  however, one ought to sit down and speak with a racial minority group member before jumping to such erroneous conclusions.  Canada’s criminal justice system continues to be one of the most readily apparent examples of institutionalized racism.  While Canada is a world leader in many fields, particularly in the areas of progressive social policy and human rights, our country is also distinguished as being a world leader at putting people in prison.  In a tolerant multicultural society one might hope that the prison population would represent considerable racial heterogeneity, however sadly, this is not the case. Racial minorities, particularly Black and Aboriginal people, are considerably and disproportionately over represented in Canada’s criminal justice system, including Canada’s incarceral institutions.

Professor Tim Quigley suggests that the unemployed, transients and the poorly educated are all better candidates for imprisonment. When social, political and economic aspects of society disproportionately put both Aboriginals and Blacks in these ranks, our society literally sentences them to the jail.   Years of dislocation and economic development have translated for many aboriginals into low incomes, high unemployment substance abuse, loneliness and community fragmentation. Similarly, Blacks are more likely to possess such lower-class characteristics as residential mobility and high levels of unemployment. Bleak socio-cultural and economic conditions, coupled with personal, systemic and cultural racism, which pervades the Canadian community and then infiltrates all aspects of the criminal justice system, translates into higher levels of racial minority crime and presence in the justice system.  

Advantage in the criminal justice system is heavily dependant upon access to and control over resources that can be mobilized to influence others to one’s own advantage.   Racial minorities remain relatively powerless in a justice system which uses emotionally charged fears to legitimate politically expedient right wing policies of get tough, law and order solutions to the crime problem, which pose little threats to entrenched interests. As perceptions of social well-being and security are shaped in this fashion, divisions between us are both reinforced and legitimized. Racial minorities are in turn exceedingly dehumanized, demonized and criticized. This racial inequality within the justice system serves to undermine respect for the rule of law and confidence in the justice system.

        Racism and racial discrimination are facts of life in Canada. They exist openly and blatantly in the attitudes and actions of individuals and privately in fears, prejudice and plain ignorance of many. Racism is a part of our community psyche. A significant segment of the community holds overtly racist views while a much larger segment subconsciously operates on the basis of negative racial stereotypes. Racialization of crime on the part of Canadian media, their growing tendency to attribute crime problems to minority groups who are portrayed as dangerous, prone to violence and untrustworthy, serve to reinforce fear and racism within the community. These racist beliefs filter through the criminal justice system, which in turn serves to further perpetuate them.

        Racial profiling or criminal profiling based on race involves illegitimately targeting individual members of a particular racial group on the basis of supposed criminality or general criminal propensity of the entire racial group. There is no disputing that this phenomenon exists, as it is supported in a considerable amount of social science research. The Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System suggests that racialized characteristics, especially those pertaining to black people, though certainly not reserved to them, in combination with other factors, provoke police suspicion.  Distrust based racial profiling has a tendency to result in over policing of racial minority groups. This is furthered by institutionalized racism within a police subculture, which in make-up remains largely unrepresentative of the numerous racial denominations in Canada’s multicultural society.  This has a tendency to breed an us versus them mentality, where racial minorities remain in the ‘out group’, ripe for the picking, the ideal prey for police who’s jobs rest on making a ‘proper’ arrest for which they can build a case against.

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 Class, economic status, and social location generally play a pivotal role in whether the police, as the systems gatekeepers, ever observe or police a particular behavior.  Given that racial minorities are more likely to come from the ranks of what would be considered the lower class, they are doubly targeted. Conduct that is widespread across class and social location, such as truancy, use of soft drugs and various other ‘deviant’ acts are primarily criminalized among those who are intensively policed, which translates into significantly higher levels of racial minorities being dragged through the gates into the criminal justice arena. Once racial ...

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