Minority Groups In Canada Case Study

The brutality of the police force has been a long worldwide problem, but especially between the years of 2012-2016. Black people are being unjustly beaten and shot in plain sight for doing nothing while being unarmed. Journal of African American Studies “Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system” (482). “Black males with more “Afrocentric” features may receive longer sentences than blacks with less Afrocentric features like lighter skin and straighter hair”(482). Nowadays it is important to know about the police force. It’s important to know our rights as citizens and be careful around cops. Not everybody is good, but not everybody is bad also. In The New York Amsterdam News 21 people were killed by Chicago police in 2008. Entire families were being attacked. They believe it’s because of their skin color and how they are different. The year of racism started off with the world seeing the police murder of Oscar Grant. “The media have pushed people away from hearing the issue of police brutality, and it has fallen off of the radar screen.”(2) “You can’t give in. They will try to make an example out of you, try to break your spirit!”(2) African Americans say do not trust the cops with anything. “They will ruin you.”(2)

Policing of persons belonging to First Nations communities is not fair and equal under law, and should be changed in specific ways. Under-policing and over-policing both play significant roles in the unjust treatment of the Indigenous population, which have resulted in their marginalization and oppression in society. Despite the looming contradiction of being fearful of the police, there is still a desire for more police accountability and protection.

With so many news stories and incidents surrounding the topic of race and the police these days, it is not surprising for people to come to the conclusion that racism may exist within the criminal justice system. We will be taking a deeper look into the problem to find out what other possible determinants may play a role in deciding how an officer makes an arrest or stop and continue to analyze what is happening in those contexts. The issues surrounding the topic of race is like the two faces of the same coin as there are usually two sides that we have to consider: reality and media portrayals. The reality side of situations is always there at the time, but it is so subtly hidden from society that nobody understands it unless they witness it firsthand and with the media spreading filtered information, it becomes even harder for us to identify the key issue; this is especially the case when dealing with the police and racial profiling. If you turn on the news and flip to a channel where it is reporting on the police and their arrests, you will most likely see more arrests pertaining to minorities than other ethnicities. In the news, we can often see a misrepresentation of ethnic minorities, usually African-Americans, being arrested when compared to others and this has caused problems around societies countless times. For this essay topic, I will be discussing the different issues surrounding race within the parameters of criminal justice and inequality; furthermore I will be

There are numerous concerns based on the quantity and content of stop and searches which are often influenced by institutionalised racism (Home Office, 1997). Studies suggested that the police maintain a belief that black people are prone to be involved in violent crimes (Reiner, 1989). Therefore leading to black individuals routinely falling victim to police stereotypes and overgeneralisations (Bowling and Phillips, 2007). Police interviews have suggested that police perceive certain ethnicities to be involved with certain crimes, one interview suggested that if police are alerted of a robbery, 90% of the time they will assume it is involving a black individual (Quinton et al, 2000). Despite that there is evidence suggesting that racial disadvantages will cause an increase in young blacks to be involved with crime, suggesting that these suspicions are justified (Waddington et al, 2007). Furthermore, there is little research suggesting that police enforce their prejudices when working on the streets, thus suggesting that racial views are a result of police canteen sub-culture (Waddington, 1999).

Brent Staples’ essay, “When the Paranoids Turn Out to be Right,” acknowledges the issues of racism and racial profiling committed by police. In “Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun,” Geoffrey Canada also expresses views on this issue when he asserts that police fail to protect and serve individuals in poor neighborhoods. Staples contends, “Among the day-to-day acts of discrimination that shadow African Americans, none are more stressful or dangerous than those committed by police, some of whom treat black people as criminals until proved otherwise.” (Staples. 380) Although statistics show that the looming presence of narcotics and violence is more prevalent in urban neighborhoods, police should apply the same effort to protect individuals in these

Discrimination towards ethnic minority continues to find its way in our country. Unfortunately, the subject of racial profiling remains a part of Canada, as officers ignore individual behavior and instead, rely on race in police investigations. According to Katheryn Russell (as cited by Amy Hackney & Jack Glaser, 2013) racial profiling is defined as “The use of race or ethnicity by law enforcement officials as a basis for judgement of criminal suspicion” (Russell, 1998). Racial profiling within our country can be exposed through Canadian history, surveys and interviews from those treated unjustly. All of which stakeholders attempt to remedy for the victimization of the innocent.

There has been a significant body of literature which has attested to the veracity of the argument that black Canadians are victimized via racial profiling. For example, the Commission of Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System found that the majority of black respondents surveyed had been treated unfairly by the Canadian criminal justice system (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p.133-134). Furthermore, Canadian research studies have consistently revealed that blacks are more likely to come into negative police contact compared to Caucasians (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p. 135). Alarmingly, suspected black offenders are also more likely to be shot and experience use of force by Canadian law enforcement personnel than their white counterparts (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011, p. 138).

In a colorblind era, many people find themselves in a blissful thought that all individuals are equal yet the typical case is for individuals to have a fair amount of both privileges and disadvantages due our biased society. The second chapter of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Lockdown, offers insight into the injustice that can occur to people of color when being searched by police officers under the guise of random searches. Comparable texts to Alexander’s “Lockdown” in The New Jim Crow are Allan G. Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formations which discuss in detail both race and privilege which are key components that contribute to a person’s likelihood of being “randomly searched” by police officers.

Based on the statistics of NYPD’s 2016 second quarterly reports, 1,862 people in the African American community are stopped versus 342 Caucasians (NYPD second quarter reports, 2016). Consequently, this implies policemen classify “blacks” as delinquent even though they are uninvolved in any unlawful acts the majority of the time. The product of racial discrimination furthers the understanding that the country still does not hold minorities equal next to the other ethnicities. This demonstrates just one example on how the Stop and Frisk law variously inflates negative predigest to further the understanding that “blacks” are synonymous with barbarous criminals.

African Americans in the U.S. consist of the majority race incarcerated by police officers. Due to the Stop and Frisk program, several of them have been in the spotlight for police stops. The Stop and Frisk Program is a policing strategy that stops anyone with reasonable suspicion and then frisks them for any illegal paraphernalia. Wagner shows the several stops, and then compares it to the statistics that out of all these stops African Americans take the overwhelming majority of these stops consistently. For example, African Americans are 12 times more likely to have forced used against them than Caucasian people and, 11 times more likely to get stopped and frisked than Caucasian people. (Page 1). Some may say the cops are the doing the right

Discrimination is a known concept that happens everywhere, yet police and prosecutors are blind to it. Their ways of preventing crime are discriminatory in every sense of the word and they categorize people based on their skin color and where they reside. The disproportionate minority contact with the stop and frisk method is one of the ways that discrimination can be seen. “Code of the Street” and “Law and Disorder in Philadelphia” help dissect why discrimination is not seen by police and their agencies and also how police officers and their administration go about ways of preventing crime. The pressure within the police, community, and courts create inequalities for the individuals going through the Criminal Justice System.

Unsurprisingly, multiculturalism is glorified and Canada is painted as the “tolerant” racism-free country. Bromberg defines multiculturalism as the “coexistence of diverse culture and acceptance of cultural differences” (13). The Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s glorification of multiculturalism erases the plethora of systems of oppression that racialized bodies and Indigenous people face in Canada. Bromberg associates multiculturalism for Canada’s high rank in “inter-ethnic trust and friendship, comfort with ethnic diversity…and low levels of support for anti-immigrant political parties or movement” (14). This is obviously a stretch as illustrated by the media representation of black people and Aboriginals, particularly in Toronto. In the Muzik nightclub shooting after the OVO Fest on August 2015, 2 people were shot: one was a girl named Ariela Navarro-Fenoy, who was portrayed as the “beautiful, smiling girl,” and the other was Duvel Hibbert, a black man whose death highlighted his past crimes rather than being a victim of a shooting (Matis, “Collateral Damage”). Media coverage of gun violence have been under scrutiny by lawyers, criminologists and media critics as it sustains the stereotype that Black people, specifically Jamaicans, are violent gang members that are a threat to the streets of Toronto (Matis, “Collateral Damage”). This glorified

In a well-known country of being democratic and free, there are high expectations of equality and justice. But, this is just how it looks like at a glance in Canada, as for minorities living in Canada and, in particular to black Canadians, these minorities face a different reality in the encounters with police and the justice system in comparison to their white counterparts. Which raises the question of how equal each citizen really is under the same rules. Therefore, in the essay I argue racial profiling is evident in stop and search practices targeting Blacks in Canada by police officers due to institutional racism and police socialization.

The Toronto’s Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy allows officers to put Black people, specifically Black males, under more intense police watch. The Ontario Human Rights Commission in their report on systemic racism acknowledged the existence of severe racial bias against blacks throughout the justice system (Toronto Star 2013). The social construction of black criminality coupled with the denial of certain rights can further debilitate effects of racially discriminatory practices against blacks. By referring to minority groups as criminally inclined and certain neighbourhoods as high-priority, police can target racialized neighbourhoods thus avoid being labelled discriminatory. It is clear from our findings that differential police practices

Bernasconi, R. (2014). When police violence is more than violent policing. CR: The New Centennial Review, 14(2), 145-152. doi:10.14321/crnewcentrevi.14.2.0145 The article examines a particular case where a young African-American male was shot by a police officer in Chicago. The author looks at the causes of this incident as well as discusses the absence of accountability that the police department faced. The content of this article applies to all three disciplines that will assist to explain police brutality.