When racial profiling shows its subtler side

Page 17

MEDIUM RARE

A few years ago, a journalist at CBC Radio asked in private if I had ever, personally, experienced racial profiling. I blinked. I pointed out the reason that I was being interviewed by CBC Radio at that time was precisely because I was an Aboriginal person and I would be asked to comment about only Aboriginal issues.

CBC's reporter wasn't interested in the people I saw dying from AIDS in small communities in South Africa. She didn't want to know my thoughts on Robert Mugabe or the repression of journalists in Zimbabwe. When I called this a form of racial profiling, she couldn't see the irony.

It was too subtle. She expected an answer on police harassment or discrimination at the hands of some official. Instead, I challenged her perceptions of me based on my race and national origin-Mohawk-that limited my experience within a narrow focus defined by her stereotypes. I'm Mohawk, therefore, I may only speak about Aboriginal issues. I could sense the wall of defensiveness go up.

What she wanted were stories about the anger I felt when a bar-owner told me 'We don't serve your kind here.' She wanted me to explain that feeling in the pit of my stomach as two clerks shadowed my every step through the aisles of a store. Or the sense of helplessness I felt when I was one of two people, both darkies, bumped from the last flight home even though we both checked in early.

I'm walking home from a movie and a cop demands my ID for no apparent reason other than the color of my skin. Someone's purse goes missing and my boss wants to search only my desk.

I admit the conversation angered me. Ignorance was no excuse. A lousy education? Maybe. More likely, however, racism simply wasn't something she had to face every morning. Therefore, it wasn't real. It was an intellectual exercise, but not something she could hear, touch or feel like the rest of us.

She wanted confirmation that someone else was guilty. She didn't want to hear that maybe she stereotyped and racially profiled people too. She wasn't prepared to question her own motives or actions. As a result, I don't think she's changed the way she looks at other people. I doubt whether her stories have improved much either.

What sparks all of this is a recent report entitled Paying the Price: The Human Cost of Racial Profiling, by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It defines racial profiling as "any action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection that relies on stereotypes about race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin rather than on reasonable suspicion, to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment."

Thanks to human rights legislation, there's legal protection for some of the examples I've given. But not all of the examples fit. And let's face it, most people wouldn't bother to complain. I didn't. We knew the burden of proof was on us.

It becomes our word against that of a police officer, a businessman or a company. Why complain when all we have is a "feeling" rather than evidence? For others, the need to survive, to find food or shelter, overrides any incentive to become involved in a lengthy bureaucratic complaint. So most people just suck it up and don't, won't or can't complain. It results in frustration, anger and humiliation.

The commission's report was initiated by a series last year in the Toronto Star on racial profiling by police. But the commission didn't limit its study just to policing or to Toronto. Nor did it limit itself to questions of race. The commission traveled across the province gathering more than 400 submissions from people who explained how racial profiling in its many forms affected their lives and the lives of their children.

The commission didn't waste time covering well-worn ground, trying to re-prove the existence of racial profiling or racism.

"It is the Commission's view that previous inquiries have considered this and have found that it does ocur."

Nope. The commission's report went straight to the heart of the matter-to the "mindset" that permits racial profiling to occur particularly in this post-Sept. 11th era.

The report highlights the cost to society in terms of weakened institutions, undermined authority and an increasingly cynical public. But, mostly, the report exposes the effect-the human cost-upon people in terms of diminished self-worth, self-esteem and crushed dreams.

Perhaps the most important sentence in the report states that what's been missing from all the talk about race "is an analysis of the effect that racial profiling, or even a perception that it is occurring, has on those directly impacted and on Ontario society as a whole." In other words, it should be about people-not whether racial profiling is academically provable, legally permissible or bureaucratically justifiable.

The commission devotes a whole chapter to Aboriginal peoples and how their lives are affected by racial profiling. It may be anecdotal, stories rather than statistics, but this allowed people to talk about their experiences usually at the hand of some form of authority, including Native police.

The report recognizes that racial profiling isn't a whites-only preoccupation-we do it too. We're just as prone to imposing stereotypes as anyone else. We also discriminate based on other peoples' race, religion, ethnic origin, gender or social class among ourselves.

"A number of people who described themselves as Caucasian or white also participated in the inquiry and recounted witnessing incidents of profiling or experiencing profiling as a result of their relationship with a person from one of these other communities."

After all, it's human nature to categorize people by similarities and differences. It becomes a problem, though, when we impose values about their criminality, employability, trustworthiness, dependability and a host of other characteristics peoples based upon our prejudices. Or when it limits ourchance to contribute to discussions beyond our particular race.