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RACIAL PROFILING IN CANADA:
CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF 'A FEW BAD APPLES'

In October 2002, the Toronto Star ran a series of feature articles on racial profil¬
ing in which it was indicated that Toronto police routinely target young Black
men when making traffic stops. The series drew strong reactions from the com¬
munity, and considerable protest from the media, politicians, law enforcement
officials, and other public figures. Although the articles were supported by
substantial documentation and statistical evidence, the Toronto Police Associa¬
tion sued the Star, claiming that no such evidence existed. The lawsuit was ulti¬
mately rejected in court. However, as a result, the issue of racial profiling - a
practice in which certain criminal activities are attributed to individuals or
groups on the basis of race or ethno-racial background - was thrust into the
national spotlight.
In this comprehensive and thought-provoking work, Carol Tator and
Frances Henry explore the meaning of racial profiling in Canada as it is prac¬
tised not only by the police but also by many other social institutions. While
providing a theoretical framework within which they examine racial profiling
from a number of perspectives and in a variety of situations, the authors anal¬
yse the discourses of the media, policing officials, politicians, civil servants,
judges, and other public authorities to demonstrate how those in power com¬
municate and produce existing racialized ideologies and social relations of ine¬
quality through their common interactions. Chapter 3, by contributing author
Charles Smith, provides a comparison of experiences of racial profiling and
policing in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Chapter 7,
by Maureen Brown, through a series of interviews, presents stories that dem¬
onstrate the realities of racial profiling in the everyday experiences of Afro-
Canadians and ethno-racial minorities.
Informed by a wealth of research and theoretical approaches from a wide
range of disciplines. Racial Profiling in Canada makes a major contribution to the
literature and debates on a topic of growing concern. Together the authors
present a compelling examination of the pervasiveness of racial profiling in
daily life and its impact on our society, while suggesting directions for change.

carol tator is a course director in the Department of Anthropology at York

University
Frances henry is a professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at
York University.

NOV 1 4 2008
 .

\
CAROL TATOR AND FRANCES HENRY
With Charles Smith and Maureen Brown

Racial Profiling in Canada

4

CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF

A FEW BAD APPLES'

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada

Reprinted 2006, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-8714-0 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-8020-8714-0 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-8666-2 (paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8020-8666-7 (paper)

®
Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tator, Carol
Racial profiling in Canada : challenging the myth of 'a few bad
apples' / Carol Tator and Frances Flenry ; with Charles Smith
and Maureen Brown.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-8714-0 (bound)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-8714-0 (bound)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-8666-2 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-8666-7 (pbk.)

1. Racism - Canada. 2. Racial profiling in law enforcement -

Canada. 3. Minorities - Civil rights - Canada.
I. Henry, Frances, 1931- II. Title.

HV7936.R3T38 2006 305.8'00971 C2006-900895-7

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council. v

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its

publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
This book is dedicated to all those who dared break the silence surrounding
racial profiling in Canada: victims and their families; Black and Aboriginal
communities; the publisher, editors, and journalists at the Toronto Star; and
those courageous members of law enforcement agencies who dared to challenge
the official dominant narratives of denial, deflection, and oppression.

>
'.S * V

-
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3

1 Theoretical Perspectives 16

2 The Interlocking Web of Racism across Institutions, Systems, and

Structures 38

3 Racial Profiling in Canada, the United States, and the

United Kingdom Charles c. smith 55

4 The Culture of Policing 92

5 The Role of Narrative Inquiry in Social Science Research:

Understanding Dominant and Oppositional Discourses 113

6 The Dominant Discourses of White Public Authorities:

Narratives of Denial, Deflection, and Oppression 123

7 In Their Own Voices: African Canadians in Toronto Share

Experiences of Racial Profiling maureen brown 151

8 From Narratives to Social Change: Patterns and Possibilities 184

, *■ ,

Glossary 205

Table of Cases 213

References 215

Index 231
.*

>
 '

\
Acknowledgments

Many people were instrumental in bringing this book to fruition. We

wish to thank Dean Drummond of the Faculty of Arts at York Univer¬
sity for providing support towards the publication of this book. We are
also appreciative of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for fund¬
ing the initial phase of our study on racial profiling. Our first contrib¬
uting author, Charles Smith's comparative study of racial profiling in
the UK, the USA, and Canada provides a critical comparative perspec¬
tive on racial profiling in those countries. Maureen Brown's chapter
documents the findings of her study, 'In Their Own Voices,' and pro¬
vides important insights into the impact of racial profiling on the
everyday lives of young Black Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area.
Both of these studies were commissioned by the African Canadian
Community Coalition on Racial Profiling.
Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of'a Few Bad Apples' is
our third book to be published by the University of Toronto Press on
the subject of racism in Canada. Over the past ten years, our work has
benefited significantly from the support and expertise of many people
at the press, especially Virgil Duff and Anne Laughlin.
Central to the issue of racial profiling are the costs and consequences
to those individuals and communities that continue to experience this
injustice in their everyday lives. We wish to acknowledge the courage
and strength it took to share these stories and experiences in public
forums and inquiries, in consultations with researchers, in interviews
with the media, and in many other venues. We hope their voices will
be heard and that actions will be taken across a wide range of public
institutions.

f
/

>
*
 The Toronto Star has also played a significant role in this book. The
commitment by the Star to help uncover the 'real' story of racial profil¬
ing in Toronto was sustained over more than three years. We wish to
recognize the contribution of all the columnists who worked on this
story especially Jim Rankin, who not only was part of the team of writ¬
ers, but also produced the photograph that enhances the cover of this
book.
Finally, we thank our husbands, Charles Tator and Jeff Henry, and
our children Ira, Michael, and Julie Tator, and Terrence and Miriam
Henry, for their love and support, which has enriched our lives and
our work.

\
RACIAL PROFILING IN CANADA:
CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF A FEW BAD APPLES'

t
4

>
Introduction

Profiling is the inverse of law enforcement. In law enforcement, a crime is

discovered and the police then look for a suspect who might possibly
have committed it. Profiling means that a suspect is discovered and the
police then look for a crime for the person to have possibly committed.
(Martinot 2003,168)

This book on racial profiling begins with a story. 'Peter Owusu-

Ansah's Nightmare' by Carol Goar appeared in the Toronto Star on 15
August 2004. Peter's story is repeated daily on the streets of Toronto
and in towns and cities across Canada. The victims are often Black, but
racial profiling also affects other racialized minority populations,
including Aboriginals, Asians, Muslims, Arabs, and Latinos. The fol¬
lowing is an edited version of the Star article:

Peter Owusu-Ansah is young. Black, and hearing impaired. Over a four-

year period he was stopped by the police while riding his bicycle to work,
while sitting in coffee shops, while walking down the street ... a total of
seventeen times. He had been ordered to empty his knapsack and pockets
countless times. He had been pushed against walls. 'Now, every time I see
them coming. I'm’afraid,' he says. The first seventeen times the police
stopped him for questioning, he was cooperative. The eighteenth time (in
September 2002), he and a group of friends had finished a game of basket¬
ball at the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf in Toronto. Afterwards they
stopped at McDonald's and walked to the bus stop. Along the way a
police cruiser, lights flashing, stopped them for questioning. The two
officers got out of their car and began asking questions. Owusu-Ansah,

*
4 Introduction

who can lip-read, explained that his friends were deaf and that he was
hard of hearing. One of the officers demanded that he produce identifica¬
tion; he responded that he did not have any on him. She asked for his
name, address, and date of birth. 'Why are you asking me all these ques¬
tions?' he responded. Two more officers were summoned. Owusu-Ansah
was then separated from his friends and interrogated by another consta¬
ble. What happened next has become the subject of two legal actions and
a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The police say
they questioned him in relation to a reported robbery at a nearby high
school. He alleges that he was pushed into the police cruiser and taken to
a spot behind a high school and there was punched in the head and in the
groin repeatedly. He couldn't understand anything the officers were say¬
ing because he cannot lip-read in the dark. Finally, the police officers put
him back in the car and dropped him off at a bus stop. Owusu-Ansah
filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission and also
launched a suit against the two police officers for assault. Elizabeth
Briickmann, the lawyer handling his human rights complaint, held out
little hope that the two officers would be convicted, arguing that 'when
you have the word of a young Black male against the word of two police
officers, the young Black man is going to lose every time.'1

Stories like Peter Owusu-Ansah's inspired the Toronto Star to publish

a series of articles on the racial profiling of African Canadians. The first
of these ran on 19 October 2002. Racial profiling is an issue that reso¬
nates strongly in the Black community and in other racialized minority
communities. It affects the daily lives of men, women, and youth of
colour. The Star, a paper with a long history of in-depth reporting on

1 On 14 October 2004 the case was heard by Judge Paul Robertson. The court rejected
most of the constable's evidence and found that his explanation for why he drove
Peter Owusu-Ansah to the parking lot of a high school at 1 a.m. 'defies common
sense.' But in his decision he concluded that the victim had a 'pre-existing animus to
police.' Owusu-Ansah attributed this to the fact that he had often been singled out for
racial profiling because he is deaf and a person of colour. The two officers were acquit¬
ted of assaulting Owusu-Ansah, who has since filed a complaint with the Ontario
Human Rights Commission against the officers and the Toronto Police Services Board
(Small 2004). Note well that Judge Robertson gave no indication that he ever consid¬
ered the role played by deafness in the miscommunication between Owusu-Ansah
and the police. Yet as noted by Lesli Bisgould, a staff lawyer with ARCH, a legal
resource centre for people with disabilities, Owusu-Ansah used a sign-language inter¬
preter in court, and his first language is neither English nor ASL (http://www.archle-
galclinic.ca/publications/archAlert/2004/'08_decl3).
 Introduction 5

social issues, based its new series on a two-year probe of race and
crime statistics gathered from a Toronto police database that docu¬
ments arrests and charges laid. The database detailed more than
480,000 incidents in which an individual was arrested or ticketed for
an offence, along with nearly 800,000 criminal and other charges laid
by police from late 1996 to early 2002. The data were accessed through
the Freedom of Information Act after police denied the Star access.
During its investigations, the Star consulted a statistician from York
University to ensure the. validity of its methodology and analysis. The
data revealed significant disparities in how Blacks and Whites are
treated in law enforcement practices. Specifically, they showed that a
disproportionate number of Black motorists are ticketed for violations
that only surface following a traffic stop. Furthermore, Black people
who are charged with simple drug possession are taken to police sta¬
tions more often than Whites facing the same charge. And once at the
station. Blacks are held overnight for a bail hearing at twice the rate of
Whites.
The Star series on race and policing generated hundreds of news sto¬
ries, opinion pieces, editorials, and letters to the editor. Although the
coverage was mainly in the Star, the issue was also taken up in other
print media - including alternative presses such as Share, the African-
Canadian newspaper - and on television and radio news programs,
both local and national. The Star series provoked an immediate and
hostile reaction from the police chief, the Toronto Police Services
Board, the Toronto Police Association, and the president of the Toronto
Police Union. Many politicians, as well as journalists from other
papers, adopted a common discursive position: categorical denial that
racial profiling exists. On the other side of the divide, voices in the
Black community affirmed the reality of racial profiling as a persistent
and systemic problem in their lives. With near unanimity, they vali¬
dated the Star's findings.
The Star series provoked a discursive crisis that continues to rever¬
berate. Here, a 'discursive crisis' refers to a set of reactions that pro¬
foundly affect society - specifically, the state of minority-majority
relations. The crisis is sometimes of short duration, but this one was
prolonged. Three years after the Star began publishing its series, the
struggle against racial profiling continues, as does the Black commu¬
nity's battle against racism in policing and in the broader Canadian
society.

?
y

#
*
6 Introduction

The Theoretical Foundations of This Book

This book is informed by many disciplines, including cultural studies,

critical criminology, and critical race theory. In the sometimes acrimo¬
nious debate over the efficacy of various theoretical models in aca¬
demic and other forms of research, we concur with Cottle (2000), who
suggests that the clash of frameworks with regard to questions of
knowledge, methodology, and the role of politics in academic life can
be a positive force when issues of vital concern to society are
addressed. Such a clash can help push the boundaries of knowledge
into new, productive, and creative areas. We believe that critical theory
in the social sciences, criminology, and the law, and the critical analyti¬
cal approach that forms the core of cultural studies, taken together pro¬
vide an appropriate methodology for studying the volatile issue of
racial profiling. Critical theory addresses the contested constructs of
ideology and hegemony, power and powerlessness, domination and
resistance, representation and misrepresentation, normality and abnor¬
mality. It acknowledges the dialectical nature of knowledge, truth, and
'commonsense' beliefs. A critical approach also underscores the impor¬
tance of discourse and discursive analysis, and dominant and counter
narratives. Concepts such as essentialism, difference, identity, subjec¬
tivity, meaning, and myth are vehicles for understanding the dynamics
of racism in democratic liberal societies. Thus the many disciplines that
have been influenced by critical theory offer both common and unique
strategic tools for uncovering the nexus of race, racism, and crime; they
also provide alternative approaches and insights for studies of how
racial profiling has been injected into policing and other institutional
systems.
We have used the discursive approach in much of our recent work
(Henry and Tator 1998, 2002, 2005), which has been strongly influenced
by many scholars, including Hall (1997), Hall and colleagues (1978),
van Dijk (1988, 1991, 1993), Fiske (1994, 1999, 2000), and Fairclough
(1992, 1995). This approach emphasizes the belief that in democratic
liberal societies, discourse essentially reproduces the racialized beliefs,
values, norms, and actions of the White majority. For that reason, we
and our contributing authors, Charles Smith and Maureen Brown,
have chosen to use the 'discursive event' as means of accessing the
many complex and challenging issues that racial profiling raises in
modern Canada.
Although this book is framed around a particular set of phenomena.
 Introduction 7

the issues addressed by the Star series and the responses that series
generated have their roots in the broader historical struggle of Black
people to be treated as full and equal citizens of a democratic liberal
society. The long and heated debate over racial profiling reflects the
deep chasm between the White political, cultural, and social systems -
which have long been dominant and rarely change - and the individu¬
als and groups who suffer from the dis-enabling and marginalizing
effects of those systems.
The crisis the Star series provoked took the form of a highly charged
set of dominant discourses across a broad spectrum of public spaces,
which included newsrooms, courtrooms, and government agencies.
Also, several academic and government-sponsored conferences were
convened. The issue of racial profiling was hotly contested in the meet¬
ing rooms of the Police Service Board and in forums organized by
social agencies and community and youth agencies. Perhaps the most
wrenching of these 'conversations' took place in the private spaces of
Black families. Royson James, a columnist at the Star, wrote of how
racial profiling was affecting his own family:

Only some of us parents know the palpable, paralyzing fear that the car
will be stopped by Toronto, Peel, Durham or York police, searched, have
its passengers harassed and humiliated - simply because the driver is our
black son ...
Ask your black colleague and he or she will share DWB stories. That's
Driving While Black. They have the scars, most emotional but some phys¬
ical as well to prove it ... They know the stereotype of the angry young
black male; that a significant number of police officers feel blacks are
criminal beasts deserving attention from law enforcers; that some ele¬
ments of society harbour such racist sentiments; that blacks don't have
the same freedom to make mistakes like everyone else because the conse¬
quences could be harsher, the punishment more severe. (R. James 2002)

The Star series and the responses to it from White authorities offer
critical insights into how racialized discourse is used to banish - or at
the very least deflect attention away from - the general issue of racism
in policing and the specific issue of the racial profiling of Blacks.
We argue in this book that facial profiling is a manifestation of 'dem¬
ocratic racism/ in which bias and discrimination 'cloak their presence'
in liberal principles. Democratic racism is an ideology in which two
conflicting sets of values are made congruent. The consequences of this
8 Introduction

tension ensure that commitments to justice, fairness, and equality con¬

flict with, but at the same time coexist with, negative feelings about
people of colour and differential treatment of them (see Henry and
Tator 2005).
The term racial profiling is of rather recent origin (see Harris 2002,
11). It is usually confined to discussions of the policing of racially
diverse communities. In chapter 3 of this book, by Charles Smith, these
practices are described in relation to the Black community. However,
our use of this term is broader and deeper; it includes the various dis¬
courses that are articulated by the police, governments, and other
authorities, and by the media, in their efforts to rationalize and justify
racialized behaviours and practices. In our view, racial profiling is
another word for racism or racialization; for that reason, we give it a
discursive meaning, one that applies to all social institutions and
aspects of everyday life within systems of social control and represen¬
tation. Like Hall (1978,1997) and Foucault (1977,1980), we analyse the
ideological foundations of racial profiling as they are revealed in the
everyday dominant discourses of elite public authorities, including the
police.
This approach, which draws from both Hall and Foucault, facilitates
our understanding of White dominant beliefs and value systems. An
exploration of the ideological underpinnings of racial profiling reveals
how the The body of the criminal is produced and disciplined' within
discourse according to various discursive formations, such as the state
of knowledge about crime and the criminal and what counts as 'true'
about how to change criminal behaviour (Foucault 1977, 63).
Our approach to the issue and practice of racial profiling is to decon¬
struct the hegemonic force that shapes the lives of Black people and
other minoritized communities by identifying the markers of meaning
that underlie the everyday text, talk, and actions of the policing com¬
munity and of other White elites, including politicians and journalists
(Hall 1980; van Dijk 1993).
The first crucial element in racial profiling is its link to the practices
of racialization - practices that can be seen to operate in virtually every
sector of society. Racialization is part of a broader process that inferior-
izes and excludes groups in 'the population. It refers to 'both the cul¬
tural or political processes or situations where race is involved as an
explanation' (Murji and Solomos 2004). It categorizes people and their
social relations in terms of their biological characteristics.
Racialization begins with ideology, which is then filtered through
 Introduction 9

the everyday micro-interactions and discourses of police, security

officers, judges, journalists and editors, educators, politicians, and
bureaucrats, among others. The processes of racialization are visible in
the negative representations (in language, images, and ideas) of people
of colour and Aboriginals, who are constructed as 'problem people.'
Monolithic and persistent stereotypes of these groups are found in
popular culture - in films, TV and print news stories, literature, adver¬
tising,''and music.
Racialization is embedded in authoritative texts such as law books,
government documents, and parliamentary debates. Racialization is
supported by polls and surveys that repeatedly frame questions in
ways that highlight the dominant culture's perceptions, beliefs, and
norms. The racialization of minority groups is obvious in the eco¬
nomic, social, political, and cultural structures of society - structures
that ensure an unequal distribution of resources and that preserve
power for the hegemonic White culture (Anthias 1998; Small 1999).
Racism can also be understood as the racialization of the White race.
Here, Whiteness becomes a socially constructed identity, a force that
both compels and underpins the maintenance of systems of Eurocen¬
tric and Anglocentric power and privilege. Whiteness can be viewed as
an essentializing strategy (often unconscious) for defending and main¬
taining the established social order and for preserving White cultural
hegemony (Gabriel 1998). In this book we shall demonstrate that
Whiteness plays a significant role in racial profiling, just as it does in
all other forms of racism.
In deconstructing racial profiling, it is also important to draw atten¬
tion to the role played by culture.2 Scholars of Whiteness studies -
especially those who focus on the relationship between race and crime
(Razack 1998; Visano 2002; Jiwani 2002; Barnes 2002) - maintain that
the discourses of race and racism often use culture to reinforce the dis¬
tance between 'our' superior (that is, Eurocentric and Anglocentric)
cultural values and norms and 'their' inferior (that is, non-Western)
ones. For example, the discourses around criminal acts by particular
minority groups depend on essentialized and stereotypical thinking.
Thus, Jamaican culture becomes a signifier of deviant cultural behav¬
iour, especially with regard to drug-related crimes (Barnes 2002; Ben¬
jamin 2002; Henry and Tator 2002; James 2002). In the same way, Asian

2 Lawrence (1982), working in the United Kingdom, many years ago emphasized the
cultural underpinnings of racist ideology.
10 Introduction

cultural groups are commonly depicted by police (and the media) as

predisposed to gang-related activities. The categorization of minority
gangs by 'ethnicity' and of majority gangs by 'activity' is contributing
to the racialization of the street gang issue. In 1996 the Montreal Police
Department declared that it would be making street gangs a priority
issue for the next five years. It then identified five racial groups from
which street gangs originate: Jamaican, Haitian, Asiatic, extreme right,
and Latino (Symons 2002). More recently, Muslims and Arabs have
been subjected to increased scrutiny and surveillance. Muslim and
Arab cultural norms have been linked consistently with deviant (ter¬
rorist) acts.
Aboriginal peoples are constantly inferiorized, racialized, and
racially profiled. Race-based inequality characterizes both the current
realities of Aboriginal life and the long history of colonialist and racial¬
ized policies that have systematically undermined Aboriginal eco¬
nomic, social, and political self-sufficiency. This is dramatically
demonstrated by the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people in Can¬
ada's prison system (Royal Commission on Aboriginal People 1996). It
is also demonstrated by the growing evidence of the racial profiling of
First Nations men in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and elsewhere in the
West; some of these men have been found dead after encounters with
police (see chapter 3). While we were writing this book, two public
inquiries were in progress, investigating the role of the police in the
deaths of Neil Stonechild in Saskatoon and Dudley George in Forest,
Ontario.
Social class is closely related to processes of racialization and crimi¬
nalization. Those identified as at the bottom of the social and economic
hierarchy are perceived as the most prone to crime and also as less
credible and deserving. This form of marginalization and stigmatiza¬
tion is embedded in the everyday discourses of police, judges, and
other public authorities. Poor people are seen and described by the
dominant discourse as dispossessed; furthermore, they are character¬
ized in ways that suggest they are disposable (Jiwani 2002; Dulude
2000). The emphasis on Black crime and crime associated with other
minority groups, rather than on white-collar crime, reflects the capital¬
istic nature of Canadian society, in which social stratification is based
on wealth and White privilege and which simultaneously constructs
people of colour as inferior (Russell 1998). Criminalization and racial¬
ization can be understood as a multidimensional process shaped by
dominant narratives whose central theme is the so-called 'other.'
 Introduction 11

Problematizing Language in Writing about Racism

One of the first challenges in analysing racism is establishing an appro¬

priate terminology. One must search for words that themselves are not
perceived as racialized; at the same time, one must clearly and accu¬
rately communicate what racism means. However, as the phenomenon
of racism continues to take on new forms and manifestations, so too
does the language modify. Words change; and as well, their historical
context affects how they are used. Furthermore, the sometimes funda¬
mental changes that words undergo imply that there is no fixed or cor¬
rect meaning for any term.
Apple (1993, 25) expresses the challenge of language in this way:
Concepts do not remain still very long. They have wings so to speak,
and can be induced to fly from place to place.' So in identifying the
meaning of terms, one must consider the specific context in which they
are used. We caution the reader that terms such as culture, race, truth.
Black, White, Native, and immigrant, for example, are not neutral; they
exist in many different social and interpretative frameworks. Powerful
currents alter interpretations depending on the situation, location, and
social context (Lentricchia and McLaughlin 1990; Fiske 1994).
Colour remains the nucleus of the race classification system, yet par¬
adoxically, it bears little relation to the actual skin tones of human
beings. No White person is truly white, nor is any Black individual
completely Black. Whites do not consider themselves part of the colour
spectrum; indeed, they identify their group as constituting the univer¬
sal norm. However, the gradations of colour from white to black asso¬
ciated with various racial groups have economic, social, and cultural
consequences. The ideology that defines Whites as superior renders
people of different colours inferior.
As will be demonstrated throughout this book, skin colour has an
important relationship to status and position in Canadian society. The
language of colour delineates the politics of domination and subordi¬
nation; it has been noted that 'White ... is the colour of domination'
(Razack 1998, IT). Making this point in terms of her personal experi¬
ence as a person of colour, Joanne St Lewis (1996, 28) observes: 'In con¬
versations about race, all of my being is telescoped to my skin. The
colour of my skin drives the engine of my public life.'
When we use the terms 'racial minorities/ 'people of colour,' and
'racialized communities,' we will be referring to groups of people who
because of their physical characteristics are subjected to differential
t

>
12 Introduction

and unequal treatment in Canada. Their minority status is the result of

a lack of access to power, privilege, and prestige in relation to the
White majority. Although there are significant differences among racial
minorities or people of colour, just as there are within any ethno-racial
group, the members of these diverse communities share a history of
discriminatory barriers and exposure to racial bias based on the colour
of their skin. So for the purposes of this book, we will be grouping
them together.
Also, references to colour in this book will be used in their political
sense, and the terms "Black" and "White" will be capitalized to reflect
this. The reader will note that some references citing British literature
or experiences use the term 'Black' inclusively, to refer to all people of
colour. American scholars, on the other hand, use 'black' to refer spe¬
cifically to people of African descent.3
Finally, it is important to note the colour-coded nature of the lan¬
guage used to categorize different forms of criminal activities, as in
'Black-on-Black crime,' 'driving while Black,' and 'White-collar crime.'
Throughout this book we will be using discourse analysis as an analyt¬
ical tool for decoding the cultural symbols and representations that
underlie the articulated plurality of discourses that frame the issues of
racial profiling and criminality.

Chapter Outline

Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical approach, developed from several

sources. We draw from some of the approaches utilized by other schol¬
ars to establish how race is used as a proxy for criminality. Applying
methods of analysis and interpretation derived from a Foucauldian
model and incorporated into the work, for example, of Rose (2002),
Fiske (2002), Visano (2002), and Hall (1978), we show that racial profil¬
ing arises from the need to identify and manage 'risky' minority popu¬
lations. Blackness becomes a racial signifier for crime and a threat to
law and the social order. The Black body seen through the 'White gaze'
requires racially differentiated forms of surveillance, containment, and
control (Fiske 2000). The theoretical perspective includes the notion
that racialization can also be" analysed from the perspective of White-

3 Fiske employs the convention of capitalizing 'Black' to signify the positive reclaiming
of that word. He suggests that the spelling 'black' in White racist discourse is deroga¬
tory.
 Introduction 13

ness — that is, the process whereby White culture comes to be inter¬
preted as normative and natural, truthful and meritorious, civil and
law abiding, tolerant and accommodating difference.
In chapter 2 we explore the processes of racialization and cultural
hegemony that occur across public institutions such as the justice sys¬
tem, the immigration system, and the media. In this way an overview
of how African Canadians are marginalized in each of these sectors is
demonstrated. Our analysis explores the diverse ways in which the
Black male body becomes culturally marked as 'different/ 'deviant,'
and dangerous. At the intersections of diverse systems such as govern¬
ment, courtrooms, schools, newsrooms, television studios, radio talk
shows, videos, and films, the images and discourses of Blackness
become charged with the notion of the undesirable, alien other, who
represents a threat to the moral and social order.
In chapter 3 the first contributing author, Charles Smith, analyses
racial profiling and the practices the police in three different countries
with tacially diverse (and especially Black) communities. Smith pro¬
vides an important historical overview as well as a contemporary criti¬
cal approach to the issue of racial profiling as it has unfolded in the
United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Drawing from an
accumulated body of evidence that the police have long been racist
towards Blacks, he explores how police forces have responded to the
challenge of creating more just and equitable law enforcement systems.
In the Canadian section of his chapter, he analyses racial profiling as it
has affected Blacks in Ontario and Quebec. He ends his contribution by
considering the racial profiling of Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan,
Manitoba, British Columbia, and Ontario.
Chapter 4 focuses on police culture. The authors analyse some of the
core values and norms of that culture. We then critically examine the
tensions between the core culture - its everyday assumptions, values,
beliefs, and practices - and the more macrolevel structure in which
policies are developed, implemented, or ignored. The police culture
exhibits numerous cultural traits, including social isolation, solidarity,
a siege mentality, militaristic modes and structures, codes of secrecy
and silence, and tensions between the top brass and the cops on the
beat. All of these traits strongly shape the relationship between the
police and the diverse publics they serve. The chapter discusses how
these elements influence the police in their everyday interactions with
people of colour, especially Blacks, and how police culture itself rein¬
forces racism.

>
14 Introduction

Chapter 5 begins with a theoretical introduction to the subject of nar¬

rative inquiry and its importance to the themes of this book. Dominant
and oppositional narratives and discourses are powerful tools for
examining human experience, especially racism. Deconstructing the
discourses surrounding social issues such as racial profiling offers
powerful insights into the processes of racialization. We suggest that
conflicting dominant and oppositional narratives help expose the com¬
plex ruptures beneath the surface of institutional practices of policing.
Chapter 6 takes a case study approach to explore some of the discur¬
sive strategies that were followed by the police and other public
authorities in their response to the Star series on race, crime, and polic¬
ing. The White elites - including police officials and highly placed
political figures - spoke with almost a single voice. The messages
embedded in their communications with the public were contextual¬
ized in the discourses of deflection and denial - in the discourse of
'Otherness' and the discourse of moral panic, among others. We apply
discourse analysis to deconstruct the dominant narratives of police
officials, politicians, and other influential figures. We then study the
texts of several journalists from Toronto newspapers and their
responses to the issue of the racial profiling of Blacks. The chapter con¬
cludes with some startling revelations by a group of Black officers on
the Toronto Police Service, who decided to share their own experiences
with being racially profiled by their fellow officers. The focus group of
Black officers was held in 2003, but became public only in March 2005.
Chapter 7, by our second contributing author, Maureen Brown, con¬
siders the role of counter-narratives - that is, stories that demonstrate
the realities of racial profiling in the everyday experiences of African
Canadians and other ethno-racial minorities. On the basis of extensive
interviews across the Greater Toronto Area, Brown identifies some of
the key feelings and experiences shared by young Blacks in relation to
racial profiling. Some of her respondents were African-Canadian
police officers. Her chapter offers a probing analysis of what racial pro¬
filing looks like and feels like to those who experience it. As well, the
interviews offer constructive perspectives on how to address the prob¬
lem of racial profiling.
Chapter 8 identifies some bf the main findings of our analysis. A key
premise of this book is that certain events require narration; the discur¬
sive crisis that flowed out of the Star series was one of those of events.
The after-effects of the Star series and the lived experiences of racial
profiling - which are ongoing - provide an opportunity to deconstruct
 Introduction 15

the dynamics of discursive racism and, at the same time, to challenge

widely accepted stereotypical assumptions about the alleged relation¬
ship between race and crime.
The controversy the Star series inspired had deep roots and was
intrinsically linked to the struggles of Black people to be treated as full
and equal citizens and to be freed from more than three decades of
racialized police practices. The findings of this book also emphasize
the powerful link between racism in policing and the racism that
crosses all institutional sectors and spaces - racism that inferiorizes
and marginalizes Blacks and other people of colour.
The personal accounts of racial profiling and other forms of racism
documented throughout this book challenge the ideological frame¬
work of a democratic liberal society. The polarization between White¬
ness and Blackness, and between "Aboriginalness" and Anglo-
centrism, raises questions about whether Canada should really be seen
as a multicultural model by the rest of the world. However, in the con¬
cluding section of this book we point to some recent events that sug¬
gest change is possible.
1 Theoretical Perspectives

White people create the dominant images of the world and don't quite see
that they thus construct the world in their image. (Dyer 1997, 9)

The relations between Black communities and law enforcement agen¬

cies have a long and troubled history in several countries, including
Canada. We believe that the nexus between race and crime is rooted in
racist ideologies as well as in the processes of racialization, culturaliza¬
tion, and criminalization that form the basis for racism in democratic
liberal societies. These same processes provide a strong theoretical
framework for a critical analysis of racial profiling.
This book draws from the work of many scholars (Rose 2002; Gar¬
land 1996; Visano 2002; Fiske 2000) and is informed by several theoret¬
ical perspectives on how postmodern societies marginalize and
disadvantage certain groups, especially Blacks. Four distinct albeit
related theoretical approaches have most influenced this book: (1) White¬
ness studies examine the racialization of Whiteness and its role in sus¬
taining systems of power and privilege. This approach focuses on
Whites as a racial group in hegemonic control of marginalized sub¬
groups in society. (2) Blackness studies focus on the abnormalization of
Blackness and the Black body image. (3) Danger and racialization theory
refers to the idea that people of colour - and especially Blacks - pose a
danger to predominantly White societies. (4) Discursive analysis theories
explore how White hegemonic discourse produces, reinforces, and dis¬
seminates racism in democratic liberal societies. Discursive analysis
also examines the role of oppositional and counter discourses in chal-
 Theoretical Perspectives 17

lenging hegemonic ideologies and discourses as well as racialized

practices.
One purpose of this book is to uncover and deconstruct racial profil¬
ing practices in Canadian society. We shall be concentrating on police
activity but shall also be connecting that activity to the ways in which
politicians, the media, and other White elites reinforce processes of
racialization. To put it in Foucauldian terms, racial profiling has
become' a regime of truth' the purpose of which is to preserve and
reinforce systems of White privilege and social control - systems that
are rooted in structures of dominance.
The term racial profiling' has undergone some changes since it was
coined in the United States. In its original sense, it referred to the com¬
piling of race-based criminal profiles for use by the police. Nowadays
the term is used in the United States and Canada to refer to the police
use of discretionary authority to pull over Black drivers (Engel, Cal-
non, and Bernard 2002). It is also used by immigration authorities and
other government agencies to describe an approach to controlling
racialized minorities, including Arabs, Muslims, Aboriginals, and Lati¬
nos. However, it is used most often in the context of police behaviour -
specifically, discriminatory behaviour rooted in stereotypes and preju¬
dices held by individual police officers.
Racism within police forces has often been dismissed as nothing
more than the rogue actions of a limited number of isolated and big¬
oted individuals. This is the 'few bad apples' thesis. Encoded in this
discourse is the denial of racism as a set of institutional practices and
patterned cultural behaviours that collectively support and reinforce
racially different systemic outcomes. The implication of the 'bad
apples' perspective is that all we need to do to solve the problem of
racial profiling is provide police officers with more training in race
relations and cultural sensitivity, or recruit a limited number of people
of colour. This, of course, leaves unchanged the structure of policing as
well as the core ideology of police officers - their beliefs, values, and
norms.
To describe individual police as racist, or even to blame general sys¬
tems of social control in society, is to evade the real question: Why does
racial profiling occur in modern, industrialized nation-states such as
Canada? In this book we will be applying various theories to the ques¬
tion of how prevalent racial profiling is in this country, and why. Our
emphasis will be on investigating police profiling as a striking mani¬
festation of the cultural and structural racism that is deeply embedded

>
18 Racial Profiling

not just in the criminal justice system but in many other institutions in
Canadian society. But in order to succeed at our task, we will have to
investigate racial bias and the discriminatory treatment of people of
colour across all sectors and institutions in Canadian society (see chap¬
ter 2).
Studies of racial profiling quickly encounter methodological prob¬
lems. This chapter is concerned mainly with the theoretical perspec¬
tives that have influenced our work; but before we go into that, it is
important that we sketch some of the research biases and thorny meth¬
odological issues that have characterized both studies of racial profil¬
ing and, more generally, the broader topic of the relationship between
race and crime.

Research Issues in the Study of Race, Crime, and Racial Profiling

Social science research, most of which has been conducted in the

United States and the United Kingdom, has not been especially useful
in providing accurate data on police stops of Black drivers. The main
methodological problem here is that it is difficult to establish accurate
baseline rates of stops of Black drivers. Once the stops, searches,
charges, and so on have been quantified, the figures for Black drivers
must be compared with those for some other population group - typi¬
cally, White drivers. Yet it is often difficult to decide which baseline
rate of White drivers should be used for comparison. Should it be the
rate for Whites overall, relative to that for 'non-Whites'? or the num¬
bers who engage in traffic offences? or some other rate? Without a
accurate, standardized indicator of comparison it cannot be deter¬
mined that Black drivers have been subjected to more police stops.
According to Engel and colleagues (2002), most researchers have relied
on 'demographic proxies' - that is, they have used the numbers of
Whites and non-Whites in the overall population. The problem with
this approach is that it is a gross overall indicator and subsumes finer
distinctions such as the number of drivers in each population group,
their ages, their prior driving charges and convictions, and the like. In
Canada, the Toronto Star study used overall population statistics.
As Engel and colleague^ (2000) observed, most studies of police
stops of Black drivers have compared those drivers to a sample of
White drivers. In fact, nearly all studies of Black crime in the United
States have compared Black and White crime rates either for particular
crimes or in order to generate overall rates of crime.
 Theoretical Perspectives 19

Engel and colleagues (ibid.) analysed a number of American studies

on racial profiling. They found six that showed differences by race,
which 'likely reflected racial discrimination by police officers.' In a few
other studies, the data collected could not 'rule out alternative and
legitimate, race-neutral explanations for disparity' (ibid., 259). Gener¬
ally speaking, though, progressive legal opinion in the United States,
the United Kingdom, and Canada generally posits that the police do
conduct racial profiling, especially of people of African descent but
also of other racialized groups. Very often, stops and searches are con¬
ducted for no other reason than that the driver is Black, under thirty-
five, and driving a late-model vehicle. This is how the phrase 'driving
while Black' has achieved the status of folklore. The studies as a whole,
whatever their methodological weaknesses, tend to show disparities in
stops. These findings, combined with those from studies that report
personal accounts from within Black communities, make it clear that
the police do stop Blacks more often than others. Thus the 'few rotten
apples-' theory is grossly inadequate to answer the central question:
Why does racial profiling against Blacks arise so consistently in so
many countries?
Setting aside police stops for a moment, a great deal of social science
research reflects a much broader concern with Black crime rates in the
United States and elsewhere. Specifically, research has concentrated on
how high or low the rates actually are, and on how to explain Black
crime rates. Covington (1999, 560) has challenged the basic method¬
ological premises that underlie such studies: 'The notion that Black
crime rates are high and thus the desire to theorize about that excess
stems solely from a comparison of Black and White crime rates.' This
results in the racialization of the Black crime rate: 'Between-race analy¬
ses, which compare Blacks and Whites, are able to racialize, in part,
because they impose a uniform response on Blacks: this means that all
Blacks are believed to react in like manner (racial response) or to be
motivated by similar concerns (racial motives)' (ibid., 560). Covington
argues compellingly that the construct of the 'high Black crime rate' -
which has been generated solely in comparison to Whites - has tarred
an entire population as prone to crime. It ignores the fact that the vast
majority of Blacks are not criminals. Using murder rates in the United
States as an example, she notes that even among the urban Black
'underclass' - from which the majority of Black murderers come -
murder rates are high only relative to those in White communities.
Even so, the vast majority of similarly placed 'underclass' Black citi-

>
20 Racial Profiling

zens who do not commit murder are assigned 'criminal propensities.

Delgado writes on the same point: 'No one focuses on White crime
or sees it as a problem. In fact the very category "White crime" sounds
funny, like some sort of debater's trick' (in Russell 1998, 110). Russell
notes that a language has been developed for describing and studying
black crime — a language that includes terms such as 'Black-on-Black
crime,' 'Black criminality,' and 'Black crime.' This language does not
include terms such as 'White crime' or 'White-on-White crime' (ibid.).
There is a widespread belief - largely fostered by sensationalist report¬
ing in the news media - that Blacks commit more crimes than Whites.
Yet in the United States, the majority of those arrested are White, and
49 percent of the total incarcerated population is White (ibid.). Blacks
commit more crimes in proportion to their overall numbers in the pop¬
ulation; that said, the majority of crimes are committed by Whites.
The overemphasis on Black crime and the general perceptions of
Black criminality are also reflected in analyses of these issues in crimi¬
nology and the social sciences. For example, Russell (ibid.) examined
thousands of articles in the Lexus Nexus database and found only a
handful that discussed White crime or 'White-on-White' crime. Along
with journalists and law professors, criminologists have avoided
explicitly recognizing White crime. Russell reviewed four influential
criminology journals and found that between 1992 and 1996 they pub¬
lished few articles devoted specifically to 'White crime.'
White crime is being studied - it just isn't called .White crime. The
many academic articles that focus on the deviance of White adults and
White youths avoid terms such as 'White criminality.' The non-label¬
ling of White crime contrasts sharply with the pervasive labelling of
Black crime. Moreover, social scientists use a number of supposedly
'race neutral' terms, such as 'inner city,' 'truly disadvantaged,' 'under¬
class,' 'poverty ghetto,' and 'urban.' Often these are code words for
'Black crime.' Russell suggests that the unequal focus on Black crime
may be related the attention paid by the media and the social sciences
to street crime, which is disproportionately committed by Blacks. This,
however, does not, explain the lack of attention to White crime.
Researchers have observed that Whites commit more white-collar
crimes because they have & disproportionate opportunity to commit
high-status offences, since they are more likely to hold high-status jobs.
It has been suggested that the amount of attention focused on Black
crime relative to White crime is also related to the relatively small
numbers of Black professional criminologists and to the underrepre-
 Theoretical Perspectives 21

sentation of Blacks in the legal professions and the justice system

(ibid.). Thus one of the central methodological issues in race/crime
studies relates to the tendency of not only the media but also the social
sciences and traditional criminology to focus on the study of Black
criminality while generally ignoring White crime. Schissel and Brooks
(2002) also point to the role of conventional criminology in framing
how we think about (a) issues of 'badness and goodness/ (b) what
should be defined as criminality, and (c) the role of 'criminogenic cul¬
tures that produce the values and norms of criminality in its members
— values and norms that run counter to the norms of greater society'
(ibid., 51).

The Four Theoretical Perspectives

Whiteness Studies

The emerging field of 'Whiteness studies' focuses on racialization - a

process that is normally understood as making race a relevant factor to
people or situations when it is, in fact, totally irrelevant. In this context,
we are reversing the term to refer to the racialization of the 'White'
race. Whiteness scholars accept - as do all critical scholars today - that
race as a biological construct is no longer important or relevant to the
understanding of human differences. Yet social racism continues to
emphasize race as a visible trait for use in practising racial discrimina¬
tion. Whiteness studies maintain that if people of colour are racialized,
then so should Whites be recognized and identified as members of the
White or Caucasian race. White identity is based on the concept that
those who have traditionally held hegemonic positions of power over all
other groups have done so by constructing hierarchical structures of
exclusion and marginality. White studies scholars contend that Whites
must accept a race category for themselves, but one which does not
include the assumption that they are biologically superior to other
'races.' Whiteness studies will help answer a question we will be rais¬
ing throughout this work: Why is the discourse of denial of racism still
so powerful and persistent in Canadian society and especially among
White power elites?
A bedrock truth in many postmodern societies is that Whiteness is
hegemonic over Blackness. This 'truth' is believed not only by those
who are strongly prejudiced but also by those who do not perceive
themselves as prejudiced, and who are not generally viewed as preju-

>
22 Racial Profiling

diced, yet who exercise control over society's structures and systems.
The beliefs, values, and norms of the White elite operate in the law, the
media, and the educational and criminal justice systems, as well as in
other systems of social control and representation. The hegemonic con¬
cept has attained its own, largely unconscious reality, which manifests
itself in terms of the meaning of 'Whiteness,' especially in contrast to
the meaning of 'Blackness.' Whiteness has thus become another
socially constructed identity - an identity that has long held the domi¬
nant position in perpetuating social inequities.
The field of White studies owes much to literary figures and other
scholars such Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Richard Dyer, and Ruth
Frankenberg, whose seminal work White Women, Race Matters: The
Social Construction of Whiteness (1993) succinctly defined the field of
study. Whiteness, according to her, has three interlinked dimensions:
it is 'a location of structural advantage'; it is a 'standpoint or place
from which White people look at ourselves, at others and at society';
and it refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked
and unnamed. Morrison (1992) further advances the field by placing
the onus of responsibility on the 'racial subject' - namely, White peo¬
ple: 'My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial
object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the
describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served' (ibid., 90).
This shifts the onus in studies of institutionalized racism, of racism in
popular culture, and of racism deeply embedded in society, from the
disadvantaged groups of colour to those who are White and privi¬
leged and whose views are considered natural, normative, and basi¬
cally raceless.
Whiteness studies reverse the focus on 'Blackness' and 'Otherness'
to critically examine the role of Whites in preserving and reinforcing
racial bias and exclusion. Whiteness studies offers 'the possibility of
destabilizing whiteness as an identity and an ideology to gain a differ¬
ent vision of society. The problem of race now includes those who are
raced white' (Johnson 1999, 5).
Whiteness studies analyse the link between white skin and the posi¬
tion of privilege operating in most societies, including those which
have been subjected to European colonialism. White privilege confers
benefits, whereas people of colour are often disadvantaged, excluded,
and marginalized because of their skin colour and its associated stereo¬
typic constructs. Whiteness contests the common notion of colour¬
blindness - the notion that one does not see skin colour - as untrue and
inaccurate. Whites see the 'colour' in others in the same manner that
 Theoretical Perspectives 23

they are seen as 'White/ Most White people do not, however, recog¬
nize themselves as a racial category, and their self-identification rarely
includes the descriptor 'White.' White people are often not even aware
they are White; and without that essential self-recognition they find it
difficult to recognize and accept their role as perpetrators of racial dis¬
crimination and exclusion. Many Whites do not recognize their own
identity as based on race; thus they do not participate in conversations
in which race is discussed.
It is crucial to remember that 'Whiteness/ like 'colour' or 'Black¬
ness,' is essentially a social construct applied to human beings rather
than a truth of universal validity. The power of Whiteness manifests
itself in the ways in which racialized Whiteness becomes transformed
into social, political, economic, and cultural behaviour. White culture,
norms, and values in all these areas become normative and natural.
They become the standard against which all other cultures, groups,
and individuals are measured - and usually found wanting. Whiteness
comes to mean truth, objectivity, and merit. Against this background,
scholars of Whiteness such as Richard Delgado (1995), Patricia Will¬
iams (1991), and Derrick Bell (1987) are now attempting to gain insight
into these dynamics; their goal is to expose the power of Whiteness in
order to dismantle some of its overwhelming hegemony over those
who are 'non-White.'

Blackness Studies: Black Body Imagery and Definitions of Masculinity

We will have to racialize Whiteness in order to understand the hege¬

monic role it plays - often inadvertently - in modern societies. Simi¬
larly, we will have to understand Blackness - which has long been
racialized - as the other side of that coin. Blackness is contextualized in
images of the Black male heterosexual body as represented in a broad
spectrum of systems, including in public, social, and cultural spaces.
These images serve an important function: they define not only skin
colour but also constructions of masculinity.1 More specifically, ideas of
Black heterosexual masculinity are found in

1 Because racial profiling is directed primarily against men, we exclude from our study
discussion of racialized female body imagery. However, we recognize the importance
of such imagery, especially in regard to the Black woman as sexual object in history
and in contemporary society. We also note that there are issues surrounding Black
homosexual men, although we do not deal with this added dimension (see Chapman
and Rutherford 1988; Mercer and Julien 1988).

>
24 Racial Profiling

the popular imagination as the basis of masculine hero worship in the

case of the rappers; as naturalized and commodified bodies in the case of
athletes; as symbols of menace and threat in the case of black gang mem¬
bers; and as noble warriors in the case of Afrocentric nationalists and
Fruit of Islam. While these varied images travel across different fields of
electronic representation and social discourse, it is nevertheless the same
black body - super star athlete, indignant rapper, 'menacing' gang mem¬
ber, and pitch-man, appropriate middle class professional, movie star -
onto which competing and conflicting claims about (and for) black mas¬
culinity are waged. (Gray 1995, 402)

Negative and disturbing concepts of the Black male body were con¬
structed under colonialism, which defined Blackness as 'the other'
and in doing so confirmed the supremacy of Whites as well as the dis¬
cursive power of the colonizers. Black men thus became subordinate
and powerless, robbed of their cultural identities and reduced to ste¬
reotypic images based on White men's fantasies (Fanon 1967). These
fantasies were mainly sexual and erotic and based on the imagery of
the Black primitive. But those images projected a menace. Colonialism
had eroticized Black men and at the same time denied them power;
yet their images were threatening because of their potential to attract
White women and thereby undermine the confidence and self-esteem
of White men. Many of the constructs of the Black man that have
evolved throughout history are still pervasive, albeit in a altered form.
What has remained consistent, however, according to writers on this
subject (most of them Black), is the image of the Black male body
(Mercer 1994; Gray 1995; Carrington 2002; Chapman and Rutherford
1988).
According to these scholars the Black male body is a construct cre¬
ated largely by White men; moreover. Black men do not own their own
bodies because they have been subjected to slavery and colonialism by
Whites. Blackness is a visible sign of racial difference that leaves Black
people vulnerable to societal and individual racism; yet at the same
time, the image of the Black male body carries a set of highly ambiva¬
lent meanings. It is the one thing that White men allow Black men to
have; they have no choice ift this, for after all, one cannot be deprived
of one's body except through death. As Chapman and Rutherford
(1988) note: 'But it is a body filled with white fantasy and foreboding.
For the white man the black man's physicality is what defines his pres¬
ence. For the white man the black man is more violent, more of a rap-
 Theoretical Perspectives 25

ist, more misogynist than himself ... He becomes the constructed

image of white men's repressed lust; imbued with an animal-like sexu¬
ality and a huge penis; a body closer to nature than the "cultured white
man"'(1988, 63).
The supposedly animalistic Black male body is still represented
strongly today in the arena of sports. Sport is a naturally competitive
activity, and the competition between White men and Black men is
highlighted especially in track and field, where Blacks are alleged to
have a natural superiority. The media play a key role in perpetuating
these images, in that sports reporting is how most people learn about
and follow sports (see, for example, Wilson 1997; Carrington 2002). In
reporting on sports, journalists indirectly strengthen racist ideologies -
for example, they refer to the 'natural' athletic ability of athletes who
happen to be African Americans, they disseminate stereotypes about
'dumb jocks'; they demonize Black males, and they generally catego¬
rize Blacks as 'good' or 'bad.' This is especially true in the American
media, 'though Canadian sports reporters tend towards it as well (Wil¬
son 1997).
Carrington (2002, 3) notes that the 'facts of Blackness, or the lived
experiences of being Black in the new century are no longer marked by
an invisibility within the public sphere' as markers of social inequality.
Indeed, Blackness is promoted through 'mantras of equal opportuni¬
ties, diversity and multiculturalism.' Mainstream media culture is
'dominated by Black faces and bodies, from the sports fields and fash¬
ion catwalks, to our cinematic screens and music video channels.' Car¬
rington observes that Blackness can now be enjoyed '24-7 in a way
which is no longer threatening by its mere presence.' However, the
effects of discrimination and inequality are still present in Western lib¬
eral democracies. This 'spectacle of hyperblackness' is a mechanism for
continuing historically derived racialized images and ideologies.
Blackness is represented to this day by these images, and the Black
male body 'has come to occupy a central metronymic site through
which notions of "athleticism" and "animalism" operate ... These
tropes of Blackness provide the discursive boundaries within which
the black subject is still framed' (ibid., 4). Black participation in sports.
Black presence in media reporting, and the growing use of Black bod¬
ies in advertisements in which their strength, power, and virility are
highlighted, all point to a paradoxical contradiction between these
images and the reality of the lived experiences of most Black people.
Thus the image of the Black male body, in earlier times as well as in
26 Racial Profiling

contemporary society, creates fear and apprehension and is probably

one important factor in the continued oppression of Blacks, and espe¬
cially men, by dominant hegemonic forces - primarily White men.
Images of Black men and their bodies are disseminated today largely
through those sports in which they are alleged to have natural ability;
through the media, which highlight their supposed propensity for
criminal activity (mugging, rape, homicide); and through the spectre of
racialized crime.
Gray (1995a) is also concerned about these images; however, his
focus is more on representations of Black masculinity in recent times.
He begins by noting that the great jazz figures of the mid-twentieth
century - exemplified by John Coltrane and Miles Davis - used them¬
selves and their music to create a new and powerful image of Black
masculinity. However, their strong images of Black masculinity were
also contradictory; although the Black man was prized and celebrated
by White society, he was also 'policed as a social threat because he
transgressed the social role assigned to him by the dominant culture
and celebrated as the "modern primitive" because he embodied and
expressed a masculinity that explicitly rejected the reigning codes of
propriety and place. Drugs, sexism, pleasure, excess, nihilism, defi¬
ance, pride, and the cool posse of disengagement were all a part of the
style, personality, vision and practices of an assertive heterosexual
black masculinity that could not be confined within the dominant cul¬
tural logic' (1995, 402).
Today, similar contradictory images are being produced and dissem¬
inated that require 'new contextualizations and different reading strat¬
egies.' An example is young Blacks' hero worship of gangsta rap,
which also generates powerful images of Black masculinity. Another
example is the commodification and naturalization of Black athletes,
who are deemed to have natural prowess, and whose talents are then
commodified in advertisements. The menace presented by Black gang
members and the construct of the 'noble warrior' presented by Afro¬
centric nationalists and the Fruit of Islam are further examples. These
images are found on television and in films and are often cited in social
discourse. And they all branch out from the same trunk: 'It is neverthe¬
less the same black body -’Super star athlete, indignant rapper, "men-
acing" gang member, ad pitch-man, appropriate middle class
professional, movie star - onto to which competing and conflicting
claims about (and for) black masculinity are waged' (ibid., 402).
Gray (1995a) argues that the negative and disturbing images emanat-
 Theoretical Perspectives 27

ing from rappers and gang members represent the oppositional and
resistive forces that have created a new and menacing construction of
the Black male. These forces are contested not only by Whites but also
by the middle-class and civil rights elements within the Black commu¬
nity itself.
Evident in the discourse of the new Blackness - as represented by
these many and contested images that are emerging from the contem¬
porary cultural life of Black Americans - is that racial profiling is by
and large simply another approach to the social control of Blacks (and
other ethno-racial communities, in Canada and elsewhere). Racial pro¬
filing is mostly about how the White gaze filters notions and images of
Blackness.

Moving towards Racial Profiling: Danger and Racialization Theory

Whiteness has become normalized; it follows that non-Whiteness has

become 'abnormalized.' It is easy to notice the abnormal because of
their skin colour. Thus Black drivers are immediately perceived in
terms of a particular body and colour image associated almost sublim-
inally with a criminal disposition. Skin colour is the basic marker;
agents of social control such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) then draw from a set of visible cultural behaviours associated
with that 'abnormal' skin colour. Examples of these behaviours: wear¬
ing gold chains; wearing a black jump suit; carrying a gym bag; being a
member of an 'ethnic group associated with the drug trade'; and trav¬
elling from 'a source city' such as Los Angeles, Miami, or Detroit, or in
a car bearing licence plates from a state in which there are source cities
(Ehrenreich 1990). These features are also observable through surveil¬
lance techniques such as CCTV. Individuals demonstrating these fea¬
tures are then stopped and searched for no other reason than that they
fit a profile.
To be preventive, to be proactive, surveillance must be able to iden¬
tify the abnormal by what it looks like rather than by what it does: it
needs to abnormalize - or criminalize - by visible social category, not
by social behaviour (Fiske 2000). Black men are the first group to be
abnormalized; in this sense, racism is the ultimate source of their
'abnormalization by surveillance.' The abnormalization of the racial
'other' is what enables the DEA to identify drug runners by what they
look like. The same process manifests itself in other arenas. Banks
employ it to identify users of stolen credit cards; stores employ it to

>
28 Racial Profiling

identify shoplifters by their appearance (that is, rather than by their

behaviour). As Fiske (2000, 53) notes: 'Surveillance is a technology of
Whiteness that racially zones both the city space that exists as a matter
of physical geography, and the social space ... In both spaces, surveil¬
lance draws lines that Blacks cannot cross and Whites cannot see.' This
abnormalization and criminalization of the racial 'other' through
widespread forms of surveillance, whether by CCTV or by police in
their scout cars, relies heavily on processes for identifying deviancy
based on appearance rather than behaviour. This processing is central
to modern-day forms of racism. Fiske (ibid., 62) states that 'at the core
of this process is the way that Whiteness normalizes itself, and
excludes itself both from categorizing and being categorizable: it thus
ensures its invisibility.'
At the same time, many Blacks and other people of colour not only
feel the oppressive application of norms, but also notice how Whites
are largely free from the constraints of normalization. This difference
that people of colour notice is part of the experience of discrimination.
The racialization of the 'other' is part of the White process of abnor¬
malization; it follows that the classification of non-Whiteness may - in
different historic and social contexts - include diverse groups: 'Black¬
ness is a product of whiteness, not of melanin' (ibid., 64).
The abnormalization of the Black male has also been noted in the
processes whereby the notions of race and danger are brought together.
The idea behind this is that people of colour - especially Blacks - pose
a threat to predominantly White societies (Rose 2002; Garland 1996;
Visano 2002; Flail et al. 1978; Jiwani 2002).
A highly provocative article by William Rose (2002) provides some
compelling answers to the question of why racial profiling against peo¬
ple of colour happens. Rose discusses what he calls the 'risk society' or
the 'return of dangerous classes.' He notes that the use of race and
especially Blackness as a 'proxy for criminal dangerousness' is embed¬
ded deep in American history: 'Black bodies have [been] supersatu¬
rated with meaning ... The narrative attached to Black men in
particular, has been one of criminal danger' (ibid., 182).
Drawing from Garland (1996), a British criminologist. Rose notes
that penology has moved aWay from the rehabilitative model towards
one wherein society must be protected from rising criminality. Garland
notes that high crime rates have become a normal social fact in the
United Kingdom and in many other countries as well. The fear of
crime (and criminality) has reached epic proportions. It has become yet
 Theoretical Perspectives 29

another modern danger 'which has been routinized and normalized

over time.' As a consequence, the emphasis has shifted from rehabili¬
tating criminals to managing crime in the most efficient manner possi¬
ble given the state's limited resources. In the United States this has
resulted in a bureaucratic approach to crime, one that involves more
and more punitive measures. State after state has undertaken 'legisla¬
tive efforts to stiffen criminal penalties, introduce mandatory mini¬
mum sentences, revitalize the death penalty.' Garland further notes
that since the late 1970s there has been a 'new and urgent emphasis
upon the need for security, the containment of danger, and the identifi¬
cation and management of any kind of risk.' He goes on to argue that
an important effect of all this has been the 'emergence of a criminologi¬
cal discourse of the "alien other." [This approach] represents criminals
as dangerous members of distinct racial and social groups which bear
little resemblance to "us" ... [It is] a criminology which trades in
images, archetypes and anxieties, rather than in careful analyses and
research findings' (ibid., 459-63).
Rose maintains that racial profiling is driven by two factors: an
adaptive or managerial approach to crime, and a new emphasis on
punitive responses to it. He believes that racial profiling 'results from
the politicization of danger. That is, "profiling" would seem to be
grounded in some sort of precise actuarial calculation, but it is not.
Rather, it is a new way of talking about danger' (Rose 2002, 185). He
cites Feeley and Simon (1994), who maintain that there is a 'new penol¬
ogy' that deals less with morality, diagnosis, or intervention than with
regulating levels of deviance. This new penology is concerned with
'techniques to identify, classify and manage groupings sorted by dan¬
gerousness.' The objective is not to identify a dangerous offender but
to 'identify and manage "risky" population subgroups sorted by dan¬
ger' (Rose 2002,185-6).
Reinforcing this point. Rose points to the work of an influential
American criminologist, James Q. Wilson (1995), who described the
new 'predator' as relatively young and who noted that 6 per cent of
boys of a given age commit half or more of all crimes perpetrated by
boys of that age. That 6 per cent come from dysfunctional homes, have
criminal parents, do poorly in school, are emotionally cold, and so on.
Although Wilson does not identify this group of boys by race. Rose
(2002, 190) tells us: 'We can almost hear him say as well that, more
often than not, the faces of this relatively small but dangerous class are
black.' Wilson states that even though American research tells us that

>
30 Racial Profiling

Blacks commit more criminal offences than Whites, a reactive police

strategy is no longer effective. He calls instead for a proactive strategy
that would involve police in directed, 'not random, patrol, and should
make the following the goal of that direction: to reduce ... the opportu¬
nity for high-risk persons to do those things that increase the likeli¬
hood of their victimizing others' (in ibid., 190). In commenting on
Wilson's thesis. Rose observes that following this line of reasoning,
policing and other mechanisms of social control in modernizing or
postmodern societies would have to manage criminal activity through
'preemptive targeting, containment and exclusion of risky population
subgroups' (ibid., 191).
Racial profiling, and police stops and searches of Black drivers
undertaken not because of traffic violations but because they are 'driv¬
ing while Black,' have become endemic in these societies. Similarly,
police stops and searches of Blacks on street corners, in Black neigh¬
bourhoods, and in shopping malls are conducted on suspicion of crim¬
inal activity even when there is no observable evidence that any law is
being violated. Russell-Brown (2004, 66) suggests that the profiling of
young Black men takes place 'whether they are driving while Black,
walking while Black, sitting while Black, bicycling while Black, or
breathing while Black.'
Citing Rodney King, Mike Tyson, and O.J. Simpson as examples,
Fiske (2000, 60) maintains that in White America, Blacks - and espe¬
cially Black men - must be watched because they demonstrate an ever
present danger to the social order of White society: 'In the contempo¬
rary U.S. city the image of a Black man "out of place" is immediately
moved from information to knowledge, from the seen to the known. In
these conditions being seen is in itself oppressive. To be seen to be
Black or Brown, in all but a few places in the U.S., is to be known, to be
out of place, beyond the norm that someone else has set, and thus to be
the subject of white power.'
It is not only that such persons are seen in places, but also that this
seeing becomes transformed quickly into the notion of danger. An
example of this - one often encountered by individuals of African
descent - involves being stopped by the police for being present in a
White neighborhood. A Bfeck man in a predominantly White geo¬
graphic space is immediately suspect because he is out of place and
perceived as acting abnormally.
The need to see and monitor the 'other' has led, at least in the
United States, to the widespread use of video surveillance. This tech-
 Theoretical Perspectives 31

nology 'functions as a control mechanism directed particularly upon

the Black male as he moves through its so-called public spaces from
the neighborhood store to the suburb, from the shopping mall, the
office building or the airport to the public street' (ibid., 53). Fiske
argues that the surveillance that both Orwell and Foucault saw as cru¬
cial to the modern social order has been racialized in a manner unfore¬
seen by those forward-looking writers: 'Today's seeing eye is white,
and its object colored' (ibid.).
Moreover, White people need to engage in critical self-reflection to
find the 'traces of a deeply sedimented white knowledge that the Black
man is always, potentially at least, the source of social disorder, and
that this disorderliness can be all too easily imagined in terms of exces¬
sive sexuality or criminal drug use' (ibid., 54). The Black man has been
made to symbolize the internal threat to law and order, which is
implicitly framed in the discourse of Whiteness. Threats of Blackness
that cannot be eliminated must be contained. Surveillance must there¬
fore be directed constantly at the male Black body to ensure that he is
contained in his place (both geographically and socially). When he is
allowed outside of his place, he must be watched to ensure that his
behaviour is 'normal,' as measured by White standards. In this way,
not only surveillance but also constant monitoring in the form of police
stops and searches and other forms of racial profiling become essential
to what is a highly segmented and racialized postmodern society.
These dynamics are more deeply entrenched in the United States and
United Kingdom; however, the signs of surveillance, control, and con¬
tainment are also present in Canada, especially in large urban centres
such as Toronto.
Visano (2002) embraces a similar analytical framework in his exami¬
nation of racial profiling and criminalization in the criminal justice sys¬
tem - specifically in policing. Fie asserts that the qualitatively different
policing of Black and White communities reflects historical and colo¬
nial hegemonic systems of racism. Approaches to policing that view
Blacks as intrinsically criminal and as potential threats to law and
order open the gates for more strongly racialized practices, including
racial profiling. Fie suggests that criminalization can be understood as
a 'staged process that manipulates sanctions by defining disturbances
... as totalizing narratives of trouble that warrant closure, containment,
and coercion' (ibid., 212). One of the dominant narratives on which the
criminal justice system builds is 'the criminal subject as the essential-
ized and inferior other.' When layered with colour, class, and gender.

>
32 Racial Profiling

the criminalized 'other' constitutes a serious threat to the dominant

White society, its social institutions, and the state as a whole.
The criminal justice system and other institutions - including the
media and other vehicles of cultural and knowledge production - per¬
petuate a pathology of deviance by problematizing race and thereby
generating a 'climate of mutual threat' (Russell-Brown 2004, 67). The
resulting relationship between minority citizens and the police is char¬
acterized by what Russell-Brown describes as underground codes.
These codes, which focus on the nexus between race and crime, make
it possible for society to ignore and dismiss the concerns of minority
communities. Thus the dominant White culture does not perceive
racial profiling as a threat to the public. At the same time, these codes
or myths reinforce stereotypes of crime and criminality as 'a Black
problem' or 'an Aboriginal issue.'
As we will demonstrate throughout this book, myths play a power¬
ful role in racialization processes - specifically, in processes of con¬
structing the deviant and alien 'other.' Criminal mythologies form part
of those master narratives, which serve to amplify moral panics as well
as perceptions of fear and threat (Hall et al. 1978; Solomos 1988). We
will examine many of these myths in chapter 6, which analyses the role
of dominant/elite discourses in reinforcing cultural and systemic rac¬
ism in the context of racial profiling.
In their pioneering work Policing the Crisis (1978), Hall and his col¬
leagues probed beneath the surface - as expressed in newspaper cover¬
age of the problem of mugging - to outline the 'deep structure' of what
mugging had come to mean in British society in the 1970s. In doing so,
they documented the emergence of a particular 'moral panic' about
youth. The press and the police and even some sectors of the public
wove together various threads - street crime, sexuality, unemployment,
'strange' religions, the foreign ways of primarily Caribbean youths, and
so on - to develop the image of the black mugger, who soon emerged as
a symbol of crime, urbanism, and other undesired social and political
changes. The dangerous black mugger thus became a metaphor for all
that was wrong with Britain in the 1970s, as well as a main plank in the
turn towards the 'law and order' discourse that ushered in the Thatcher
era. The image of the black mugger as responsible for crime and other
social ills became a dominant discourse in Britain during those years,
and this led to harsher laws to control this racialized crime. The media
focused a great deal of attention on the courts, which issued stiff sen¬
tences in the name of the public interest and public safety and which
 Theoretical Perspectives 33

justified doing so on the basis that violent crime was rising. Police
activity increased as a response, and a number of prominent figures
intervened, including the home secretary and Prince Philip. Substantial
numbers of people supported the view that crime - and especially
muggings by Blacks - needed to be controlled. The campaign took on
racial tones to the point that mugging became synonymous with street
crimes committed by Black youths. As a result, 'police versus blacks'
soon became the 'paradigmatic relation' to the mugging phenomenon
(ibid., 51). This tapped into a long history of difficult race relations. The
media did much to promote the public's change in perspective by sen¬
sationalizing and overemphasizing Black mugging and crime. As a
consequence, the relationship between crime and the marginalization
of the racialized 'other' became part of the dominant discourse.
The three approaches outlined above are all aimed at explaining the
prevalence of racial profiling, especially as the police direct it against
Blacks. All three set out to explain how Blacks have become a visible
and observable symbol of danger. This construct is rooted in percep¬
tions not only that Blacks are socially, culturally, and physiologically
different from Whites, but also that they are at variance with the
White-defined norms that regulate modern societies. As a conse¬
quence, Blacks (and other people of colour) are inferiorized as human
beings, their cultures are stigmatized, and they are cast to society's
margins. This White perception that Blacks are dangerous to White
society leads to an acceptance of strategies such as racial profiling as
mechanisms of social control.

Discourse and Discursive Practices

Another important influence on this book is the theory that racism

manifests itself in the everyday discourses of the White elite. Attention
therefore will be paid to the power of discourse - in particular, to race,
crime, and racial profiling as these are communicated through public
and official discourses.
The ideologies of Whiteness and Blackness, and of danger, racializa-
tion, and criminalization, rely on complex sets of discourses framed by
untested assumptions, unexamined beliefs, and biases rooted in struc¬
tures of dominance and articulated by White elite authorities and offi¬
cials (van Dijk 1993; Hall 1997; Visano 2002). The criminalization of
Blackness - of the Black face, of the Black body - is a discursive prac¬
tice that quickly becomes translated into law enforcement norms. A

f
. v

>
34 Racial Profiling

discursive approach is a tool not only for exploring the ideological

meaning of racial profiling but also for decoding the discourses that
flow from it. These discourses are articulated in the 'talk and text' of
the media, academe, legislatures, the criminal justice system, the
bureaucracies ... everywhere members of the White elite occupy posi¬
tions of authority and control.
Discourse is most closely associated with language and the written or
oral text. At this level it challenges the concept of 'language' as an
abstract system and relocates the entire process of making and using
meanings from abstracted structural systems into particular historical,
social, and political conditions (Fiske 1994). Discourse is how language
is used socially to convey broad historical meanings. It is language iden¬
tified by the social conditions of its use, by who is using it, and by the
conditions under which it is used. Language can never be 'neutral,' for
it serves as a bridge between our personal and social worlds (van Dijk
1988). It can never be 'objective' or 'detached' because it draws from
myth and fantasy (Hall 1997). It can never be entirely free of the socio¬
cultural influences and economic interests in which it was produced
and disseminated.
Discourse thus comes with a set of social meanings that typically are
politicized in the sense that they carry with them a concept of power
that reflects the interests of the power elite who use them. Opinion
leaders, including politicians, senior bureaucrats, lawyers and judges,
editors and journalists, academics, and business leaders, play a vital
role in shaping the issues as well as in identifying the boundaries of
'legitimate' discourse. These people can marginalize and even silence
opponents by defining them as 'radicals,' 'special interest groups,' or,
'spokespeople who do not represent anyone but themselves.'
Discourses are ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about
a particular topic; they are clusters or formations of ideas, images, and
practices that provide ways of talking about forms of knowledge and
conduct associated with a particular topic, social activity, or institu¬
tional site in society. These discursive formulations define what is and is
not appropriate in our formulations of - and in our practices in relation
to - particular subjects or sites of social activity. They also tell us which
knowledge is useful, relev^ht, and true in which context, as well as
which sorts of people or subjects embody its characteristics. Discourses
can also be understood in terms of their capacity to identify, regulate,
and construct social groups; their ability to provide resources for mak¬
ing evaluations and constructing 'factual' versions; their success in ere-
 Theoretical Perspectives 35

ating the impetus and motivation to act; and their capacity to

constitute 'truth' and to maintain social relations and disadvantage
(Wetherell and Potter 1992, 90ff).
Dominant discourse can be understood as the collection of expecta¬
tions we take for granted. It embodies socialization by the dominant
or decision-making group. Dominant discourse gives us the prevail¬
ing normative rules of everyday living as practiced by decision-mak¬
ers. Dominant discourse rarely includes the perspective of the Other.
One of the key attributes of a dominant discourse is its power to inter¬
pret major social, political, and economic issues and events - such as
the crisis that followed the publication of the Star series on racial
profiling.
Note also that discourses are articulated not only through the spo¬
ken word but also through texts, including media stories and editori¬
als, academic texts, government studies, conference and commission
reports, and institutional and organizational policies - and perhaps
most significantly the law itself. Embedded in law enforcement dis¬
courses are procedural conventions, administrative and bureaucratic
rules, professional standards, and cultural norms and rituals. Each of
these texts - and the spoken word as well - can be viewed as an ideo¬
logical expression of Whiteness. Collectively they represent vehicles
for producing, distributing, and consuming the meanings that under¬
pin racism. They confer legitimacy and authority on the existing domi¬
nant White culture.
The discursive crisis generated by the Star series on racial profiling,
which began running in October 2002 and was still being published
while this book was being written, led to the construction of a number
of dominant discourses by police authorities, political figures, police
union leaders, journalists, and others. Their reactions to the series
reflected some of the core elements of racialized elite discourses that
allegations of racism have traditionally generated (see chapter 6). Here
we briefly note that dominant among all these discourses as it relates
to racial profiling is total and pervasive denial that racism exists in the
structures and cultures of policing or in the everyday practices of law enforce¬
ment agencies. These discourses are of course not unique to the Toronto
Police Service; they form a common set of rhetorical strategies utilized
by law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions as well. Following
Ewick and Silbey (1995), we argue in this work that these hegemonic
narratives articulated by White policing officials and White public fig¬
ures were not merely reflective of the dominant meanings and power
36 Racial Profiling

relations that form the basis of these discourses, but in fact contributed
to the very production of those meanings and power relations. The mere
act of telling dominant narratives constitutes the hegemony that
shapes the social lives and well-being of people of colour.
As Hall (1978) maintains, discursive events by their very nature can
become catalysts for social change. Even while the Star series was
unfolding, the dominant and hegemonic narratives of Whiteness were
being made to confront counter-narratives emerging from the Black
community. Editorials and opinion columns in the Star provided a
vehicle for minority communities - and the Black community in partic¬
ular - to confirm their experiences by telling their own stories. These
counter-narratives enabled those who were being racialized and crimi¬
nalized to bear witness to their lived experience in the face of a domi¬
nant culture that was distorting, stereotyping, and marginalizing them
(Bell 2003, 6; Delgado 1995). In chapter 7, Maureen Brown provides a
powerful analysis of how the oppositional narratives she collected
from Black youth and adults across the GTA challenged the dominant
narratives. These kinds of oppositional stories have been described as
a form of 'cultural activism' (Morales 1998).

Conclusion

Much of the theoretical and empirical work on racial profiling comes

from the United States and United Kingdom. These attempts to explain
racial profiling work equally well for Canadian society, and much of
the work on profiling has crossed the border through the public media
and academic scholarship.
Black subculture is growing in Toronto, along with the assumption
that Black men are heavily involved in drug trafficking and other devi¬
ant behaviours. This has strongly reinforced the practice of police stops
and surveillance in Canadian communities. Approaches to policing the
'crisis' focus on containing and controlling a racialized and essential-
ized Black population. The 'moral panic' that flowed from the Star arti¬
cles on racial profiling was evidence not only of the actuarial incidence
of racial profiling but also of the discourses that resulted from it. These
discourses exist as mechanisms of (a) representation/misrepresenta¬
tion and (b) social control and White domination. As this book will
demonstrate, these mechanisms have resulted in an extraordinarily
diverse community being portrayed as 'needing correction, incarcera¬
tion, censoring, silencing ... This is the consequence and function of
 Theoretical Perspectives 37

official stories: to impose the will of the dominant culture7 (Morrison

1997, xxviii).
Finally, in terms of the theoretical approaches that have influenced
this work, it is important for us to emphasize that we cannot be satis¬
fied with merely recording the quantitative findings of empirically ori¬
ented studies. We accept a priori the idea that the police (and other
institutions such as the courts, the schools, the media, and social ser¬
vices) do practise differential behaviour towards Aboriginal peoples,
people of colour, and especially people of African origin (Henry and
Tator 2005; Razack 1998; Calliste and Dei 2000). Thus we are less inter¬
ested in determining the numbers involved in racial profiling practices
- in what constitutes an 'actuarial' approach - and more concerned
with analysing why these kinds of differential behaviours are targeted
towards racialized groups. What does the new concern with racial pro¬
filing tell us about the subtler values, beliefs and norms that underlie
the social construction of Black and other people of colour as the
'other'?

»■

>
2 The Interlocking Web of Racism across
Institutions, Systems, and Structures

We are not suggesting that the police invent racialized categories. Rather,
they draw upon and sometimes modify or reinforce those racialized catego¬
ries already constructed and firmly embedded in society at large. (Holdaway
1997, 85)

The questions and controversies surrounding the issue of race, crime,

and racial profiling cannot be answered in isolation from other institu¬
tional and societal contexts. The production and reproduction of rac¬
ism does not happen within the hermetically sealed walls of law
enforcement agencies, nor is it confined to the specific organizational
norms and decision-making processes of particular structures. Policing
culture and its structures are a composite of ideologies, values, norms,
and practices that are deeply connected to and embedded in diverse
societal systems.
In this chapter we look more closely at how the processes of racial-
ization and Whiteness operate and intersect across institutional and
discursive spaces; and at how these processes have categorized, inferi-
orized, marginalized, and criminalized people of colour and First
Nations people as individuals and as communities. We also explore
how otherness is 'marked' in the law, the justice system, and systems
of governance. Vehicles ofVultural production, including education
and the media, are also discussed. White elites in these public spheres
heavily influence and strongly control many ideological beliefs, which
in turn affect public discourse and public responses to the critical issue
of race and racism in democratic liberal societies (Razack 1998; Henry
and Tator 2002; van Dijk 1993).
 The Interlocking Web of Racism 39

An important dimension of the racialization process is what Frantz

Fanon (1967) called the 'white gaze.' His famous book Black Skin, White
Masks offers critical insights into the nature of racialization and the ideo¬
logical construction of Blacks and other racialized groups. In it he
describes how a young boy once fixed him with his white gaze and,
turning to his mother, said 'Look, a Negro [negre]/ The child saw and
commented on his skin colour rather than on his build or the scar on his
face. Moreover, he did not refer to him as a 'black' or 'a man of colour.'
The importance of the White gaze - the way White people and espe¬
cially White elites perceive people of colour - is that it allows a domi¬
nant group to control the social spaces and social interactions of all
other groups. In this way Blacks, for example, can be rendered visible
and invisible at the same time under the gaze of a White police officer,
lawmaker, judge, journalist, educator, or filmmaker.

The Law, or Legalized Racism

Throughout Canadian history the state has used the law as an instru¬
ment for explaining racial differences, for reinforcing commonsense
notions embedded in a dominant cultural system, and for establishing
new social constructions of 'otherness' (Kobayashi 1990; Backhouse
1999; Aylward 2002; Visano 2002). Legislation has neither eliminated
nor controlled racism: the legacy of racism is too intertwined with the
national White culture and its core myths, values, ideals, and norms.
The racial profiling or racialization of Aboriginals, Blacks, Japanese,
Chinese, South Asians, and other people of colour has a long history
and legacy.
We encounter Canada's racist legacy in some of its earliest laws. The
Canadian government, through the Indian Act of 1876 and subsequent
legislation and treaties, introduced institutionalized racism to the rela¬
tionship between Canada and its Aboriginal peoples. Racism has flour¬
ished to this day. First Nations peoples have been subjugated,
segregated, and in some instances annihilated by racist policies and
assumptions. They have been subjected to overtly racist and assimila-
tionist policies that have led to their segregation and degradation and
to never-ending poverty. Specific manifestations of racist policies
include the denial of the right to vote, the prohibition on purchasing
land, the outlawing of spiritual ceremonies, forced relocation to and
segregation on reserves, restrictions of civil and political rights, and the
expropriation of land (Ponting 1997; Frideres and Gadacz 2001; Satze-
wich and Wotherspoon 1993).
Other documents randomly have
different content
The plan of Cleopatra the mother, after her husband’s death, was to
make her son the king of Egypt, and to govern herself, as regent,
until he should become of age. The friends and adherents of
Physcon, however, formed a strong party in his favor. They sent for
him to come to Alexandria to assert his claims to the throne. He
came, and a new civil war was on the point of breaking out between
the brother and sister, when at length the dispute was settled by a
treaty, in which it was stipulated that Physcon should marry
Cleopatra, and be king; but that he should make the son of
Cleopatra by her former husband his heir. This treaty was carried
into effect so far as the celebration of the marriage with the mother
was concerned, and the establishment of Physcon upon the throne.
But the perfidious monster, instead of keeping his faith in respect to
the boy, determined to murder him; and so open and brutal were his
habits of violence and cruelty, that he undertook to perpetrate the
deed himself, in open day. The boy fled shrieking to the mother’s
arms for protection, and Physcon stabbed and killed him there,
exhibiting the spectacle of a newly-married husband murdering the
son of his wife in her very arms!
It is easy to conceive what sort of affection would exist between a
husband and a wife after such transactions as these. In fact, there
had been no love between them from the beginning. The marriage
had been solely a political arrangement. Physcon hated his wife, and
had murdered her son, and then, as if to complete the exhibition of
the brutal lawlessness and capriciousness of his passions, he ended
with falling in love with her daughter. The beautiful girl looked upon
this heartless monster, as ugly and deformed in body as he was in
mind, with absolute horror. But she was wholly in his power. He
compelled her, by violence, to submit to his will. He repudiated the
mother, and forced the daughter to become his wife.
Physcon displayed the same qualities of brutal tyranny and cruelty in
the treatment of his subjects that he manifested in his own domestic
relations. The particulars we can not here give, but can only say that
his atrocities became at length absolutely intolerable, and a revolt so
formidable broke out, that he fled from the country. In fact, he
barely escaped with his life, as the mob had surrounded the palace
and were setting it on fire, intending to burn the tyrant himself and
all the accomplices of his crimes together. Physcon, however,
contrived to make his escape. He fled to the island of Cyprus, taking
with him a certain beautiful boy, his son by the Cleopatra whom he
had divorced; for they had been married long enough, before the
divorce, to have a son. The name of this boy was Memphitis. His
mother was very tenderly attached to him, and Physcon took him
away on this very account, to keep him as a hostage for his mother’s
good behavior. He fancied that, when he was gone, she might
possibly attempt to resume possession of the throne.
His expectations in this respect were realized. The people of
Alexandria rallied around Cleopatra, and called upon her to take the
crown. She did so, feeling, perhaps, some misgivings in respect to
the danger which such a step might possibly bring upon her absent
boy. She quieted herself, however, by the thought that he was in the
hands of his own father, and that he could not possibly come to
harm.
After some little time had elapsed, and Cleopatra was beginning to
be well established in her possession of the supreme power at
Alexandria, her birth-day approached, and arrangements were made
for celebrating it in the most magnificent manner. When the day
arrived, the whole city was given up to festivities and rejoicing.
Grand entertainments were given in the palace, and games,
spectacles, and plays in every variety, were exhibited and performed
in all quarters of the city. Cleopatra herself was enjoying a
magnificent entertainment, given to the lords and ladies of the court
and the officers of her army, in one of the royal palaces.
 The Birth-day Present.

In the midst of this scene of festivity and pleasure, it was announced

to the queen that a large box had arrived for her. The box was
brought into the apartment. It had the appearance of containing
some magnificent present, sent in at that time by some friend in
honor of the occasion. The curiosity of the queen was excited to
know what the mysterious coffer might contain. She ordered it to be
opened; and the guests gathered around, each eager to obtain the
first glimpse of the contents. The lid was removed, and a cloth
beneath it was raised, when, to the unutterable horror of all who
witnessed the spectacle, there was seen the head and hands of
Cleopatra’s beautiful boy, lying among masses of human flesh, which
consisted of the rest of his body cut into pieces. The head had been
left entire, that the wretched mother might recognize in the pale and
lifeless features the countenance of her son. Physcon had sent the
box to Alexandria, with orders that it should be retained until the
evening of the birth-day, and then presented publicly to Cleopatra in
the midst of the festivities of the scene. The shrieks and cries with
which she filled the apartments of the palace at the first sight of the
dreadful spectacle, and the agony of long-continued and
inconsolable grief which followed, showed how well the cruel
contrivance of the tyrant was fitted to accomplish its end.
It gives us no pleasure to write, and we are sure it can give our
readers no pleasure to peruse, such shocking stories of bloody
cruelty as these. It is necessary, however, to a just appreciation of
the character of the great subject of this history, that we should
understand the nature of the domestic influences that reigned in the
family from which she sprung. In fact, it is due, as a matter of
simple justice to her, that we should know what these influences
were, and what were the examples set before her in her early life;
since the privileges and advantages which the young enjoy in their
early years, and, on the other hand, the evil influences under which
they suffer, are to be taken very seriously into the account when we
are passing judgment upon the follies and sins into which they
subsequently fall.
The monster Physcon lived, it is true, two or three generations
before the great Cleopatra; but the character of the intermediate
generations, until the time of her birth, continued much the same. In
fact, the cruelty, corruption, and vice which reigned in every branch
of the royal family increased rather than diminished. The beautiful
niece of Physcon, who, at the time of her compulsory marriage with
him, evinced such an aversion to the monster, had become, at the
period of her husband’s death, as great a monster of ambition,
selfishness, and cruelty as he. She had two sons, Lathyrus and
Alexander. Physcon, when he died, left the kingdom of Egypt to her
by will, authorizing her to associate with her in the government
whichever of these two sons she might choose. The oldest was best
entitled to this privilege, by his priority of birth; but she preferred
the youngest, as she thought that her own power would be more
absolute in reigning in conjunction with him, since he would be more
completely under her control. The leading powers, however, in
Alexandria, resisted this plan, and insisted on Cleopatra’s associating
her oldest son, Lathyrus, with her in the government of the realm.
They compelled her to recall Lathyrus from the banishment into
which she had sent him, and to put him nominally upon the throne.
Cleopatra yielded to this necessity, but she forced her son to
repudiate his wife, and to take, instead, another woman, whom she
fancied she could make more subservient to her will. The mother
and the son went on together for a time, Lathyrus being nominally
king, though her determination that she would rule, and his
struggles to resist her intolerable tyranny, made their wretched
household the scene of terrible and perpetual quarrels. At last
Cleopatra seized a number of Lathyrus’s servants, the eunuchs who
were employed in various offices about the palace, and after
wounding and mutilating them in a horrible manner, she exhibited
them to the populace, saying that it was Lathyrus that had inflicted
the cruel injuries upon the sufferers, and calling upon them to arise
and punish him for his crimes. In this and in other similar ways she
awakened among the people of the court and of the city such an
animosity against Lathyrus, that they expelled him from the country.
There followed a long series of cruel and bloody wars between the
mother and the son, in the course of which each party perpetrated
against the other almost every imaginable deed of atrocity and
crime. Alexander, the youngest son, was so afraid of his terrible
mother, that he did not dare to remain in Alexandria with her, but
went into a sort of banishment of his own accord. He, however,
finally returned to Egypt. His mother immediately supposed that he
was intending to disturb her possession of power, and resolved to
destroy him. He became acquainted with her designs, and, grown
desperate by the long-continued pressure of her intolerable tyranny,
he resolved to bring the anxiety and terror in which he lived to an
end by killing her. This he did, and then fled the country. Lathyrus,
his brother, then returned, and reigned for the rest of his days in a
tolerable degree of quietness and peace. At length Lathyrus died,
and left the kingdom to his son, Ptolemy Auletes, who was the great
Cleopatra’s father.
We can not soften the picture which is exhibited to our view in the
history of this celebrated family, by regarding the mother of Auletes,
in the masculine and merciless traits and principles which she
displayed so energetically throughout her terrible career, as an
exception to the general character of the princesses who appeared
from time to time in the line. In ambition, selfishness, unnatural and
reckless cruelty, and utter disregard of every virtuous principle and
of every domestic tie, she was but the type and representative of all
the rest.
She had two daughters, for example, who were the consistent and
worthy followers of such a mother. A passage in the lives of these
sisters illustrates very forcibly the kind of sisterly affection which
prevailed in the family of the Ptolemies. The case was this:
There were two princes of Syria, a country lying northeast of the
Mediterranean Sea, and so not very far from Egypt, who, though
they were brothers, were in a state of most deadly hostility to each
other. One had attempted to poison the other, and afterward a war
had broken out between them, and all Syria was suffering from the
ravages of their armies. One of the sisters, of whom we have been
speaking, married one of these princes. Her name was Tryphena.
After some time, but yet while the unnatural war was still raging
between the two brothers, Cleopatra, the other sister—the same
Cleopatra, in fact, that had been divorced from Lathyrus at the
instance of his mother—espoused the other brother. Tryphena was
exceedingly incensed against Cleopatra for marrying her husband’s
mortal foe, and the implacable hostility and hate of the sisters was
thenceforth added to that which the brothers had before exhibited,
to complete the display of unnatural and parricidal passion which
this shameful contest presented to the world.
In fact, Tryphena from this time seemed to feel a new and highly-
excited interest in the contest, from her eager desire to revenge
herself on her sister. She watched the progress of it, and took an
active part in pressing forward the active prosecution of the war. The
party of her husband, either from this or some other causes, seemed
to be gaining the day. The husband of Cleopatra was driven from
one part of the country to another, and at length, in order to provide
for the security of his wife, he left her in Antioch, a large and
strongly-fortified city, where he supposed that she would be safe,
while he himself was engaged in prosecuting the war in other
quarters where his presence seemed to be required.
On learning that her sister was at Antioch, Tryphena urged her
husband to attack the place. He accordingly advanced with a strong
detachment of the army, and besieged and took the city. Cleopatra
would, of course, have fallen into his hands as a captive; but, to
escape this fate, she fled to a temple for refuge. A temple was
considered, in those days, an inviolable sanctuary. The soldiers
accordingly left her there. Tryphena, however, made a request that
her husband would deliver the unhappy fugitive into her hands. She
was determined, she said, to kill her. Her husband remonstrated with
her against this atrocious proposal. “It would be a wholly useless act
of cruelty,” said he, “to destroy her life. She can do us no possible
harm in the future progress of the war, while to murder her under
these circumstances will only exasperate her husband and her
friends, and nerve them with new strength for the remainder of the
contest. And then, besides, she has taken refuge in a temple; and if
we violate that sanctuary, we shall incur, by such an act of sacrilege,
the implacable displeasure of heaven. Consider, too, that she is your
sister, and for you to kill her would be to commit an unnatural and
wholly inexcusable crime.”
So saying, he commanded Tryphena to say no more upon the
subject, for he would on no account consent that Cleopatra should
suffer any injury whatever.
This refusal on the part of her husband to comply with her request
only inflamed Tryphena’s insane resentment and anger the more. In
fact, the earnestness with which he espoused her sister’s cause, and
the interest which he seemed to feel in her fate, aroused Tryphena’s
jealousy. She believed, or pretended to believe, that her husband
was influenced by a sentiment of love in so warmly defending her.
The object of her hate, from being simply an enemy, became now, in
her view, a rival, and she resolved that, at all hazards, she should be
destroyed. She accordingly ordered a body of desperate soldiers to
break into the temple and seize her. Cleopatra fled in terror to the
altar, and clung to it with such convulsive force that the soldiers cut
her hands off before they could tear her away, and then, maddened
by her resistance and the sight of blood, they stabbed her again and
again upon the floor of the temple, where she fell. The appalling
shrieks with which the wretched victim filled the air in the first
moments of her flight and her terror, subsided, as her life ebbed
away, into the most awful imprecations of the judgments of heaven
upon the head of the unnatural sister whose implacable hate had
destroyed her.

Notwithstanding the specimens that we have thus given of the

character and action of this extraordinary family, the government of
this dynasty, extending, as it did, through the reigns of thirteen
sovereigns and over a period of nearly three hundred years, has
always been considered one of the most liberal, enlightened, and
prosperous of all the governments of ancient times. We shall have
something to say in the next chapter in respect to the internal
condition of the country while these violent men were upon the
throne. In the meantime, we will here only add, that whoever is
inclined, in observing the ambition, the selfishness, the party spirit,
the unworthy intrigues, and the irregularities of moral conduct,
which modern rulers and statesmen sometimes exhibit to mankind in
their personal and political career, to believe in a retrogression and
degeneracy of national character as the world advances in age, will
be very effectually undeceived by reading attentively a full history of
this celebrated dynasty, and reflecting, as he reads, that the
narrative presents, on the whole, a fair and honest exhibition of the
general character of the men by whom, in ancient times, the world
was governed.
 Chapter III.

Alexandria.

I T must not be imagined by the reader that the scenes of vicious

indulgence, and reckless cruelty and crime, which were exhibited
with such dreadful frequency, and carried to such an enormous
excess in the palaces of the Egyptian kings, prevailed to the same
extent throughout the mass of the community during the period of
their reign. The internal administration of government, and the
institutions by which the industrial pursuits of the mass of the people
were regulated, and peace and order preserved, and justice
enforced between man and man, were all this time in the hands of
men well qualified, on the whole, for the trusts committed to their
charge, and in a good degree faithful in the performance of their
duties; and thus the ordinary affairs of government, and the general
routine of domestic and social life, went on, notwithstanding the
profligacy of the kings, in a course of very tolerable peace,
prosperity, and happiness. During every one of the three hundred
years over which the history of the Ptolemies extends, the whole
length and breadth of the land of Egypt exhibited, with
comparatively few interruptions, one wide-spread scene of busy
industry. The inundations came at their appointed season, and then
regularly retired. The boundless fields which the waters had fertilized
were then every where tilled. The lands were plowed; the seed was
sown; the canals and water-courses, which ramified from the river in
every direction over the ground, were opened or closed, as the case
required, to regulate the irrigation. The inhabitants were busy, and,
consequently, they were virtuous. And as the sky of Egypt is seldom
or never darkened by clouds and storms, the scene presented to the
eye the same unchanging aspect of smiling verdure and beauty, day
after day, and month after month, until the ripened grain was
gathered into the store-houses, and the land was cleared for another
inundation.
We say that the people were virtuous because they were busy; for
there is no principle of political economy more fully established than
that vice in the social state is the incident and symptom of idleness.
It prevails always in those classes of every great population who are
either released by the possession of fixed and unchangeable wealth
from the necessity, or excluded by their poverty and degradation
from the advantage, of useful employment. Wealth that is free, and
subject to its possessor’s control, so that he can, if he will, occupy
himself in the management of it, while it sometimes may make
individuals vicious, does not generally corrupt classes of men, for it
does not make them idle. But wherever the institutions of a country
are such as to create an aristocratic class, whose incomes depend on
entailed estates, or on fixed and permanent annuities, so that the
capital on which they live can not afford them any mental
occupation, they are doomed necessarily to inaction and idleness.
Vicious pleasures and indulgences are, with such a class as a whole,
the inevitable result; for the innocent enjoyments of man are
planned and designed by the Author of nature only for the intervals
of rest and repose in a life of activity. They are always found wholly
insufficient to satisfy one who makes pleasure the whole end and
aim of his being.
In the same manner, if, either from the influence of the social
institutions of a country, or from the operation of natural causes
which human power is unable to control, there is a class of men too
low, and degraded, and miserable to be reached by the ordinary
inducements to daily toil, so certain are they to grow corrupt and
depraved, that degradation has become in all languages a term
almost synonymous with vice. There are many exceptions, it is true,
to these general laws. Many active men are very wicked; and there
have been frequent instances of the most exalted virtue among
nobles and kings. Still, as a general law, it is unquestionably true
that vice is the incident of idleness; and the sphere of vice,
therefore, is at the top and at the bottom of society—those being
the regions in which idleness reigns. The great remedy, too, for vice
is employment. To make a community virtuous, it is essential that all
ranks and gradations of it, from the highest to the lowest, should
have something to do.
In accordance with these principles, we observe that, while the most
extreme and abominable wickedness seemed to hold continual and
absolute sway in the palaces of the Ptolemies, and among the
nobles of their courts, the working ministers of state, and the men
on whom the actual governmental functions devolved, discharged
their duties with wisdom and fidelity, and throughout all the ordinary
ranks and gradations of society there prevailed generally a very
considerable degree of industry, prosperity, and happiness. This
prosperity prevailed not only in the rural districts of the Delta and
along the valley of the Nile, but also among the merchants, and
navigators, and artisans of Alexandria.
Alexandria became, in fact, very soon after it was founded, a very
great and busy city. Many things conspired to make it at once a
great commercial emporium. In the first place, it was the depôt of
export for all the surplus grain and other agricultural produce which
was raised in such abundance along the Egyptian valley. This
produce was brought down in boats to the upper point of the Delta,
where the branches of the river divided, and thence down the
Canopic branch to the city. The city was not, in fact, situated directly
upon this branch, but upon a narrow tongue of land, at a little
distance from it, near the sea. It was not easy to enter the channel
directly, on account of the bars and sand-banks at its mouth,
produced by the eternal conflict between the waters of the river and
the surges of the sea. The water was deep, however, as Alexander’s
engineers had discovered, at the place where the city was built, and,
by establishing the port there, and then cutting a canal across to the
Nile, they were enabled to bring the river and the sea at once into
easy communication.
The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and
through the canal to the city. Here immense warehouses and
granaries were erected for its reception, that it might be safely
preserved until the ships that came into the port were ready to take
it away. These ships came from Syria, from all the coasts of Asia
Minor, from Greece, and from Rome. They brought the agricultural
productions of their own countries, as well as articles of manufacture
of various kinds; these they sold to the merchants of Alexandria, and
purchased the productions of Egypt in return.
The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and
animation. Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or
lying at anchor in the roadstead. Seamen were hoisting sails, or
raising anchors, or rowing their capacious galleys through the water,
singing, as they pulled, to the motion of the oars. Within the city
there was the same ceaseless activity. Here groups of men were
unloading the canal boats which had arrived from the river. There
porters were transporting bales of merchandise or sacks of grain
from a warehouse to a pier, or from one landing to another. The
occasional parading of the king’s guards, or the arrival and departure
of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of armed men, were
occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as perhaps
the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of useful
industry; and now and then, for a brief period, these peaceful
avocations would be wholly suspended and set aside by a revolt or
by a civil war, waged by rival brothers against each other, or
instigated by the conflicting claims of a mother and son. These
interruptions, however, were comparatively few, and, in ordinary
cases, not of long continuance. It was for the interest of all branches
of the royal line to do as little injury as possible to the commercial
and agricultural operations of the realm. In fact, it was on the
prosperity of those operations that the revenues depended. The
rulers were well aware of this, and so, however implacably two rival
princes may have hated one another, and however desperately each
party may have struggled to destroy all active combatants whom
they should find in arms against them, they were both under every
possible inducement to spare the private property and the lives of
the peaceful population. This population, in fact, engaged thus in
profitable industry, constituted, with the avails of their labors, the
very estate for which the combatants were contending.
Seeing the subject in this light, the Egyptian sovereigns, especially
Alexander and the earlier Ptolemies, made every effort in their
power to promote the commercial greatness of Alexandria. They
built palaces, it is true, but they also built warehouses. One of the
most expensive and celebrated of all the edifices that they reared
was the light-house which has been already alluded to. This light-
house was a lofty tower, built of white marble. It was situated upon
the island of Pharos, opposite to the city, and at some distance from
it. There was a sort of isthmus of shoals and sand-bars connecting
the island with the shore. Over these shallows a pier or causeway
was built, which finally became a broad and inhabited neck. The
principal part of the ancient city, however, was on the main land.[1]
The curvature of the earth requires that a light-house on a coast
should have a considerable elevation, otherwise its summit would
not appear above the horizon, unless the mariner were very near. To
attain this elevation, the architects usually take advantage of some
hill or cliff, or rocky eminence near the shore. There was, however,
no opportunity to do this at Pharos; for the island was, like the main
land, level and low. The requisite elevation could only be attained,
therefore, by the masonry of an edifice, and the blocks of marble
necessary for the work had to be brought from a great distance. The
Alexandrian light-house was reared in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, the second monarch in the line. No pains or expense
were spared in its construction. The edifice, when completed, was
considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It was indebted
for its fame, however, in some degree, undoubtedly to the
conspicuousness of its situation, rising, as it did, at the entrance of
the greatest commercial emporium of its time, and standing there,
like a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to attract the
welcome gaze of every wandering mariner whose ship came within
its horizon, and to awaken his gratitude by tendering him its
guidance and dispelling his fears.
The light at the top of the tower was produced by a fire, made of
such combustibles as would emit the brightest flame. This fire
burned slowly through the day, and then was kindled up anew when
the sun went down, and was continually replenished through the
night with fresh supplies of fuel. In modern times, a much more
convenient and economical mode is adopted to produce the requisite
illumination. A great blazing lamp burns brilliantly in the center of
the lantern of the tower, and all that part of the radiation from the
flame which would naturally have beamed upward, or downward, or
laterally, or back toward the land, is so turned by a curious system of
reflectors and polyzonal lenses, most ingeniously contrived and very
exactly adjusted, as to be thrown forward in one broad and thin, but
brilliant sheet of light, which shoots out where its radiance is
needed, over the surface of the sea. Before these inventions were
perfected, far the largest portion of the light emitted by the
illumination of light-house towers streamed away wastefully in
landward directions, or was lost among the stars.
Of course, the glory of erecting such an edifice as the Pharos of
Alexandria, and of maintaining it in the performance of its functions,
was very great; the question might, however, very naturally arise
whether this glory was justly due to the architect through whose
scientific skill the work was actually accomplished, or to the monarch
by whose power and resources the architect was sustained. The
name of the architect was Sostratus. He was a Greek. The monarch
was, as has already been stated, the second Ptolemy, called
commonly Ptolemy Philadelphus. Ptolemy ordered that, in
completing the tower, a marble tablet should be built into the wall,
at a suitable place near the summit, and that a proper inscription
should be carved upon it, with his name as the builder of the edifice
conspicuous thereon. Sostratus preferred inserting his own name. He
accordingly made the tablet and set it in its place. He cut the
inscription upon the face of it, in Greek characters, with his own
name as the author of the work. He did this secretly, and then
covered the face of the tablet with an artificial composition, made
with lime, to imitate the natural surface of the stone. On this outer
surface he cut a new inscription, in which he inserted the name of
the king. In process of time the lime moldered away, the king’s
inscription disappeared, and his own, which thenceforward
continued as long as the building endured, came out to view.
The Pharos was said to have been four hundred feet high. It was
famed throughout the world for many centuries; nothing, however,
remains of it now but a heap of useless and unmeaning ruins.
Besides the light that beamed from the summit of this lofty tower,
there was another center of radiance and illumination in ancient
Alexandria, which was in some respects still more conspicuous and
renowned, namely, an immense library and museum established and
maintained by the Ptolemies. The Museum, which was first
established, was not, as its name might now imply, a collection of
curiosities, but an institution of learning, consisting of a body of
learned men, who devoted their time to philosophical and scientific
pursuits. The institution was richly endowed, and magnificent
buildings were erected for its use. The king who established it began
immediately to make a collection of books for the use of the
members of the institution. This was attended with great expense,
as every book that was added to the collection required to be
transcribed with a pen on parchment or papyrus, with infinite labor
and care. Great numbers of scribes were constantly employed upon
this work at the Museum. The kings who were most interested in
forming this library would seize the books that were possessed by
individual scholars, or that were deposited in the various cities of
their dominions, and then, causing beautiful copies of them to be
made by the scribes of the Museum, they would retain the originals
for the great Alexandrian Library, and give the copies to the men or
the cities that had been thus despoiled. In the same manner they
would borrow, as they called it, from all travelers who visited Egypt,
any valuable books which they might have in their possession, and,
retaining the originals, give them back copies instead.
In process of time the library increased to four hundred thousand
volumes. There was then no longer any room in the buildings of the
Museum for further additions. There was, however, in another part
of the city, a great temple called the Serapion. This temple was a
very magnificent edifice, or, rather, group of edifices, dedicated to
the god Serapis. The origin and history of this temple were very
remarkable. The legend was this:
It seems that one of the ancient and long-venerated gods of the
Egyptians was a deity named Serapis. He had been, among other
divinities, the object of Egyptian adoration ages before Alexandria
was built or the Ptolemies reigned. There was also, by a curious
coincidence, a statue of the same name at a great commercial town
named Sinope, which was built upon the extremity of a promontory
which projected from Asia Minor into the Euxine Sea.[2] Sinope was,
in some sense, the Alexandria of the north, being the center and
seat of a great portion of the commerce of that quarter of the world.
The Serapis of Sinope was considered as the protecting deity of
seamen, and the navigators who came and went to and from the
city made sacrifices to him, and offered him oblations and prayers,
believing that they were, in a great measure, dependent upon some
mysterious and inscrutable power which he exercised for their safety
in storms. They carried the knowledge of his name, and tales of his
imaginary interpositions, to all the places that they visited; and thus
the fame of the god became extended, first, to all the coasts of the
Euxine Sea, and subsequently to distant provinces and kingdoms.
The Serapis of Sinope began to be considered every where as the
tutelar god of seamen.
Accordingly, when the first of the Ptolemies was forming his various
plans for adorning and aggrandizing Alexandria, he received, he
said, one night, a divine intimation in a dream that he was to obtain
the statue of Serapis from Sinope, and set it up in Alexandria, in a
suitable temple which he was in the mean time to erect in honor of
the god. It is obvious that very great advantages to the city would
result from the accomplishment of this design. In the first place, a
temple to the god Serapis would be a new distinction for it in the
minds of the rural population, who would undoubtedly suppose that
the deity honored by it was their own ancient god. Then the whole
maritime and nautical interest of the world, which had been
accustomed to adore the god of Sinope, would turn to Alexandria as
the great center of religious attraction, if their venerated idol could
be carried and placed in a new and magnificent temple built
expressly for him there. Alexandria could never be the chief naval
port and station of the world, unless it contained the sanctuary and
shrine of the god of seamen.
Ptolemy sent accordingly to the King of Sinope and proposed to
purchase the idol. The embassage was, however, unsuccessful. The
king refused to give up the god. The negotiations were continued for
two years, but all in vain. At length, on account of some failure in
the regular course of the seasons on that coast, there was a famine
there, which became finally so severe that the people of the city
were induced to consent to give up their deity to the Egyptians in
exchange for a supply of corn. Ptolemy sent the corn and received
the idol. He then built the temple, which, when finished, surpassed
in grandeur and magnificence almost every sacred structure in the
world.
It was in this temple that the successive additions to the Alexandrian
library were deposited, when the apartments at the Museum became
full. In the end there were four hundred thousand rolls or volumes in
the Museum, and three hundred thousand in the Serapion. The
former was called the parent library, and the latter, being, as it were,
the offspring of the first, was called the daughter.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who interested himself very greatly in
collecting this library, wished to make it a complete collection of all
the books in the world. He employed scholars to read and study, and
travelers to make extensive tours, for the purpose of learning what
books existed among all the surrounding nations; and, when he
learned of their existence, he spared no pains or expense in
attempting to procure either the originals themselves, or the most
perfect and authentic copies of them. He sent to Athens and
obtained the works of the most celebrated Greek historians, and
then causing, as in other cases, most beautiful transcripts to be
made, he sent the transcripts back to Athens, and a very large sum
of money with them as an equivalent for the difference of value
between originals and copies in such an exchange.
In the course of the inquiries which Ptolemy made into the literature
of the surrounding nations, in his search for accessions to his library,
he heard that the Jews had certain sacred writings in their temple at
Jerusalem, comprising a minute and extremely interesting history of
their nation from the earliest periods, and also many other books of
sacred prophecy and poetry. These books, which were, in fact, the
Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, were then wholly unknown
to all nations except the Jews, and among the Jews were known
only to priests and scholars. They were kept sacred at Jerusalem.
The Jews would have considered them as profaned in being
exhibited to the view of pagan nations. In fact, the learned men of
other countries would not have been able to read them; for the Jews
secluded themselves so closely from the rest of mankind, that their
language was, in that age, scarcely ever heard beyond the confines
of Judea and Galilee.
Ptolemy very naturally thought that a copy of these sacred books
would be a great acquisition to his library. They constituted, in fact,
the whole literature of a nation which was, in some respects, the
most extraordinary that ever existed on the globe. Ptolemy
conceived the idea, also, of not only adding to his library a copy of
these writings in the original Hebrew, but of causing a translation of
them to be made into Greek, so that they might easily be read by
the Greek and Roman scholars who were drawn in great numbers to
his capital by the libraries and the learned institutions which he had
established there. The first thing to be effected, however, in
accomplishing either of these plans, was to obtain the consent of the
Jewish authorities. They would probably object to giving up any copy
of their sacred writings at all.
There was one circumstance which led Ptolemy to imagine that the
Jews would, at that time particularly, be averse to granting any
request of such a nature coming from an Egyptian king, and that
was, that during certain wars which had taken place in previous
reigns, a considerable number of prisoners had been taken by the
Egyptians, and had been brought to Egypt as captives, where they
had been sold to the inhabitants, and were now scattered over the
land as slaves. They were employed as servile laborers in tilling the
fields, or in turning enormous wheels to pump up water from the
Nile. The masters of these hapless bondmen conceived, like other
slave-holders, that they had a right of property in their slaves. This
was in some respects true, since they had bought them of the
government at the close of the war for a consideration; and though
they obviously derived from this circumstance no valid proprietary
right or claim as against the men personally, it certainly would seem
that it gave them a just claim against the government of whom they
bought, in case of subsequent manumission.
Ptolemy or his minister, for it can not now be known who was the
real actor in these transactions, determined on liberating these
slaves and sending them back to their native land, as a means of
propitiating the Jews and inclining them to listen favorably to the
request which he was about to prefer for a copy of their sacred
writings. He, however, paid to those who held the captives a very
liberal sum for ransom. The ancient historians, who never allow the
interest of their narratives to suffer for want of a proper
amplification on their part of the scale on which the deeds which
they record were performed, say that the number of slaves liberated
on this occasion was a hundred and twenty thousand, and the sum
paid for them, as compensation to the owners, was six hundred
talents, equal to six hundred thousand dollars.[3] And yet this was
only a preliminary expense to pave the way for the acquisition of a
single series of books, to add to the variety of the immense
collection.
After the liberation and return of the captives, Ptolemy sent a
splendid embassage to Jerusalem, with very respectful letters to the
high priest, and with very magnificent presents. The embassadors
were received with the highest honors. The request of Ptolemy that
he should be allowed to take a copy of the sacred books for his
library was very readily granted.
The priests caused copies to be made of all the sacred writings.
These copies were executed in the most magnificent style, and were
splendidly illuminated with letters of gold. The Jewish government
also, at Ptolemy’s request, designated a company of Hebrew
scholars, six from each tribe—men learned in both the Greek and
Hebrew languages—to proceed to Alexandria, and there, at the
Museum, to make a careful translation of the Hebrew books into
Greek. As there were twelve tribes, and six translators chosen from
each, there were seventy-two translators in all. They made their
translation, and it was called the Septuagint, from the Latin
septuaginta duo, which means seventy-two.
Although out of Judea there was no feeling of reverence for these
Hebrew Scriptures as books of divine authority, there was still a
strong interest felt in them as very entertaining and curious works of
history, by all the Greek and Roman scholars who frequented
Alexandria to study at the Museum. Copies were accordingly made
of the Septuagint translation, and were taken to other countries; and
there, in process of time, copies of the copies were made, until, at
length the work became extensively circulated throughout the whole
learned world. When, finally, Christianity became extended over the
Roman empire, the priests and monks looked with even a stronger
interest than the ancient scholars had felt upon this early translation
of so important a portion of the sacred Scriptures. They made new
copies for abbeys, monasteries, and colleges; and when, at length,
the art of printing was discovered, this work was one of the first on
which the magic power of typography was tried. The original
manuscript made by the scribes of the seventy-two, and all the early
transcripts which were made from it, have long since been lost or
destroyed; but, instead of them, we have now hundreds of
thousands of copies in compact printed volumes, scattered among
the public and private libraries of Christendom. In fact, now, after
the lapse of two thousand years, a copy of Ptolemy’s Septuagint may
be obtained of any considerable bookseller in any country of the
civilized world; and though it required a national embassage, and an
expenditure, if the accounts are true, of more than a million of
dollars, originally to obtain it, it may be procured without difficulty
now by two days’ wages of an ordinary laborer.
Besides the building of the Pharos, the Museum, and the Temple of
Serapis, the early Ptolemies formed and executed a great many
other plans tending to the same ends which the erection of these
splendid edifices was designed to secure, namely, to concentrate in
Alexandria all possible means of attraction, commercial, literary, and
religious, so as to make the city the great center of interest, and the
common resort for all mankind. They raised immense revenues for
these and other purposes by taxing heavily the whole agricultural
produce of the valley of the Nile. The inundations, by the boundless
fertility which they annually produced, supplied the royal treasuries.
Thus the Abyssinian rains at the sources of the Nile built the Pharos
at its mouth, and endowed the Alexandrian library.
The taxes laid upon the people of Egypt to supply the Ptolemies with
funds were, in fact, so heavy, that only the bare means of
subsistence were left to the mass of the agricultural population. In
admiring the greatness and glory of the city, therefore, we must
remember that there was a gloomy counterpart to its splendor in the
very extended destitution and poverty to which the mass of the
people were every where doomed. They lived in hamlets of wretched
huts along the banks of the river, in order that the capital might be
splendidly adorned with temples and palaces. They passed their lives
in darkness and ignorance, that seven hundred thousand volumes of
expensive manuscripts might be enrolled at the Museum for the use
of foreign philosophers and scholars. The policy of the Ptolemies
was, perhaps, on the whole, the best, for the general advancement
and ultimate welfare of mankind, which could have been pursued in
the age in which they lived and acted; but, in applauding the results
which they attained, we must not wholly forget the cost which they
incurred in attaining them. At the same cost, we could, at the
present day, far surpass them. If the people of the United States will
surrender the comforts and conveniences which they individually
enjoy—if the farmers scattered in their comfortable homes on the
hill-sides and plains throughout the land will give up their houses,
their furniture, their carpets, their books, and the privileges of their
children, and then—withholding from the produce of their annual toil
only a sufficient reservation to sustain them and their families
through the year, in a life like that of a beast of burden, spent in
some miserable and naked hovel—send the rest to some hereditary
sovereign residing upon the Atlantic sea-board, that he may build
with the proceeds a splendid capital, they may have an Alexandria
now that will infinitely exceed the ancient city of the Ptolemies in
splendor and renown. The nation, too, would, in such a case, pay for
its metropolis the same price, precisely, that the ancient Egyptians
paid for theirs.
The Ptolemies expended the revenues which they raised by this
taxation mainly in a very liberal and enlightened manner, for the
accomplishment of the purposes which they had in view. The
building of the Pharos, the removal of the statue of Serapis, and the
endowment of the Museum and the library were great conceptions,
and they were carried into effect in the most complete and perfect
manner. All the other operations which they devised and executed
for the extension and aggrandizement of the city were conceived
and executed in the same spirit of scientific and enlightened
liberality. Streets were opened; the most splendid palaces were built;
docks, piers, and breakwaters were constructed, and fortresses and
towers were armed and garrisoned. Then every means was
employed to attract to the city a great concourse from all the most
highly-civilized nations then existing. The highest inducements were
offered to merchants, mechanics, and artisans to make the city their
abode. Poets, painters, sculptors, and scholars of every nation and
degree were made welcome, and every facility was afforded them
for the prosecution of their various pursuits. These plans were all
eminently successful. Alexandria rose rapidly to the highest
consideration and importance; and, at the time when Cleopatra—
born to preside over this scene of magnificence and splendor—came
upon the stage, the city had but one rival in the world. That rival
was Rome.
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