Racial Profiling

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After you click the link, it's the first one in the queue; fast-forward to 15:00:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/2016-2017-chapel-college-arts/id1148681753?mt=10

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar a existência de mecanismos de produção da
desigualdade racial na atuação das polícias do estado de São Paulo. Os dados sobre a
produtividade policial publicados periodicamente não permitem a análise pela variável
cor/raça dos envolvidos. Em busca de indicadores que permitissem esta observação, a
equipe de pesquisa firmou uma parceria com a Ouvidoria da Polícia do Estado de São
Paulo para a produção de uma base de dados sobre a letalidade policial com
informações sobre o perfil das vítimas e dos policiais, incluindo a variável cor/raça de
ambos. Além da letalidade, a prisão em flagrante também foi usada como indicador,
porém, como os dados divulgados pela Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Estado de
São Paulo também não possibilitam a observação da variável cor/raça, a Coordenadoria
de Análise e Planejamento forneceu uma consulta específica à base de registro de
ocorrência, o que permitiu conhecer a distribuição das prisões em flagrante efetuadas
segundo a cor/raça dos presos. Os resultados da análise destas duas bases apontaram
que os negros são a maioria das vítimas de mortes praticadas por policiais,
especialmente os jovens e do sexo masculino. Também foi possível observar que a
proporção de negros presos em flagrante é maior do que a de brancos e que a maior
parte dos autores das mortes são policiais militares, sendo que parte significativa
pertence a grupamentos especiais, com destaque para a Força Tática. A conclusão da
pesquisa é que a desigualdade racial na segurança pública é evidenciada pela intensa
vigilância e ação policial violenta sobre um grupo populacional específico, ao passo que
outros grupos populacionais são menos visados sendo surpreendidos com menor
frequência em suas práticas. Os resultados são indicativos também de que,
possivelmente, as atividades criminais mais frequentemente cometidas por negros sejam
mais vigiadas, ao passo que atividades criminais mais comuns entre brancos despertem
menor atenção da polícia.

This article examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s development of the reasonable person standard in connection with the concept of “psychological detentions” which arises out of sections 9 and 10 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, it discusses the Court’s 2019 decision in R. v. Le where race is expressly incorporated within this reasonable person standard. Le stands in contrast to past decisions of the Court where the failure to substantially account for the racial dynamics of police encounters with racialized detainees has been criticized by various scholars. Drawing from critical race theory, this article argues that this incorporation is an important and welcome advancement in Charter jurisprudence, particularly in connection with the phenomenon of racial profiling practiced by various law enforcement officers.

In the years following the attacks on September 11th, 2001, the American government and other governmental democracies who fall victim to Americentric hegemony have eroded away many of the rights and civil liberties enjoyed by their respective populaces in the name of increased security. Paramount to the effectiveness of security is surveillance, and surveillance as an institution, not just of our country, but of our world, has more than clearly made its way into our media. With this, we have seen the rise of Surveillance Dependant Media, media which

Racial discrimination in policing and its effect on police/minority youth relations were explored in a federally funded Canadian race relations initiative, using semistructured dialogue and voice-centered relational data analysis. Participants were front-line police officers and male youth of color. For enhancing communication between the groups, findings emphasized ongoing, face-to-face interaction. Substantial related concerns were: the need for trust, respect, self-preservation, information sharing, and improved police/minority youth relations. These were understood and highlighted as embedded within a system of ruling relations in the participants’ sociocultural context. Implications of these issues for police relations with racialized youth and their communities are discussed.

The sustained fixation on Muslims as the perennial suspects in domestic terrorism is a stereotype that continues to pervade counter-intelligence driven efforts. This research analyzes 113 cases of FBI contact with US Muslims living in Los Angeles, CA. Based upon these cases, this research suggests that every day, normal behavior becomes suspicious only when practiced by US Muslims, which would otherwise be acceptable, mundane, and unremarkable for ordinary white Christians, therefore constituting a form of "racialized state surveillance." The most prevalent questions asked by FBI agents to Muslims in this study were regarding religious practices or affiliation with religious organizations demonstrating the FBI faultily presumes that Muslim ties to their community and faith is abnormal, and worthy of state surveillance. This research reveals that FBI contact with Muslims is often not reliant upon actual indications of criminal activity, but instead the contact is predicated upon the suspicion of who is engaged in these behaviors. Under racialized state surveillance, these actions become hyperscrutinized and deemed worthy of FBI assessment.

This research tackles the interaction between police and racial inequality. More specifically, it dwells on how democratic policing manifests itself in racially unequal societies. After assessing the existence of racial inequalities regarding the access to rights to life and safety, one wonders how this racial bias is produced and reproduced. To this effect, a review of the national literature on police violence and excessive use of force by
police is performed. We observe the development and consolidation of researches associating race to police brutality outcomes. We investigate the coinage of the term racial profiling, drawing on similarities and specificities of its use in Brazil and in the United States. In Brazil, we verify that researches on racial profiling focus either on accessible statistical data (regarding arrests by flagrante delicto and police use of lethal
force) or social representations that guide police practices and their process of suspicion. The second class of researches indicates an abstract institutional discourse in which racialization scarcely appears (generally in order to deny race) and emphasizes the importance of police agents' subjective constructions in materializing a race-biased conduct. Thus, our field research was guided by the question: in what ways the training provided by the Superior School of Military Police Soldiers of São Paulo state, in the city of São Paulo, influences race relations between police officers and citizens? The results confirm the literature directions that the institution curtails itself before themes such as racial inequality and racial discrimination by the police. It communicates abstracts
categories to be filled with representations – previous and post-training – of the suspect and the criminal. The self-conferred role of the Military Police dismiss its educational attribute in favor of an assimilationist perspective of knowledge, in which there is no space for reflexive analysis, only for body conditioning to automatic and intuitive responses.

This essay focus on the current state of racially biased policing in the United States. It looks in depth at the state of policing in Westchester County, NY. It concludes with an analysis of arrest data in the county, that shows severe racial disproportionately.

As I write, Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States and around the world. All Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter protests are drawing thousands amid news of more violence against Black trans people. At least two incidents that incited protest – the murder of George Floyd and the assault on Iyanna Dior – have involved corner stores, and corner stores figure prominently in geographies of surveillance in the United States.[1] My reflection comes from this moment and from grappling, again, with how to write about Black death (Jones 2019a). Katherine McKittrick (2014: 20) writes that the “task is … to write blackness by ethically honoring but not repeating anti-black violences”, and that one way to do this is “through reading the mathematics of these violences as possibilities that are iterations of black life that cannot be contained by black death”. Below, I practice writing blackness ethically partly by embedding {Pauses}, invitations to stop, reflect, and give reverence.

Traditional tropes of racial stereotyping in both old and contemporary Hollywood cinema lend credence to the continual need for further progression of ethnic representation on screen. Information from sources such as the Motion Picture Association of America (2015: 2) and the Hollywood Diversity Report (2015) establish the industry's economic prominence and global influence over the modern-day film market. By using the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this research underlines the subliminally domineering effect of culture upon audience perception, thus highlighting the importance of ethnic equality on-screen and denouncing the negligent stereotypes that have plagued mainstream American cinema since conception. 
America's racial history is imprinted into the subtext of their film culture; the release of The Birth of a Nation (1915) exemplified stereotypical racial profiling and how it's intricately tied to the US political system. After the socio-political event of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the white saviour narrative evolved and is still in use, placing emphasis on friendly depictions of ethnic minorities, whilst covertly coercing the stereotypical minority into subservience for the white protagonist, due to their paternalistic, moral, and messianic qualities. The history of mainstream race depiction contextualise the recent Hollywood trend of Whitewashing (the replacement of a coloured character with a white actor), and combined with the cultural relevance of the capital gained from popular film media, the importance of racial progression and further democratisation of ethnic diversity in our globalised culture is apparent.
By drawing correlations between sociological culture theory, the progressive change of public consensus advocated by millennials, and Hollywood's self-detrimental adherence to traditional tropes of racial profiling, the contemporary filmography exemplified in this essay indicate that the demeaning and subversive qualities of the industry's traditional ethnic profiling is still prominent today. Whilst audience research advocates an increasing awareness towards this area of racial relations, the re-evaluation of race-representation on the big screen has become an ever more pressing and necessary endeavour.

Brown analyzes Shakespeare’s tragedy, Titus Andronicus, in light of Black Lives Matter and explores the concept of (racial) profiling. Brown argues that Titus stages the deindividualizing effects of racism and, consequently, contributes to a discourse about race in the early modern period that still resonates today. Overall, “‘Is Black so Base a Hue?’” presents Titus as a symptomatic case of anti-black violence. In conclusion, Brown turns to Julie Taymor’s 1999 Titus film adaptation and considers the complementary timelessness and timeliness of her work and Shakespeare’s.

Purpose – There has been limited analysis on the intersections of race, gender, inequality (e.g. education, income), and procedural/distributive justice and the perceived prevalence of racially biased policing. Using data from a sample of New York City residents who were asked to judge the New York City Police Department on measures related to racially biased policing and to procedural/distributive justice, this paper builds a perception of discrimination composite tied to perceived personal experience with officer bias and to beliefs regarding the perceived prevalence and justification for such behavior.

Design/methodology/approach – First, the bivariate relation between race and the perception of discrimination composite is examined. Then, logistic regression is employed to explain the composite with the complement of demographic and attitudinal variables. Finally, split sample analyses are conducted to examine demographic and attitudinal variables separately for blacks and non-blacks.

Findings – Blacks were three times more likely than non-blacks to perceive that racially biased policing was widespread, unjustified, and personally experienced, and this finding held after controlling for demographic and attitudinal variables. It suggests that the “black effect” operates independently of income and education, raising questions about the claim that race has made way for class in key aspects of social life.

This report is the result of collective work by the “Experiences of Encounters with the Police in Ottawa” research team. The research project was initiated and conducted by David Moffette, Sadia Jama, Lindsay Snow, and Chris Bruckert.
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Over the last decade, a series of high-profile instances of police misconduct in Ottawa resulted in law enforce- ment coming under increased scrutiny. In this context the Experiences of Encounters with the Police in Ottawa (EEPO) research sought to document the experiences of individuals from disproportionately policed communities during encounters with police. The report draws on 208 encounter report forms and 43 interviews with individuals who had an interaction with police in Ottawa in the year prior to data collection.

Brand management can be described as an ongoing procedure that usually involves the task of sustaining consistency around the brand and effectively delivering on the values that a company holds dearly to forge favorable association and maintain long-term relationships with the target audience (Heding, Knudtzen, and Bjerre, 2015). This also comprises facets like visual presentation, packaging, competition, customer satisfaction, and so forth. It is also considered an important business practice that is utilized by companies of all sizes who endeavor to remain relevant within the minds of today’s powerful customers. Even though most organizations try to enhance the reputation and image of their brands in the eyes of their customers through building trust, providing high-quality products/services, and ensuring a courteous attitude towards their customers, their strategies and approaches are not always infallible (Kelley, Sheehan, and Jugenheimer, 2015).
Nevertheless, under any situation of crisis, those organizations who become successful in walking the talk by responding in an authentic and effective manner often emerge even stronger than those companies who fail to do so in such situations. This is also true for Starbucks that had to face a similar problem when it was accused of discriminating against two of its African-American customers in one of its stores at Philadelphia that caused it to face backlash from its customers on social media. However, the appropriate reputational management approaches which were utilized by Starbucks enabled it to manage this crisis appropriately, which helped it to win back the trust of its disgruntled customers (Shirdastian, Laroche, and Richard, 2019). Thus, this report will analyze the reputation management strategy of Starbucks that helped it to reduce the hostility among its customers and enabled it to maintain its brand reputation for which it is famous globally. The report will also provide details associated with different theories of branding and relate it with existing strategies of Starbucks that have enabled it to create brand awareness and brand recall among its customers. Furthermore, it will also highlight how successful Starbuck was in improving its image through its brand reputation management strategies that allowed it to win back the trust of its customers.

"This report presents new evidence that the Toronto Police Service (TPS) is not complying with the City of Toronto’s Access Without Fear directives and often violates its own partial “Don’t Ask” policy.

Since the TPS has only implemented a partial “Don’t Ask” policy and remains opposed to a practice of non-disclosure, we hold the position that the Toronto Police Service remains an inaccessible service for undocumented Torontonians who fear being reported to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), and potentially detained and deported. Data recently obtained through Access to Information requests also confirm what many undocumented Torontonians and service providers have been saying for years: that Toronto police officers continue to practice racial profiling to inquire into Torontonians’ immigration status, in contravention of their own “Don’t Ask” commitment.

We have found that the TPS is the most frequent user of the CBSA’s Warrant Response System. Described as “an important component in effecting removal orders” by the CBSA, the call centre is available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week to law enforcement officers who want to inquire whether an immigration warrant exists against a particular individual. In the period for which we have obtained data (part of 2014 and 2015), the TPS is responsible for 31% of all calls made by all law enforcement and transit agencies across the country. The TPS inquired more often than the RCMP, and more often than the police services of Montreal, Quebec City, Calgary and Vancouver combined.

The reason for these calls is also shocking. The data provided by the CBSA show that TPS calls were rarely for “database verification” or "warrant inquiry." Rather, 83% of all calls were placed to perform a “status check” – to actively seek out information about someone’s immigration situation. This troubling information confirms what we already knew: that TPS is not accessible to people with precarious immigration status and actively seeks to identify immigration status of undocumented Torontonians, putting them in danger of indefinite detention without charges or trial or deportation to places where their lives may be at grave risk."

--- Report commissioned by No One Is Illegal-Toronto. Co-authored by David Moffette, Karl Gardner, No One Is Illegal-Toronto, and the Immigration Legal Committee of the Law Union of Ontario.

---- See: http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/ImmigrationsDirtyWork

Set in the early 2010s, the backdrop of Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire (2017) is a familiar one to contemporary readers, colored by the rise of far-right populist movements and the increase in anti-Muslim initiatives. This article examines how the novel engages with new Orientalist representations post-9/11 on two levels. Firstly, Shamsie's novel is shaped by the political narratives of the War on Terror and, in turn, responds to the upshot of these new configurations of power, reflecting how the difficulty of making sense of 9/11 exacerbated the Orientalist binary of East and West. Secondly, the novel reflects on the unenviable choice, for female kin to male terrorists, of either being Orientalized or re-orientalizing, a form of self-perpetrated Othering. This study is framed by re-orientalism theory in its analysis of how the East continues to engage the West in increasingly self-aware, multi-layered ways, constantly renegotiating positions of power and influence.

Most sociological research on racial discrimination has had an “inter-racial” focus. That is, researchers have been principally concerned with the disparate treatment that people of color receive relative to Whites in different social contexts. However, recent theoretical work emerging from legal studies sug- gests that an alternative conception of “intra-racial” discrimination exists that extends beyond colorism. This theory of intra-racial discrimination stipulates that many organizations in the “post-racial” era desire some measure of racial diversity. Yet, in their efforts to achieve this racial diversity they screen people of color based on their degree of racial salience. Whether a given person of color is hired, promoted, or in the case of college admissions, accepted, is a function of whether or not Whites within the organization consider them racially palatable, or not overly concerned with race. This creates an incentive for people of color to work their identity to allay any concerns among Whites that they may be too racially salient. In this paper I critically review this work and attempt to further buttress its claims by highlighting how this process has clear historical precedent. I conclude by showing how the audit method can be used to empirically examine this practice contemporarily.

Community policing is a varying operation. Recent scholarship has attempted to grapple with this variation by examining differences in the way community policing operates across space (e.g., from neighbourhood to neighbourhood), but has problematically overlooked the issue of variation over time. Aiming to analyze both geographical and historical variation, this article examines community policing in the city of Montreal between 1978 and 1994. In this period, I argue, community policing embodied at least three distinct logics, each of which were linked to variations in the racial politics of the city: (1) a logic of collaboration, (2) a logic of compromise, and (3) a logic of counter-insurgency. These three logics, emerging at specific points in time, were also specific in their geography. Documenting geographical and historical variations in community policing, I conclude, can help to link diverse forms of policing to the differentiated socio-spatial hierarchies that shape it and better contribute to the making of what Gilmore (2017) "abolition geographies."

The United States is at a pivotal moment in terms of rethinking class and racial inequality within the criminal justice system. However, there is a lack of shared conceptual tools to frame this debate. First, there is no clear or comprehensive theoretical tool to describe, categorize, or analyze class and racial inequality throughout the criminal justice process. Current tools focus, separately, on the enactment of laws, on the performance of police officers, on the actions of judges, juries, and prosecutors, or on the administration of punishment. Second, scholars use different language to describe how inequality operates in each of the mentioned stages within the criminal justice process. Third, there is a lack of conceptual precision about the mechanisms through which inequality operates. These three problematic aspects of the conceptual framing result in ambiguity at the moment of discussing consistent crime policy. This study helps overcome this gap and offer conceptual tools that can serve as analytical categories to precisely describe and analyze inequality within the criminal justice system. This article also puts the suggested categories in practice to analyze the functioning of the criminal justice system in the United States since the 1970s. Overall, this article proposes that only a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial approach to define and analyze crime control will help overcome the current situation of conceptual ambiguity, opening the path for thorough and lasting crime policies.

To cite this work/Para citar este trabajo: Vegh Weis, Valeria “Criminal Selectivity in the United States. A History Plagued by Class & Race Bias.” De Paul Journal of Social Justice, vol. 10, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1-31.

This work contains papers by six authors who participated in a 2007 conference about racial profiling convened by The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.  The authors who wrote the papers represent
various disciplines, perspectives and experiences.
They all agree that racial profiling cannot be tolerated
in a multi-cultural society and accept that
racial profiling is not an effective law enforcement
strategy. However, they take different positions
about whether profiling is, in fact, practiced in
Canada and have different reasons for rejecting
profiling.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

A tese analisa a articulação entre práticas policiais cotidianas e a conformação do policiamento ostensivo militarizado protagonizado pela Polícia Militar. O presente trabalho partiu de entrevistas e análise de dados oficiais da segurança pública paulista para compreender como os policiais, durante o policiamento ostensivo, selecionam as pessoas que sofrerão as investidas da polícia e, por conseguinte, do sistema de justiça criminal. A partir daí foi possível entender, de forma específica, quais são os públicos e os crimes mais vigiados pelos policiais militares e, de forma abrangente, as características do modelo de policiamento ostensivo paulista. Constatou-se que o objetivo do policiamento ostensivo é flagrar suspeitos criminais, o que incute à PM a responsabilidade de selecionar e “retirar” das ruas aqueles que os policiais identificam como “bandidos”. Para tal estão disponíveis à PM, sobretudo, três recursos: a) o aprisionamento ou b) a eliminação daqueles identificados como bandidos e c) o tirocínio policial enquanto ferramenta para diferenciar “bandidos” e “cidadãos de bem”. Uma das conclusões da pesquisa é a constatação da ampla utilização do tirocínio pelos policiais que atuam no policiamento ostensivo e de seu aspecto racializado; isto significa que, para a fundamentação da suspeita policial, são utilizados marcadores raciais. Desta forma, o tirocínio, ao lado da letalidade policial e do aprisionamento se tornaram responsáveis pelo acúmulo de desvantagens para a população jovem e negra, no que tange ao direito à vida segura e a um maior risco de serem presos por crimes patrimoniais em relação ao restante da população. No mais, constatou-se que nos últimos vinte anos há uma insistência por parte da segurança pública paulista num policiamento ostensivo com tais características, mesmo diante do insucesso na diminuição no número de crimes patrimoniais no estado de São Paulo.

Palavras-chave: Policiamento ostensivo, Polícia Militar, Racialização, Tirocínio, Letalidade Policial, Prisões em Flagrante.

My dissertation examines the different ways that Mexican-origin farm worker households are racialized and integrated into the U.S. capitalist economy and rural society. There has been an exponential increase of Mexican-origin farm worker households in Washington State since 1976, Mexican populations in rural Washington have doubled and sometimes even tripled between the 1980 and 2010 U.S. Census. This demographic change in the make up of rural society has come with varying effects upon race consciousness for Mexican-origin farm worker households. My findings supported my hypothesis that early generations of Tejano or northern Mexico migrants had a different experience of racialization than migrant workers from central Mexico after the end of the Bracero program, and that these experiences differed from the experiences of indigenous, Triqui and Mixteco-speaking migrant workers from southern Mexico beginning in the 1990s after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The settlement of immigrant communities in rural areas in each of these waves of migration has had a profound influence upon each segment of agricultural worker’s experience of race consciousness, racialization, and xenophobic violence as they faced white supremacy of both the U.S. and Latin American varieties. The different degrees of integration of this diaspora into a new racial state has served to maintain a tiered wage system via renewed experiences of racial profiling, hyper-criminalization, surveillance and segregation in particular along the northern border.

Basing my dissertation project upon studies that addressed Mexican farm labor in U.S. capitalist agriculture, primarily in California. I conducted a long-term in situ ethnography, collected oral histories and used archival research methods to systematically document two strategies used by Sakuma Bros. Farms and Broetje Orchards to deal with the increased demand for labor in Washington State: a transnational system used in Berry picking and a company town system used in Apple production. My investigation paid close attention to whether or not these large vertically integrated agricultural firms were able to stabilize their respective labor force, whether they have been successful in reproducing a future labor force, and whether or not each strategy of organization was sustainable for both the growers and the farm worker households. I observed the everyday lived experience of Mexican-origin farm worker households articulated and/or integrated into each of these systems. I was able to document the everyday struggles, losses and triumphs of Mexican-origin labor-power at its conjuncture with capitalist agricultural modes of production in Washington State. One group of workers engaged a series of strikes and a launched a consumer boycott. The second set of workers engaged in more subtle negotiations of power with their employer. For the sake of making farmworker agency more visible I conclude my project with a historical context of farmworker struggles in the region.

Contemporary approaches to integrating "self" and the "other"—such as multiculturalism, cultural diversity, race relations, inclusiveness strategies, or identity politics—are flawed from the perspective of traditional thought. At their core, modernist ideologies are inimical to and destructive of all human diversity. The new face of antipathy to pluralism is becoming more deceptive as it grows less focused on respecting diversity and more on promoting ideological uniformity and the erection of a global monoculture. This essay argues that it is from a metaphysical perspective that human diversity can be fully understood and can seek to reconcile the dichotomy of "self" and the "other".

Boyce and Miller explore the expansive nature of post-9/11 US border policing, focusing on the US-Canada divide, and the increased racial-ethnic profiling of Latinos. This illustrates the Border Patrol's character as a national quasi-racial-ethnic police force, a development that raises a number of troubling questions that the authors identify and discuss.

Though states are founded in and dependent on successfully claiming a monopoly on the use of violent force and the certification of citizenship, these means suggest particular ends: the production of the social order. Police have the primary mandate to produce order and administer poverty. From a new abolitionist perspective, the particular social order of the U.S. is unique. The white race was founded through the production and maintenance of the color line and performed through a cross-class alliance of whites. Policing is deeply implicated in these processes. A historical account of police during the Herrenvolk era is provided. Finally, the persistence of racist policing is explained in light of a now officially color-blind political order, with officers functioning as petty sovereigns in a neoliberal era.