“A young [man] got it bad because I’m brown, not the other colour, so police think, they have the authority to kill a minority”.
- Ice Cube/N.W.A., 1988

I should preface this piece by saying that I am taking the above quote from a well-known N.W.A protest song, not to endorse the song’s overall message, but to illustrate some of the feelings and criticisms of (likely many) African Americans toward police. Beyond that, it may even say something about public sentiment when a song like this managed to rank 417 on Rolling Stone magazines "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Ferguson, Missouri, became infamous when Michael Brown was killed by a local police officer on August 9.

Much has been said about this incident itself, quite apart from the riots that ensued. In this piece, I hope to address some of the broader issues that have been addressed in litigation generally.

Racism is often extremely hard to prove. As awareness has improved and it has become less socially acceptable to discriminate on the basis of race, racism has become covert and subtle in many instances. Quite apart from that, many people continue to harbour unconscious stereotypes about minorities. Give yourself a real gut check and see if you fit into the latter category.

Often, there are many ways to ostensibly justify adverse treatment on some basis other than race. Criminal behaviour or some other misconduct is often such a basis. We see this in some news agencies’ reporting that Michael Brown had robbed a convenience store before being shot. That is really nothing other than a character smear, designed to suggest that he was the kind of person who deserved to be shot, ignoring the actual confrontation that led to the shooting. What is critical is what the officer knew and how Brown responded to that officer. However, much of this has become lost in rhetoric and emotion.

One group over at 9gag.tv ran a little social experiment. Three actors were filmed while trying to steal a bike in a park: a young white man, a young black man, and an attractive blonde white woman.

What happened was in line with any Dave Chapelle sketch. People ignored the white man (one black woman even opined that a young white male would not be walking around stealing bikes in broad daylight). However, many people confronted his black doppelganger, some in a very aggressive manner.

As for the woman? Forget the suckers buying drinks for women who will never hand over their phone numbers. A few men, one even with his wife, stopped to help the good-looking blonde woman steal the bike—even while knowing that she was trying to steal the bike.

That piece aside, there have been far more scientific studies done that tend to prove the existence of racial profiling among authority figures in particular.

In 1995, Ontario commissioned a formal inquiry into systemic racism in the criminal justice system. One finding was that 40 percent of defence counsel perceived minorities to be subject to harsher treatment than the Caucasian majority, but only 10 percent of Crown prosecutors perceived there to be disparate treatment. Thirty-three percent of provincial court judges appointed after 1989 believed there to be unequal treatment, but only 10 percent of judges appointed before 1989 shared that perception.

Perception is important. With things as intangible and subjective as this, it might even matter more than substance.

There are more concrete figures available than just perception. A 2007 study by Dr. Kelly Welch and reported in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice pointed out that, while black people accounted 13 percent of the American population, they represented 75 percent of its drug prisoners. This is despite white people accounting for approximately 75 percent of America’s illegal drug users. There is a clear disparity here. Not to dwell on Dave Chappelle, but this conclusion suggests that he might fairly capture the actual dynamic in this clip.

Many studies have looked into racial profiling by police in Canada and the U.S. One study conducted in the U.S. following the viewing of thousands of hours of videotape found that 70-80 percent of all people stopped by police on the Florida Turnpike were either Hispanic or African Americans.

Other studies looked into the relationship between police searches at the street level and “hit” rates (i.e. the rate at which people stopped were actually found with illegal items). Most of these studies concluded that black people are over-represented in street-level searches, although white people have a higher hit rate. This suggests that minorities are subject to a higher level of suspicion and scrutiny than Caucasians. Surprised?

One study among high school students, which controlled for factors such as suspicious behaviour, found that black students were 4.1 times more likely to be stopped by police than white students.

Do we chalk this up to overt racism or unconscious stereotyping? I hope it is not terribly naïve of me to believe that the latter is likely far more common than the former. Stereotypes are often based on perceptions (see above, albeit in a different context). Of course, there is the kind of stereotypes that we can poke fun at with no harm done (or so I’d like to think). On the other hand, there are divisive stereotypes that lead one to believe, rightly or wrongly, that certain ethnicities have certain inclinations.

In 2005, the Tinseltown mall and Securiguard were taken to task for evicting First Nations persons from the mall without good reason. In a 211 page decision, among other things, the Human Rights Tribunal found that stereotypes lead security guards to believe that First Nations people with mobility problems and other disabilities were likely intoxicated, without any real inquiry into whether or not they were actually intoxicated. Part of that decision turned on the fact that the stereotype of “drunken Indians” was endemic in Canadian society. Sadly, I have to agree that that stereotype exists.

In Canada, I think it is undeniable that the bulk of racial stereotyping has been directed at First Nations. Much of this is rooted in colonialism and the misguided efforts to “take the Indian out the child”. While we are proud that Canada consistently ranks as one of the best places in the world to live in, we have discrete populations essentially living in third world conditions. Without going into the social complexities of those populations and the cause of their troubles, one cannot ignore the severe impact that residential schools and historical European exploitation play in causing those difficulties.

In the United States, a good part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s can be traced to the GI Bill during World War II. The GI Bill significantly increased the number of African Americans getting a college education, thus empowering them to participate in sectors of society that had previously been off limits.

In Canada, there is good reason to believe that the country is either on the brink of or in the midst of its own civil rights movement. Canadian law is moving away, albeit extremely slowly, from the paternalistic approach to dealing with First Nations epitomized by the Indian Act and the notion that First Nations require the Crown’s protection. The common law is protecting more First Nations rights, most notably in the Tsilhqot'in case this past June, although legislative reform and a new political attitude is required on many fronts.

Importantly, for the first time in decades, there is an entire generation of First Nations millennials whose parents were not subjected to residential schools and who can expect a better upbringing than their parents might have had. First Nations bands are organizing and incorporating businesses and organizations for the betterment of their people. They are gaining traction at bargaining tables. There is a population of over one million people whose social and economic potential has historically been impeded by racism. This is likely to change in our lifetime.