Professor (Emerita) Frances Henry & Course Director Carol Tator
Theoretical Perspectives on Racial Profiling in Postmodern Societies

This paper will explore the growing contestation over racial profiling. The manifestations of racial profiling and racialized policing examined in this paper reach well beyond law enforcement. The processes of racialization are deeply embedded in the ideological frameworks and interlocking discursive spaces and structures of lawmaking, immigration, criminal justice, education, the media, and various other vehicles of social control and representation.

Dominant White authorities have attempted to control the debate over racial profiling with a number of discursive strategies. Similarly, the crisis over racial profiling has produced a set of oppositional narratives from those are the objectives of racialization. It is argued that these counter-narratives serve as primary data in a study of the processes of racialization, as well as a powerful educational and organizational tool.

Frances Henry Frances Henry, Professor Emerita, is one of Canada’s leading experts in the study of racism and anti-racism. Since the mid seventies when she published the first study of attitudes towards people of colour, she has consistently pioneered research in this field. Her most recent book (co-authored with Carol Tator) is on racial profiling in policing but it also demonstrates how profiling is carried out in other institutional arenas of society. Published in 2006, it is called Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of a ‘Few Bad Apples’. Other books include co-authoring the third edition of The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society. This work demonstrates how the ‘new racism’ here identified with the concept of ‘democratic racism’ manifests within Canadian institutions. She has also co-authored Challenging Racism in the Arts, 1998. Her recent work on racist discourse in the media, Discourses of Domination: Racial Bias in the Canadian English Language Press, 2002 uses critical discourse analysis as a tool for deconstructing racism in media representation.

As an anthropologist, Professor Henry’s area of specialization is the Caribbean. She has written the only ethnographic study of the Caribbean community in Toronto, The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto: Learning to Live with Racism, and has recently published Reclaiming African Religion in Trinidad: The Orisha and Spiritual Baptist Faiths, 2003. Her latest work on the Caribbean is co-edited (with Dwaine Plaza) and titled Returning to the Source: The Final Stage of the Caribbean Migration Circuit, 2006.
Carol Tator has worked on the frontlines of the anti-racism and equity movement for over three decades as an advocate, educator, and scholar. She teaches anti-racism and equity in the Department of Anthropology at York University. Carol has published widely on the subject of racism and has co-authored four books with Frances Henry including: The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society, 3rd ed. 2006, Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of a“Few Bad Apples” 2006, Discourses of Domination: Racism in the Canadian English Language Press, 2002 and Challenging Racism in the Arts: Case Studies of Controversy and Conflict, 1998. Our research focuses on an analysis of the impact of racialized ideologies, discourses, policies and practices across a wide range of institutional sectors.