Module 10

A Teacher Teaches about Bias

“Crime has no culture or race”
[ Susan Riley, The Ottawa Citizen ]

If racism was always stark, violent and overt, it would be easy to recognize and easier to deal with.
 
But unfortunately, racism can be mild and unremarkable, part of the daily texture of our lives.
 
Over the holiday, for example, three men were stabbed in a late-night brawl in the Saigon Capital restaurant on Somerset Street. The restaurant is Vietnamese: those involved in the fracas were of Asian origin.
 
Does this make it "Asian crime" as headlines in our newspaper and elsewhere suggested? Does the fact that some extortion was involved make the crime particularly Asian? And what Asians? Vietnamese? Chinese? Indonesian?
 
Or was it merely crime? Is any attempt to define it further careless prejudice or is it a vital aspect of competent police work? Last fall, when Ottawa high school students were involved in a drunken encounter with Hull police, no one talked about "white crime."
 
To be fair, a story in the Citizen concluded that there is no crime wave within Ottawa's Asian community. It also documented real concerns in Asian communities in Toronto and Vancouver, where thugs and drug-peddlers prey on their own kind and the larger society.
 
But this still isn't Asian crime. It is crime within the Asian community. The distinction is critical.
 
The Citizen story also quoted a Vietnamese-born lawyer, Nhung Thuy Hoang, who defends Asian-Canadians accused of various crimes. The most common charges according to her? Theft and wife assault.
 
These don't sound like Asian crimes: on the contrary, they are common to almost every culture. Imagine the uproar if we started referring to wife abuse as "male crime".
 
For all that, the Asian community does pose a special challenge to police forces, not because Asians are more mendacious by nature, but because their language and culture is so foreign.
 
In Vancouver and Toronto, police have had special Asian investigative units since the `70s. Newspapers occasionally feature lurid accounts of their struggles with "Asian youth gangs" that operate protection rackets, smuggle drugs and manage prostitutes.
 
(Again the language is loaded. If a group of Asian boys wearing leather, chains and aggressive attitude shoves you of the sidewalk, is it an Asian youth gang or just a bunch of punks?)
 
Ottawa, too, has an Asian unit, formed in 1987, the only squad devoted to one ethnic community. Its professed aim is to assist, rather than target, Asian-Canadians.
 
Nhung Thuy Hoang applauds this approach, noting that "a lot of police are not very familiar with our culture."
She recalls one client, a Vietnamese woman, who was charged when she burned dry leaves in a city park a common practice in her native country. Other Vietnamese are charged with abandonment when they let their children wander at large, as they used to in refugee camps.
 
Still others are mortified when their custom of showing children physical affection is interpreted by non-Asian neighbors as child abuse.
 
There is, says the lawyer, no need for protection from youth gangs within Ottawa's Asian community. But there is need for educated, sensitive policing.
 
What she is talking about, of course, is the other side of racism: a respectful recognition of difference. Only when we — the police and society at large — achieve that will "Asian crime" disappear.

“Crime not black and white”
[ Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen ]

Sometimes to see an issue right way up, you need to stand it on its head. Imagine a story that read like this:
 
Ottawa police are swamped in their attempts to stem a wave of crime that ranges from fraud, to dealing drugs, to murder.
 
"There's one common thread in all of this," says Ottawa Police Chief Brian Ford. "In each case, the criminals are white."
 
While statistics on crime are not recorded by race, Ottawa police estimate that fully 90 per cent of crimes committed locally are by whites.
 
Police are calling for the hiring of more white officers, to help them better understand the customs of the white criminals.
 
Ford, who is white, is frank about the racial element in the crime spree. "Some of these families have been in Canada for generations. The scary part is, the criminals look just like you or me."
 
Police sources say that white criminals often wear sports gear or even business suits, but there is no distinctive dress code that could alert potential victims to the presence of a white criminal.
 
Spokesmen for local whites were shocked by the numbers, but defensive.
 
Jacquelin Holzman is a member of Ottawa City Council, an all white group that is believed to exert considerable influence within the white community. She goes by the street name The Mayor.
 
"Certainly the white people I know are the exception here," Holzman said.
 
"Land developers, lobbyists, people like that. All fine citizens. We sometimes forget about them when the media write another story about white crime.''
The figures on white crime are "stunning, spectacular, stupendous'' said Counsellor Richard Cannings. Cannings, who is white, is proposing a series of one-way streets and road closings to keep white criminals out of his ward.
 
Some criminologists question whether race is the dominating factor in determining criminal activity, pointing to poverty and lack of jobs.
 
"If government could find a way to put white people to work, many wouldn't need to turn to crime," says Prof. John Smith.
 
Spokesmen for Canada's native peoples were relieved that the white crime problem has finally been brought out into the open.
 
"We want genealogical testing done on these people so they can be deported to their homelands. Let England and Ireland deal with their own problems," said one.
 
Sounds silly when you put it that way doesn't it? Almost as silly as having to seriously discuss the notion that because some blacks are criminals, all blacks are no good.
 
We have read in the last few days about Jamaican posses, the latest ethnic crime threat. Now Jamaican-Canadians have to defend themselves again. Like when Ben Johnson, the famous Canadian runner became a Jamaican again after he used steroids. Like when Clinton Gayle, accused of murdering a Toronto police officer, became a Jamaican although he has lived in this country since he was eight.
 
One has to feel sorry for Jamaican-Canadians coping with the exaggerated publicity and no doubt fearing the white crime wave too.