Thursday, June 5, 2008

If By "Entry Error", You Mean "Stereotyping", Then We're Talking...

A Winnipeg youth worker and rapper was pulled over in Winnipeg on Wednesday and accused of driving a stolen vehicle. The man and the youth he was mentoring, had guns pulled on them and were cuffed and thrown to the ground.

The vehicle was not stolen and did in fact belong to him. He never reported it stolen and was just leaving Starbucks with, did I mention, the young man he was mentoring?

The police say it was a "data entry error" and the man in question says it was "racial profiling" as he is a young black man who was driving a Chrysler 300.

You say "data entry error", I say "profiling". Semantics? I think not.

But remember, kids: Canada is not racist. Noppers. Not one bit.
* I used a nice old school picture of the Manitoba police force because they might as well be dressed as archaically as they act.

1 comment:

Nathanyel said...

Every police force, whatever the country's government, has their racist aspects...
Canada might be influenced in their prejudices against black people by their south- and backwards neighbor (hey, even stupidity can be an inspiration) so I'm proud to say here in Germany we don't suspect every black man riding a car to be a carjacker.
We have the Polish for that.

Funny anecdote about how even open-minded people, to which group I sometimes like to count myself, can have unintended racist thoughts: Just about two weeks ago, I got a ride home by a friend of a friend, whose number plates and person happened to be Polish. There were weird transparent plastic installations at the top of the car's windows, looked like small upside-down eaves gutters. When I asked him about those, he said they prevent wind getting in while driving, maybe he even mentioned something about the age of the car, which of course sounds kinda logical, but all I could think about was how this totally looked like it was a method to prevent breaking into the car using those slings you slip into slightly opened windows to lift the lock pegs....