Racial profiling in Toronto

One of the aims of this discussion paper is to critically analyze some of the dominant ideologies that form the foundation of many of the discourses on race, crime, and policing that have been disseminated by public authorities and the media in the weeks and months following the launching of the series of articles. [...] However, our earlier research and the research of many other scholars pointed to the importance of incorporating into study an Racial Profilin g in Toronto: Discourses of Domination, Mediation, and Opposition 5 examination of the discursive role of the media and their role in supporting and reinforcing the racialization and criminalizing of the Black community (see Entman and Rojecki, 2000; Fiske, [...] Throughout the rest of the paper, a more macro form of analysis is employed to analyze three different forms of discourse that emerged around the contestation over racial profiling: (1) the dominant discourses of police officials and other public authorities; (2) the discourses of mediation; and (3) the discourses of resistance and opposition. [...] These include: (1) the discursive response of the police and other public authorities to the findings of The Star’s series on racial profiling; (2) the mediating discourses of individuals such as The Honourable Lincoln Alexander, former Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Ontario and former Chair of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and Keith Norton, Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Comm [...] The theoretical core of this paper is embedded in the broader notion that the discursive reproduction of racism by the White dominant elite reinforces the power of the Racial Profilin g in Toronto: Discourses of Domination, Mediation, and Opposition 20 Theoretical Perspectives Informing the Study dominant cultural, social, political, and economic institutions, and at the same time, legitimizes sys