White cops and black men can be an unhappy mix. Last week, all hell broke loose when a white cop intercepted a black man trying to break into a big house near Harvard University. Unfortunately for the cop, the man was Henry Louis Gates, a prominent African-American scholar, and he lives there. Tempers flared. Accusations of racial profiling filled the air. Prof. Gates was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct, i.e., mouthing off. It turned out the cop was a race-relations trainer. Barack Obama got involved, declared them both fine men and invited them to the White House for a beer.
If only things worked that way in Canada, Instead, we have Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal. It has ruled that an individual can be convicted for racism, even when it’s totally unconscious.
In March, 2005, Constable Michael Shaw was on patrol in the Bridle Path, an ultra-affluent Toronto neighbourhood he knew well. He was showing a female trainee the ropes. Down the street, he spotted an unfamiliar letter-carrier delivering the mail. He asked him for ID, ran his name through the computer, thanked him for his trouble and verified with a regular postie that the new guy was a fill-in. The letter-carrier was not insulted, detained or charged with any crime.
Innocuous? Not to Ronald Phipps, the fill-in letter-carrier. He is black. The cop is white. Mr. Phipps decided he’d been a victim of racial profiling, and took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal. In a ruling last month, the adjudicator agreed.
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“According to human-rights commissioner Barbara Hall, the case sends a message that “systemic discrimination … requires hard work to get rid of.” But it sends another message: The tribunal is an easy mark.”
Sorry Barbara, the case sends a very clear message that justice is becoming increasingly arbitrary in our country. Why are these pseudo-judicial bodies, the HRCs, not disbanded? Why are we, the taxpayers, continuing to pay the salaries of people like Ms. Hall performing such duties? Why are the federal and provincial Conservative parties not demanding that the HRCs cease to receive public funding?
Thanks for the Questions Cunctator. My Conservative MP will be expecting my support soon. I hope you don’t mind if I add them to the list that I will have satisfactory answers to before he gets any.