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Making Canada White: Law and the Policing of Bodies of Colour in the 1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Sherene H. Razack
Sherene H. Razack
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
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Abstract

The 1990s inaugurated a new era of policing the border, one in which a variety of legislative initiatives were introduced to regulate more tightly the flow of immigrants and refugees to Canada. Border control is closely linked to the internal policing of people of colour, stigmatising and monitoring such bodies in ways that clearly establish their subordinate status in the nation. In this article, I reflect on the practices involved in the policing of the border through an exploration of how individuals participate in, and experience, these practices. Specifically, I describe my own experience of how an individual judge performed the role of the imperial patriarch in a trial of a racial minority woman lawyer charged with immigration fraud. I do not make an empirical claim that the case I explore demonstrates racism and little else. Rather, my central concern is to describe the everyday performance of domination as it occurs in this trial. I seek to illustrate the kinds of things individuals say and do when they engage in making Canada White through the law and to suggest that such individual performances, in this case of hegemonic masculinity, are part of a national story of belonging, a story in which people of colour are marked as degenerate and white subjects are the bearers of culture and civilization. In the second half of the paper, I demonstrate this national mythology as it is expressed by elites.

Résumé

Les années 1990 inaugurèrent une nouvelle ère de surveillance des frontières, pendant laquelle une variété d'initiatives législatives furent introduites pour réguler de façon plus stricte les flux d'immigrants et de réfugiés au Canada. Le contrôle des frontières est intimement lié au traitement policier interne de gens de couleur qui stigmatise et gère ces corps de manières qui établissent clairement leur statut subordonné dans la nation. Dans cet article, je réfléchis aux pratiques de contrôle policier de la frontière, en explorant comment des individus participent et font l'expérience de telles pratiques. Je décris notamment ma propre expérience d'un juge qui joua le rôle d'un patriarche impérial lors d'un procès d'une avocate d'une minorité raciale, accusée de fraude d'immigration. Mon intention n'est pas de démontrer empiriquement que le cas étudié relève tout simplement du racisme. Je vise plutôt à décrire la domination comme pratique quotidienne, telle qu'elle se présente dans ce procès. J'illustre ainsi le genre de choses que des individus disent et font lorsqu'ils entreprennent de rendre le Canada Blanc grâce au droit, proposant que de telles performances individuelles—dans ce cas de masculinité hégémonique—font partie d'une histoire nationale d'appartenance, une histoire dans laquelle des gens de couleur sont marqués comme dégénérés alors que les sujets blancs sont porteurs de culture et de civilisation. Dans la deuxième partie du texte, je montre comment les élites expriment cette mythologie nationale.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 14 , Issue 01: Gender, Ethnicity, (Hetero)Sexuality, and Norms Genre, ethnicité, (hétéro)sexualité et normes , Spring/printemps 1999 , pp. 159 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1999

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