The Practice of Carding is Rarely Warranted In our society race is still quite prevalent. This is seen through the carding of black males and other tactics done by the police. This specific topic has been largely seen in the media in both America and in Canada. For the longest time black citizens in North America have been treated differently. Canada is seen as a peaceful country, but if people took a long look they would see that racism is still around and is affecting people everyday. Carding, the act of questioning and documenting “random” individuals when no specific offense has occurred. The police use the term random very lightly as most if not all people who are carded are young black males. When these people get carded it gets put …show more content…
Cole mentions how in his life he has been carded over fifty times in his life and for every time he mentions being carded in his article, he had not been doing anything to provoke these “random” carding experiences. The police have yet to provide a reason as to whether carding has helped decrease the rate of criminal activity in the city of Toronto. They also have not mentioned why the majority of people being carded are black. Cole says, “The Toronto Star crunched the numbers and found that in 2013, [twenty-five] per cent of people carded were black.” (Cole 2015). He also mentions the black people were seventeen times more likely to get carded than white people in 2013. He says that black people make up only 2.5 percent of the population, but 9.5 percent of prisoners are black. Cole speaks about the injustice in the legal system when he says, “ between 2009 and 2013, 15 per cent of black male inmates were assigned to maximum-security, compared to 10 per cent overall. If we’re always presumed guilty, and if we receive harsher punishments for the same crimes, then it’s no surprise that many of us end up in poverty, dropping out of school and reoffending.” (Cole 2015). If officers do not give black people the benefit of the doubt this cycle of criminal activity and this apprehension of people in authority will never stop. People in powers of authority need to start applying justice to their jobs when it comes to carding people. This debate of officers being racially discriminatory towards citizens in the community has been going on for ages. Should this not be a reason to rethink the way officers should be doing their job? If an issue continues over time it means that no real solution has come forward and they should produce one. This is an issue that needs to be overcome if officers want to gain the trust of its black