Author Archives: Kelly Reznick

In both historic and modern times, racial minorities have made up the underprivileged and disenfranchised classes in the Western World. The linked article highlights the similarities of the “solutions” to minority crime in both present and past times.

From our class reading “Typecasting” by Ewen & Ewen, we were introduced to the “pictorial average” or “ideal type” revealed by composite portraiture, a technology developed by Galton. He believed the “generic images” produced from layered pictures provided how an individual conformed to a certain “type” or group. An example of groups he composited were criminals. Thus, the individual portraits that made up the composites were believed to all conform to the criminal “type” in some way that linked all the criminals in the group together. This thinking paved the way to one of Galton’s other projects: eugenics. Eugenics promoted the racial superiority of Whites over non-whites, due to physical differences among the races such as bone structure, facial profiles, and brain size. Because eugenics was based in physical measurements, it was seen as valid and scientific. Galton used eugenics to identify Europeans as being superior racial stock, and to mark non-whites as inferior racial stock whose genes were a threat to White genes if racial mixing occurred. Eugenics has therefore been used to justify genocide and racial profiling of minorities in Western countries.

Eugenics was taken to the next level, out of the laboratory and applied to social and political problems faced by the privileged White class in European cities. 19th century urban populations were exploding, circumstances which demanded techniques to zero in on and identify criminals within the city’s masses. Photography and statistics emerged simultaneously to physically identify and categorize criminals. On the political side, the exclusivity of suffrage for White property owners was being eradicated and expanded to different classes, such as black men. Because this threatened the historical White power in the West, Bertillon and similar men opened the Society of Anthropology to study the differences between human races. Based on his research, Bertillon published “The Savage Races” in which he stated that the size of a black man’s brain would make his intelligence level to be that of an “idiot” compared to a white man. The book used physical differences to “prove” that the black race was genetically and  intellectually inferior to the White race.

Bertillon’s racial science was applied to urban life as it became a standard for Western police departments. Bertillonage was also used by criminologists and public administrators who saw cities as dangerous places to be subdued, rather than as places where economic and social crises needed to be solved. Therefore, the “management” and suppression of racial minorities was justified by racial science. But the hidden aim was really to maintain the status quo of White power in the West.

After the recent London riots, UK PM David Cameron is facing a similar problem and offering up a similar solution as to what happened in the past. Cameron’s reaction to recent uprisings of the marginalised and disenfranchised in England has been to declare “all-out war on gangs and gang culture” and has called for widening the use of US suppression models of policing.”

Instead of trying to fix the social and economic problems faced by rioting Londoners, Cameron is encouraging anti-gang policing which will, according to activists, scholars, and civil rights organizations, further increase racial profiling and immigrant deportation. The power of police to detain, search, and arrest someone bases on suspicion alone – or because they fit “a certain profile”, goes back to the first half of the 19th century with the passage of “sus law” (“suspected person”). Through the 20th century, the “profile” was often race-based and targeted non-white immigrant populations. In addition to economic devastation, the police use of racial profiling and “sus law” played a significant role in uprisings in black communities in England in the early 1980s. The reinvigoration of “sus law” has been championed by tough-on-crime politicians in the UK up to the present day. Similarly, the use of civil orders were championed by Tony Blair in 1990s to target “anti-social behaviour” including loitering, begging, and public drinking.”

Criminologists argue that the targeting of anti-social behavior adversely affects racial minorities, as well as the homeless, the poor, homosexuals, and other marginalized groups. What is most devastating is that with the arrests and punishments being increased due to gang affiliation, the criminal records of the arrested will further prevent these classes from social opportunities such as education and job advancement, continuing the cycle of the disenfranchised minority classes in Britain.

I chose this article to signify how racial profiling is still being used to single out and target minorites since its earliest developments as Galton’s composite portraitures. I also chose it to show how both past and present solutions have been to try to control the minorities through policing, rather than society as a whole coming together to help solve the inequalities these people face.

– Kelly Reznick

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181872718908109.html