(#1) Los Angeles: In early August of the year 1969, five victims were brutally murdered by gun and knife. Hundreds of stab wounds were also uncovered.

(#2) September 1998: Police in Vancouver, B.C. begin reviewing dozens of files of missing women from the city’s Downtown Eastside.
December 9, 2007: A man is found guilty of six counts of second degree murder. This same man is charged with 20 further counts as well.

(#3) Three men were charged for committing a spree of bank robberies in 2007 that culminated in the death of an FBI agent.

Can you tell the race of the offender(s) who committed each of these crimes?

.... didn’t think so.

Here are the criminals who match up with the above crimes:
Offender #1 : Charles Manson
{white}



Offender #2: Robert Pickton
{white}



Offenders #3:
{Hespanic}
Wilfredo Berrios,
Efrain Lynn and
Francisco Herrera-Genao

The point of these criminal examples is to prove that members of one specific race is not increasingly likely to being a serial killer, bank robber, rapist or anyone who is a danger to society for that matter.

The nature of a crime committed has to do with personal choices, circumstances, mentality and a number of other factors – none of which include race.

This leads me to my next question; why when a man hides the dead bodies of many women in his farm are all farmers not then stereotyped and profiled? If instead of a caucasion, Robert Pickton had been a Muslim and instead of being a farmer he was a cab driver – how would this case have been used to target the Islam minority? The truth is though, that he is a white man, therefore his race was not punished for his actions, because white privilege would never allow that to happen.

An obvious solution that would force change to happen

A good start to making those in authority treat all diverse members of society (criminal, innocent or suspected) equally would be to include visible minorities as hired law enforcement. Yes, there are currently police officers who are not just white – but when you look at the statistics there is definitely room for improvement in including a range of nationalities among those who protect and serve.



In 2006, the Law Commission of Canada stated that "…in spite of concerted efforts to increase diversity in police services in Canada, women, members of visible and ethnic minority groups, as well as Aboriginal peoples, remain significantly underrepresented, compared to their representation in the communities being policed" (based on 1996 Census data). Data from the 2006 Census show that, for Canada as a whole, this continues to be the case for visible minorities and women.

Although this picture may look strange at first, I urge you to analyze why it forces you to do a double take - is it because there are hardly any officers of the Muslim nationality? The turban the clearly represents another culture? Is it the fact that a job that is so exclusively "Canadian" is being performed by somebody who does not appear to be born in Canada? If the reason was any of these suggestions, my point as to how minorities are not as readily included in law enforcement has been proven.

The role of the media in racial stereotypes & crime

This is an interesting perspective of how the media presents minorities. To see the entire article click on the link below.

No one wants to be called a racist. When you ask people why they think African-Americans are on a crime spree, Latinos are flooding the country with drugs, or Asian-Americans are banding together to put "real Americans"--read whites--out of business, they will immediately tell you they saw it on the local news or read it in a newspaper.

So, what's the answer? The more than 5,000 minority journalists at a recent Unity conference in Atlanta said the solution is to increase racial and ethnic minorities in news management ranks so that those who report, edit, and decide what goes on the media are proportionately representative of the public at large.

The number of minorities in the media have increased from four percent to more than 10% in recent years, but the Unity participants believe that rate isn't fast enough. Certainly, they are right. It is unconscionable that the men and few women who manage the media continue to do so without the benefit of enough input from racial and ethnic minorities to make a difference.



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2594_v123/ai_15897250/

White Thief Disguises Himself As Black Man To Rob 6 Banks

This video shows how quickly it was believed that a bank
robber was African American, especially being based on
stereotypes this would naturally be the assumption anyways.

The criminal who did in fact commit the crime used
the misconceptions about race in modern society for
his own benefit - and to an extent it worked.

What does this say about how people of differing
nationalities are either critically examined or assumed
to have behaved in certain ways?

The media plays a huge role in filtering those who are presented as committing crimes and being dangerous to society. How many times has the opening criminal description of a suspect been “a tall black man ...” or “a Hispanic expected to be escaping to his home land...” on the evening news? The norm of describing and grouping criminals primarily by their race perpetuates who is assumed to be more likely of acting in categories of deviant ways.

The first line of the above post seems to sum up modern North American attitudes very well, nobody wants to be accused of being racist, or have their opinions on race viewed as being discriminatory instead of political. But by the media delivering evidence and language that isolates minorities as being the “visibly dangerous members of society,” people are continually being classified by their nationalities and racial appearances. Pertaining to crime, the content that media outlets surround society with don’t just create stereotypes - they cause entire races to be victims of propaganda and fabrication.