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Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder Pamela George

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Sherene H. Razack
Sherene H. Razack
Affiliation:
Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, OISE /University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6,srazack@oise.utoronto.ca
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Abstract

In 1995, Pamela George was brutally murdered by two young university athletes. The men were convicted of manslaughter and given light sentences. In this article, I examine the murder of Pamela George as gendered racial violence and continuing colonization of Aboriginal peoples. I suggest that as an Aboriginal woman working in the space of prostitution, Pamela George represented a body that could be violated with impunity. Respectable white men who journey temporarily into the zone of degeneracy to engage in an encounter in prostitution are not held accountable for violence that occurs so routinely in the spaces and on the bodies of the Other. Further, this relationship between bodies, space, and justice, in which zones inhabited by racial Others as well as zones of prostitution (often one and the same) are considered to be spaces in which universal justice does not operate, suggests how the violence remains invisible in the law. The constitutive features of this violence, its role in making white men and white settler societies, suggest why it keeps on happening and is so consistently denied in law. The identity making processes I describe are vital to colonization and, in this case, specifically to the colonization of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

Résumé

En 1995, Pamela George a été brutalement assassinée par deux jeunes athlètes universitaires de dix-huit ans. Les deux hommes condamnés pour meurtre se virent infliger des peines légères pour leur crime. Dans cet article, j'examine le meurtre de Pamela George comme un acte de violence raciale sexuée faisant partie de la poursuite de la colonisation des Autochtones. Je suggère qu'en tant que femme autochtone travaillant dans un espace de prostitution, Pamela George représentait un corps qui pouvait être violé impunément. Les hommes blancs respectables qui s'aventurent temporairement dans une zone de dégénérescence pour s'engager dans une rencontre avec une prostituée ne sont pas tenus responsables de la violence qui se produit régulièrement dans les espaces et sur le corps de l'Autre. La relation entre les corps, l'espace et la justice, où les zones habitées par l'Autre racialisé ainsi que celles de prostitution (souvent l'une étant l'autre) sont considérées comme des espaces où la justice universelle n'opère pas, suggère que cette violence reste invisible devant la loi. Ses caractéristiques, son rôle dans la constitution de l'homme blanc et des sociétés de colonisateurs blancs, indiquent pourquoi la violence persiste et pourquoi elle est niée par le droit de façon constante. Les processus de création d'identité décrits sont essentiels à la colonisation et, dans ce cas, à celle des Autochtones du Canada.

Type
Law, Race and Space/Droit, espaces et racialisation
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , August 2000 , pp. 91 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2000

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References

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7 I use the term ‘degeneracy’ in this article to denote those groups whom Foucault describes as the “internal enemies” of the bourgeois male – women, racial others, the working class, people with disabilities, in short all those who would weaken the vigorous bourgeois body and state. For a discussion of the concepts of respectability and degeneracy, see Razack, S., “Race, Space and Prostitution: The Making of the Bourgeois Subject” (1998) 10 C.J.W.L. 338.Google Scholar

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27 R.S., C. P-17.

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39 Harding, supra note 21.

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56 Of course Aboriginal women also endure considerable violence from the men of their own communities. I would argue that such violence is of a different order than the violence discussed here although the obvious link is that both emerge out of conditions of colonization. As Emma Larocque so insightfully commented in her testimony to the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, the squaw stereotype regulates relations between Aboriginal men and women as it does between Aboriginal women and white society. Larocque, E., “Written Presentation to Aboriginal Justice Inquiry Hearings, 5 February 1990” cited in Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, supra note 44 at 479.Google Scholar See Razack, S., Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) at 69.Google Scholar

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73 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3811.

74 Ibid. at 3818.

75 Ibid. at 3821.

76 Ibid. at 3824.

77 Ibid. at 315–24.

78 Ibid. at 3829.

79 Ibid. at 1009.

80 Ibid. at 852.

81 Ibid. at 1394.

82 Although few scholars of sports masculinity discuss the role that race plays in the making of the white male athlete in the contemporary context, several scholars have noted the connections between sport masculinities and empire. See e.g. Morrell, R., “Forging a Ruling Race: Rugby and Masculinity in Colonial Natal, c. 1870–1910” in Navright, J. & Chandler, T.J.L., eds., Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity (London: Frank Cass, 1996) 91 Google Scholar; Rutherford, J., Forever England: Reflections on Masculinity and Empire (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1997).Google Scholar Related Canadian work on sport and national identity has not been explicitly about race and the forging of identities in a white settler society. See e.g. Wamsley, K.B., “The Public Importance of Men and the Importance of Public Men” in White, P. & Young, K., eds., Sport and Gender in Canada (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1999) 24 at 34Google Scholar; Bélanger, A., “The Last Game? Hockey and the Experience of Masculinity in Quebec” in White, P. & Young, K., eds., Sport and Gender in Canada (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1999) 293–309.Google Scholar

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84 Ibid. at 457.

85 Ibid. at 595–615.

86 Ibid. at 858.

87 Ibid. at 846–910.

88 Ibid. at 871.

89 Ibid. at 574–88.

90 Ibid. at 869.

91 Ibid. at 3588.

92 Ibid. at 463–64.

93 Schick describes how white teacher-training candidates whom she interviewed about their responses to a mandatory course on Aboriginal issues, experienced the university as elite space, into which Aboriginal bodies entered as interlopers, contaminating the space by representing everything that was not rational. C. Schick, “Keeping the Ivory Tower White: Discourses of Racial Domination.” See this issue. Crossing the Line, supra note 63 at 226.

95 ‘Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3843.

96 Ibid. at 3757.

97 Ibid. at 486–87.

98 Ibid. at 3494.

99 Ibid. at 470–95.

100 Ibid. at 2921.

101 Ibid. at 3760.

102 Ibid. at 892.

103 Ibid. at 3933.

104 At Public Hearings in Saskatoon for RCAP, Robin Bellamy contrasted this fear typical of (white) suburbanites (“people say that they are concerned about coming down there on a Saturday night at midnight”) with Aboriginal citizens' fear of entering the “better areas of Saskatoon.” Bellamy, supra note 37.

105 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3933.

106 Recall Harding's assertion that the typical victim of violent crime in racialized urban space is young, female and Aboriginal, not white and male. Supra note 21 at 333. In 1990–91, Aboriginal persons comprised 31 percent of the victims of reported crime in Regina, while they represented approximately 5 percent of the population. Ibid., at 331.

107 This interpretation was suggested to me by Carol Schick.

108 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 262, 304.

109 Ibid. at 280.

110 Ibid. at 282.

111 Ibid. at 1729–30.

112 Ibid. at 4710.

113 Following press coverage of this incident, the Assembly of First Nations for the prairie region received nearly 600 calls from Aboriginal men and women describing similar acts of violence towards them. O'Hanlon, M., “RCMP Investigate Deaths of Saskatoon Aboriginals” [Toronto] Star (17 February 2000) A3.Google Scholar

114 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3574, 3888.

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116 For example, Sander Gilman shows how prostitutes in 19th century Europe were depicted with African features even though they were nearly all white. Gilman, S., “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine and Literature” in Donald, J. & Rattansi, A., eds., “Race” Culture and Difference (London: The Open University, 1992) 171.Google Scholar Similarly, McClintock discusses the racialization of the Irish poor, routinely depicted with Black skin in 19th Century England. McClintock, A., Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995) at 52–53.Google Scholar

117 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3281–82 [emphasis added].

118 Ibid. at 2922.

119 Ibid. at 444.

120 Ibid. at 3345.

121 Ibid. at 2928.

122 Ibid. at 2844–49.

123 Ibid. at 2883.

124 Hall is in this instance being read as his 19th century counterpart would have been, that is, as a “squaw man.” Carter notes that white lower-class men labeled in this way were often blamed by the police for crimes such as liquor offences. Supra note 14 at 184.

125 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3008.

126 O'Connor, K., “Issac Felt Police Would Frame Him” [Regina] Leader Post (23 December 1996) A1.Google Scholar

127 “Transcript” supra note 2 at 444.

128 Ibid. at 846.

129 Ibid. at 2114.

130 Ibid. at 2116.

131 Ibid. at 811.

132 Sutter, T., “‘She Was My Baby’” [Regina] Leader Post (13 May 1995, Saturday Magazine) at 1.Google Scholar

133 Ibid.

134 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 1113.

135 Ibid. at 33, 132.

136 Ibid. at 4248.

137 Ibid. at 2993.

138 Ibid. at 2619.

139 Ibid. at 3562.

140 Ibid. at 457.

141 Ibid. at 3763.

142 Crossing the Line, supra note 63 at 44.

143 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 2139.

144 “Transcript of Sentencing”, supra note 72 at 37.

145 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 3480.

146 Ibid. at 4632.

147 Ibid. at 4633.

148 Ibid. at 4527–25.

149 Ibid. at 4633.

150 Ibid. at 4449.

151 Cynthia Lee speculates that this may be the case in cases where provocation is the defense used by men who kill unfaithful wives. Lee, C., “She Made me Do It! Killings in Response to Infidelity” (May 1999) [unpublished, in author's possession].Google Scholar

152 “Transcript of Sentencing”, supra note 72 at 69.

153 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 4755.

154 Ibid. at 4825.

155 Ibid. at 4344.

156 Ibid. at 4809, 4824.

157 Ibid. at 4795.

158 Ibid. at 406.

159 Ibid. at 1409.

160 Ibid. at 3205.

161 “Transcript of Sentencing”, supra note 72 at 47.

162 Justice Malone, “Response to the Honourable Chief Justice Allan McEachern to Complaints by Ms. Sharon Ferguson-Hood and Ms. Ailsa Watkinson and Others, February 6, 1997” [1997] (Regina, Sask. Prov. Ct. [Crim. Div.]).

163 Crossing the Line, supra note 63 at 44.

164 “Transcript” supra note 2 at 2550.

165 Ibid. at 2173.

166 “Transcript of Sentencing”, supra note 72 at 50.

167 That Aboriginal people are stereotyped as drunk and criminal is acknowledged by the Court in R. v. Williams, [1998] 1 S.C.R. 1158 at para. 58.

168 “Transcript of Sentencintg”, supra note 72 at 40.

169 “Justice Malone”, supra note 162 [emphasis added].

170 “Transcript”, supra note 2 at 5023.

171 “Transcript of Sentencing”, supra note 72 at 39.

172 Ibid., at 60. While I do not take a position on the value of long prison terms, I note here that they have been traditionally understood by society as an indicator of the severity of the crime.