Racialized Terror and the Colour Line: Racial Profiling and Policing Headwear in Schools

• Main Author: Puddicombe, Brian
• Other Authors: Dei, George Jerry Sefa
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: anti-racism; race; racism; headwear; power; gangs; Toronto District School Board; headwear policy; Safe Schools Act; Zero Tolerance; anti-bulying; anti-colonial; bloods; crips; Rasta; racial profiling; 0340; 0282; 0334; 0627; 0631; 0451
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27366

Through the simple action of covering one’s head with the wrong type of apparel, at the wrong time, and in the wrong spaces, Black and racialized youth exist in a hostile environment where their identities are reconstructed and relabeled according to dominant economic-political needs. This study interrogates and ruptures dominant notions of how space, identity and power are constructed, confronted, engaged, negotiated and resisted by Black and racialized youth in greater Toronto Area (GTA) schools. In an atmosphere of zero-tolerance toward policing youth violence, the anti-gang focus of the Safe Schools headwear policies institutionalize a ‘colour-coded’ link between crime, violence and race. Through ethnographic narrative inquiry this study critically interrogates the multiplicity of ways how the collision between zero-tolerance approaches toward regulating school violence and the policing of specific types of headwear and bodies results in differential outcomes and impacts on Black students and other racialized groups.