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1E. Race / Ethnic Origin of Drivers and SuspectsContents
Racism as a Motive for Homicide The main reason for trying to identify the racial or ethnic origin of drivers and suspects is to see if this information sheds any light on racism as a factor in attacks on taxi drivers. Theoretically, if the proportion of attacks is greater when victims and killers are of different origins than when they are of the same origin, this might indicate that racism plays a role in at least some attacks. Unfortunately there is little helpful evidence from which to draw conclusions, either in data from media reports of taxi driver homicides, from official records or from driver surveys. This section summarizes information from the sources examined so far. The information gathered from media reports of taxi driver homicides does not give us much information about the racial or ethnic origin of victims and killers. In the case of drivers who have immigrated to Canada from other countries, the country of origin is frequently identified. However, this is not necessarily an indicator of racial or ethnic origin. Only 22 of 147 victims of Category A homicides have been identified as coming to Canada from other countries:
In two cases (Jack Green and John McKechnie) the killers came to Canada from the U.S. and in one other (Gordon Stoddart) the killer came from Jamaica. Otherwise it would appear that all killers were Canadian. Ethnic or racial origin is seldom specifically identified in media reports for either victims or killers. Any conclusions on this score have to be inferred from photographs or other evidence in media reports. Based on such evidence, it would seem that victims and killers were of different ethnic origin in perhaps half a dozen cases. It seems probable that 20 out of the 22 immigrant drivers (excluding the two from the U.S.) were of different racial or ethnic origins than their killers. In total -- based on inference rather than direct evidence -- we can say with some confidence that victims and killers were of different ethnic origins in only 25 to 30 of 147 Category A homicides. A complicating factor is that the taxi driving profession in many large cities is dominated by a small number of racial or ethnic groups. For example, in 2001 Manitoba's Taxicab Safety Working Group estimated that 80% of drivers working for Winnipeg's two largest companies (which accounted for 87% of Winnipeg's taxis) were of East Indian, Asian, or Middle Eastern origin (Taxicab Safety Issues: An Independent Report (Bidhu Jha, Manitoba Taxicab Safety Working Group, October, 2001). The dominance of what Statistics Canada refers to as "Visible Minorities" increases the likelihood that victims and perpetrators of assaults will be of different origins regardless of whether or not attacks are motivated by racism. Direct evidence from media reports is also difficult to come by in the case of homicides. Racism was specified or postulated as a motive in only two cases in the Canadian Taxi Driver Homicides list.
However, as noted in the section on Motive information about the circumstances of homicides is severely limited by the fact that the story of what happened largely rests on the testimony of killers and accomplices who are unlikely to make damaging revelations about their hostility toward racial or ethnic groups. At least three Canadian surveys have attempted to isolate racism as a factor in attacks on drivers but without conclusive results. In his 1995 survey of taxi drivers in Winnipeg, Halifax and Vancouver (Fare Game, Fare Cop) Phillip Stenning found no difference in the rate of victimization for drivers by race (White or non-White), country of birth (Canada or other) or first language (English or other). However Stenning noted that his sample did not include many immigrant drivers and those who responded had to be familiar with written English. This may have biased his survey results. In 1998, at the instigation of Councilor Glen Murray, the Winnipeg City Council's Protection and Community Services Committee commissioned a study of assaults on Winnipeg taxi drivers to determine if hate groups were specifically targeting minority drivers. The study apparently envisaged a comparison of the racial or ethnic backgrounds of driver- victims and attackers but no such comparison was possible because neither police nor Manitoba Taxicab Board records contained the required information. Murray expressed the need for follow-up interviews with victims of attacks but this does not seem to have been carried out (Winnipeg Sun, November 17, 1998, p. 5). The Manitoba Taxicab Safety Working Group report (link above) found that 87% of responding drivers believed that assaults were racially motivated. In July 1995, a Winnipeg taxi driver was severely beaten by two attackers who repeatedly told him "We're gonna kill you, Paki". The beating continued even as the driver tried to surrender his money and car keys (Winnipeg Sun, July 5, 1995, p. 2). It is easy to imagine this kind of attack resulting in death. It follows that testimony of drivers surviving this kind of attack could shed valuable light on motive (racial or otherwise) and the sequence of events involved in at least some taxi driver homicides. A study based on interviews with survivors of violent physical attacks, as recommended by Glen Murray, would seem to be a helpful way of gathering the kind of information that media reports, official records and driver surveys have not so far provided. In many homicides the killer has no advance knowledge of who the victim is. A phone call is made with the intent to carry out a robbery or an attack and whoever shows up is the designated victim. In these circumstances it seems possible that the role of racial or ethnic factors may be to influence the course of events rather than to instigate them. For example, racist attitudes may make it easier for attackers to see the driver as the legitimate focus for the underlying motives discussed in the section on Motive, namely, the attacker's perception of the victim as weak and defenseless, the attacker's need to scapegoat the victim for real or imagined wrongs inflicted by others, and the killer's need to impress accomplices or acquaintances. Racism also provides a ready-made vocabulary of abuse that attackers can use to intensify physical violence. On the other hand, there may be cases where racism may provide a pretext for violence that would otherwise not take place, as in the Fernand Giroux case. These suggestions are conjectural but they offer a direction for future research. Discrimination Against Customers "Profiling" of customers or drivers by racial or ethnic origin is not directly related to taxi driver homicides or attacks on drivers but it is a relevant issue inasmuch as it contributes to dangerous antagonisms between groups from different backgrounds. The apparently widespread practice of refusing service to customers on the basis of race, and of avoiding trips to neighbourhoods in which certain racial groups predominate, has made the first question an intensely controversial issue for taxi drivers, taxi customers and regulators in many cities. To taxi drivers refusal of service is safety issue and they feel justified in avoiding dangerous-looking fares or high-risk neighbourhoods. Critics argue that "dangerous" or "high-risk" often seem mere code words to designate people of a particular race. At least one city, New York, has made strenuous efforts to identify and prosecute drivers suspected of discrimination, including the use of agents posing as fares. Some celebrities have actively campaigned against profiling -- for example, Danny Glover and Godfrey Cambridge (himself a former taxi driver). The Branford Marsalis jazz composition "Brother Trying to Catch a Cab (On the East Side) Blues" features a Black man pleading unsuccessfully with a cab driver to take him home. For their part taxi drivers have complained of being unfairly prosecuted for discrimination when refusal of service was based on other considerations, such as the wearing of gang attire. Discrimination Against Drivers The other side of the profiling coin is refusal by customers to accept drivers of a particular race or ethnic origin. During the 1980s this problem was widely publicized in Montréal where many members of the Haitian community worked as taxi drivers and were the principle victims of this discrimination. Some taxi companies routinely complied with customer requests to send them White drivers, the customer rationale being that Haitian drivers allegedly did not know their way around town or understand French adequately. Significantly, the customer requests centred on racial origin rather than competence (i.e., "send a White driver" rather than "send a driver who knows the city"). In 1984 a court decision upheld the right of companies to discriminate in this way. The Québec government responded with promises to enact legislation to discourage companies from this kind of profiling. During the uproar it was found that two companies (one in Montréal and one in Hamilton, Ontario) were openly refusing to employ non-White drivers on the grounds that their customers wouldn't accept them.
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