GGRC02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter week 10: Stereotype, Helen Betty Osborne, Treaty 4
SCHERENE RAZACK: GENDERED RACIAL VIOLENCE
-Pamela George was murdered in Regina in 1995 was a prostitute, media coverage
revealed few details about her life
oSteven Jummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky went to the “Stroll” (prostitution area
of the city) they succeeded in persuading George to enter their car beat her
up
oThey were arrested in early May white middle-class men murdering aboriginal
woman was big event for the city
oDefense first tried to argue that she was killed by someone else said, her being
a prostitute must be considered
oOnly sentenced to 6 ½ months in jail for manslaughter, instead of 2* murder
oIn the Sask. Court of appeal, the appeal by the crown was rejected b/c they said
that “Justice Malone” needed evidence that they intended to commit murder
oALSO SAID: judge considering her as a prostitute did not affect his decision to
change it from murder to manslaughter
- Racazk argues: George belonged to a violent space, where her body was always
violates and that her killers were assumed to be far removed from the zone
oThe men’s and court’s capacity to dehumanize George was derived form their
undersanding of her as the “gendered and racial” other
oAlso argues that in law, prostitutes are considered to have “consented to
whatever violence is inflicted upon them”
oArgues that prostitution and the law’s treatment of it as a contract, sustain a
colonial social order
oRejects view that spatialized justice (the values that deem certain bodies and
subjects in specific spaces as underserving of personhood) has more to do with
class than with race eg. white woman in the same situation would be treated
the same
- Colonial history plays a big part: students where just drunk white men, while she was
an aboriginal that was simply a prostitute in a bad part of town does not account for
history of dispossession
oAbstraction that doesn’t look at white people’s benefit from dispossession and
violence; law was complicit in settler violence and only looked at case through a
race less perspective
-Geographies are important as well
oWhite men that went to uncivilized part of town and met a racial other in the
Stroll followed by a movement to the murder scene moving from respectable
space (eg. university) to dangerous space shows that the white people are in
control of the situation a history of colonial transgression led to aboriginals
having to work in the “stroll” (over-policed and incarcerated lead their only
encounters w/ white men to be in prostitution or in the justice system)
oCourt viewed her personhood as invisible
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Geographies are important as well: white men that went to uncivilized part of town and met a racial other in the. The naturalness of white innocence remain and aboriginal degeneracy was still rampant in the framework that case was analyzed from. Space, gendered racial violence, and the making of white settler societies. Slum administration replaces colonial administration the city belongs to the settlers by carefully putting boudnaries around the racialized other in urban space: eg. White people get wealthy suburban house while others get projects like. Chinatown created: achieved through zoning laws inner city is a racialized space, canada"s colonial geogrpahies exhibit this same pattern of violent expulsion and spatial containment of aboriginal peoples. Regina has 8% indians, more aborigianls than any other city in canada but: them being in urban space is farily new phenomenon. Once moved to city, majority of urban abr people are in jurisdictional lingo between city and reserve urban pop.
