Reckoning with Racism

Know about the book -

Reckoning with Racism is written by Constance Backhouse and published by UBC Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0774868295 (ISBN 10) and 9780774868297 (ISBN 13).

In 1997, complacency about the racial neutrality of a predominantly white judiciary was shattered as the Supreme Court of Canada considered a complaint of judicial racial bias for the first time. The judge in question was Corrine Sparks, the country’s first Black female judge. Reckoning with Racism considers the RDS case. A white Halifax police officer had arrested a Black teenager, placed him in a choke hold, and charged him with assaulting an officer and obstructing arrest. In acquitting the teen, Judge Sparks remarked that police sometimes overreacted when dealing with non-white youth. The acquittal held, but most of the white appeal judges critiqued her comments, based on the tradition that the legal system was non-racist unless proven otherwise. That became a matter of wide debate. This book assesses the case of alleged anti-white judicial bias, the surrounding excitement, the dramatic effects on those involved, and the significance for the Canadian legal system.