Rejoinder

When writing "Racism versus Professionalism: Claims and Counterclaims about Racial Profiling," (Satzewich and Shaffir 2009) we didn't think we were saying anything controversial.

We are unable, in this space, to attend to all the concerns that Frances Henry and Carol Tator raise concerning our article.² Nothing is ultimately gained by such detailed refutation. We do believe, however, that our critics have misunderstood a number of the points we raise, notably issues surrounding the merits of qualitative research and the place of motives in behavioural outcomes.

A word about the genesis of our article may provide useful context. What initially began as a project concerning the dynamics of institutional changes in policing organizations, morphed into a focus on how police negotiated the requirements of their work: in short, how policing was actually accomplished. To explore that question, it seemed logical that we speak with police officers, as they are more familiar with how police work is accomplished than anyone. As, at the time, reports of racial profiling were in the news, we chose to discuss this topic with them; hence our article.

Frances Henry and Carol Tator raise a number of important points pertaining to police work, racial profiling, and racism, but their critique of our article, on several points, indicates that they misunderstood what we actually claimed. Nowhere in the article are we "critiquing qualitative studies that largely rely on the reported experiences of victims who have encountered racial profiling and believe that it exists and is prevalent in policing" (Henry and Tator: 65). Nor do we maintain that the quantitative data in the Star series (Rankin, Quinn, Sheppard, and Duncanson 2002; Rankin Bruser, Welsh, Popplewell, Zlomislic, and Brazao 2010) and Wortley's (2005) analysis of the Kingston data are methodologically flawed. These studies no doubt have flaws and limitations, as does all scholarly research, but again this was not the point of our article.

In fact, anyone familiar with our research over the years recognizes that we have relied almost exclusively on qualitative methods. (William Shaffir has co-edited three volumes on the merits of qualitative research.) We share Howard S. Becker's view that qualitative analyses are remarkably rich, and that we should assign a high level of confidence to results obtained by immersing ourselves in the field and gathering data that reflect the views of the people whose culture and activities are our interest. Rather, our concern is with the suggestions offered by some of the researchers we cite that, owing to their and others' findings, the issue of racial profiling has been sufficiently examined to allow for the unmistakeable conclusion that the connections between racial profiling, policing, and racism are a fait accompli and need not be the focus of continuing investigation. Instead, in our view, to examine racial profiling and policing from the perspective of the police may yield a more nuanced view of the dynamics surrounding this issue. Indeed, we believe we have succeeded in shedding some additional light on the phenomena under discussion: that profiling based on race, while not foreign to policing, is seen by police as one of several characteristic features defining how they proceed with their work; moreover, that in certain instances, it, admittedly, may serve as the predominant feature. And while testimonies relating to profiling offered by victims deserve to be taken seriously and not discarded on the grounds of their potential bias, the same courtesy ought to be extended to the police.

Henry and Tator say that we "seem to contest the notion that, when individuals say they have been racially profiled, they are to be believed" (69). We find it odd to be critiqued not for what we argue but for what we seem to imply. Nonetheless, let us be clear. We have no reason to doubt individuals' claims that they have experienced racial profiling at the hands of the police. Clearly, a certain, and perhaps, even significant, proportion of Black people in Canada report having been subject to racial profiling. But what do these narratives of profiling prove? The qualitative research on racial profiling, based on narrative analysis, clearly points to a process of...