Over the past few decades, the popular lexicon describing police behaviour has expanded to include a number of unique, though unofficial, arrestable offences, including Driving While Black (DWB) and Travelling While Arab (TWA). Officially, such behaviour has been described as racial profiling, a practice in which authorities tend to single out individuals or groups not because of any suspicious activities but because of skin colour. While the existence of such profiling has been subject to much rancorous debate, The Colour of Justice makes it clear that Canada does have a two-tiered system of justice.

University of Windsor law professor David Tanovich has presented in a clear, concise manner the many ways in which profiling not only exists but is part of a historic pattern of targeting that has affected most immigrant groups in Canada and, especially, native communities. By providing intimate details of specific random traffic stops, arbitrary arrests, and police shootings, and then parsing the social-science research, Tanovich makes a major contribution to identifying an increasingly pressing Canadian social problem.

A lawyer who has been involved in significant racial profiling cases, Tanovich is no stranger to the controversial nature of his topic. He takes pains to present a rational and compelling case that is a testament to his legal background. Distilling the facts behind the scare headlines about crime, he ably presents the story in accessible language, only occasionally straying into legal analysis that may escape the lay reader.

After presenting the facts, and then exploring the ways in which wars on drugs, gangs, and terrorism are too often euphemisms for targeting ethnic groups, Tanovich lays out how the Canadian courts have approached the issue. The overview in itself is a laudable achievement, but Tanovich refuses to rest on his laurels with a well-argued case. Instead, he travels into the difficult territory where few opponents of racial profiling have ventured, arguing that society needs to go so far as to rethink its use of skin colour in suspect descriptions.

Tanovich ends his short tome with two pages of prose that alone are worth the price of the book. By presenting a composite of the experiences of a group of young men in northern Toronto, he sketches a typical day in the life of the racially profiled, providing an emotional punch to his conclusions that will hopefully shock the country’s conscience.