Required Reading
Razack, Sherene. “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society, vol. 15, no. 2 (2000): 91-130.
Study Questions
1. Who was Pamela George? How was she murdered?
2. Why did members of the Aboriginal and white communities object to the judge’s instruction to the jury after the trial of Pamela George’s murderers?
3. What are some current attitudes toward Aboriginal women? When did these attitudes develop?
4. What is Razack’s theory on why middle-class white men would murder an Aboriginal woman who is a sex-worker?
5. On what was the murderers’ sense of identity premised? What is Razack’s evidence for this conclusion?
6. What was the attitude of the murderers and their white friends toward Pamela George?
7. What did young white women do while the murderers negotiated for the services of an Aboriginal prostitute?
8. What legal arrangement sustains the view that violence toward prostitutes is natural?