"Black men and boys are imagined as dangerous, threatening, inherently criminal and superhuman — bigger, faster, stronger and less likely to feel pain. These views have roots in chattel slavery. Canada is not innocent in the reproduction of this trope. Inspired by southern secessionists, Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, claimed the death penalty would deter Black men from assaulting white women. Scholars David Austin and Greg Thomas both demonstrate that in the 1960s and 1970s, the RCMP and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation were obsessed with Black men’s sexual prowess. In the U.S., anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells and, subsequently, writer and scholar Angela Y. Davis documented how the myth of the Black-man-as-rapist undermined African-Americans’ economic, social and political position. The idea that the late George Bush Sr. may have defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988 by promoting the Black-man-as-rapist trope shows how deeply this myth is embedded in popular culture. The idea of Black boys and men as super-predators was also expressed by Hillary Clinton in 1996. Clearly, the current culture of aggressive and militarized policing that kills Black people at three times the rate of white people in the U.S. crosses political lines."