The history that underwrites practices like carding springs from slavery and its afterlife. And while these practices are now often recast as being about safety and security, the fact that they target the same groups of people as the earlier laws makes the truth abundantly clear to anyone who really cares to consider the matter. In a city like Toronto, 27 percent of all carding documented in 2013 involved Black people, a vastly higher proportion than their 8.9 percent share of the municipality's population. Indeed, it is the awareness that this dreadful history and its most brutal practices continues that motivates Black peoples' demands for abolition. Carding and similar practices create continuity between plantation slavery and the present moment, reminding Black people of their struggle for agency, autonomy, and, ultimately, to own their own bodies.

— On Property by Rinaldo Walcott (Page 34)