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New Jersey held hearings concerning racial profiling in which one state police investigator testified that 94% of the motorists stopped were minorities (Anderson Pp). Not only were minorities more likely to be stopped than whites, but more often than not are pressured to allow searches of their vehicles, and are more likely to allow such searches (Anderson Pp). In March 2001, the New York Times reported that a 1997 investigation by New Jersey police of their own practices found that "turnpike drivers who agreed to have their cars searched by the state police were overwhelmingly black and Hispanic" (Anderson Pp).
Although African-Americans and Hispanics have been the targeted victims of racial profiling, since the September 11th attacks, Arab-Americans and visitors from Middle Eastern countries also find themselves the target of racial profiling due to their ethnicity and the global profile of terrorists (Barnes Pp). Many believe that racial profiling is an appropriate tool for the war on terrorism and polls indicate a strong majority favor "subjecting those of Arab decent to extra scrutiny at airports" (Lund Pp). Surprisingly, polls showed that "blacks and Arab-Americans...
And more importantly, "it threatens to undermine the important national goal of making all races equal under the law" (Lund Pp). That blacks commit robbery at much higher rates than whites do is a statistical or probabalistic sense, and it is also true that most blacks are not robbers and that almost half of all robbers are white (Lund Pp).
Racial profiling is in the eye of the beholder. There is no apparent justification for detaining persons based merely on their race or ethnicity, however "driving while black" has become all too common place (Lund Pp).
Works Cited
Lund, Nelson. "The conservative case against racial profiling in the war on terrorism." Albany Law Review; 12/22/2002; Pp.
Barnes, Katherine Y. "Road work: racial profiling and drug interdiction on the highway." Michigan Law Review; 12/1/2002; Pp.
Anderson, William. "The Roots of Racial Profiling." Reason; 8/1/2001; Pp.
Works Cited
Lund, Nelson. "The conservative case against racial profiling in the war on terrorism." Albany Law Review; 12/22/2002; Pp.
Barnes, Katherine Y. "Road work: racial profiling and drug interdiction on the highway." Michigan Law Review; 12/1/2002; Pp.
Anderson, William. "The Roots of Racial Profiling." Reason; 8/1/2001; Pp.
Racial profiling is not new, however, and was a theory of sociology in the late 19th century known as Social Darwinism. Incorrectly using Darwin's theory of evolution, the Social Darwinists believed that some species were morally superior to others, and even some races superior to othersJohnson () Public perception, though, believes in favor of seeing race as a reason for crime, and having a considerable fear of anyone outside their own
Racial Profiling Since 911 The racial profiling implies the discrimination by police to detail a person as suspect basing on the racial manifestations. In the present days the process of racial profiling has changed to a great extent. (Harris, 58) The racial profiling, till the present period was indicated towards the practice of police dragging over the black male drivers discriminately on the empirically valid but morally denounced hypothesis that they
The inverse would also be true. However, that question is not entirely black and white, pardon the pun (Stenning). The reason for this is that race can inform whether or why to stop someone for a traffic stop or on the sidewalk with racism not being the root reason. For example, a young white woman in her 20's would stand out like a sore thumb in a drug-infested area that
4%, among whites, it was 7.2%, and was 6.4% among Hispanics, yet African-Americans represent more than 57% of those incarcerated for drug offenses in state prisons (Coker pp). Police officers are more likely to stop African-Americans for traffic stops and once stopped, officers are more likely to search the vehicles of African-Americans. According to the 2001 traffic stop data in San Diego, African-American drivers had a sixty percent greater chance and
In evaluating the legality of racial disparities in law enforcement, the courts have clearly sought to determine the motivation for discriminating." (Knowles et al, 207) This illustrates a wide political and philosophical variance in the way that Americans understand this concept of police discrimination, with the courts asking questions seeming to imply that discrimination is not in and of itself a negative thing. Quite to the point, across the last eight years, the War On Terror had
As such, the question of fairness is not easily decided. Yet, we see that the Supreme Court has upheld racial profiling if used as a complementary technique. The American people as well support the utilitarian view that racial profiling is fair when evaluated in the context of all stakeholders, even if it seems unfair to a small few. The philosophical outlook of some may lead them to label racial