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Racial Profiing Discussion
The events from 2001 marked a crucial point in the history of the United States from the perspective of the casualties and human loss they produce but at the same time from the perspective of the changes these events marked in the American society. Nowadays, the security measures are increased to such an extend that there have been wide debates on the potential abuses that may take place in terms of human rights, privacy issues, as well as personal security.
One of the security measures enforced since September 2001 is the extended control measures and techniques used to prevent any terrorist attacks from taking place on American soil. At the same time though, despite the fact that increased security measures are justified, they also allow controversies over potential abuses. One of the arguments protesting against increased security measures as they are enforced today points out the role of racial profiling. According to the Department of Justice, racial profiling "rests on the erroneous assumption that any particular individual of one race or ethnicity is more likely to engage in misconduct than any particular individual of other races or ethnicities" (Dept. Of Justice, 2003). More precisely, there have been cases...
Depending on the nature of the crime, the black suspect (as in most rape cases) was labeled as primary suspect, whereas in serial killing crimes the white suspect was identified as primary lead (Cloud, 2001). These assumptions are suggested to be determined by a constant trail case which includes a larger number of rape offenders among African-Americans and a larger number of serial killers among the white population.
The definition in itself fails to provide the exact magnitude of the problem. In fact, racial profiling has become an ever more increasing problem largely since the 9/11 events. However, until that moment, racial profiling had been a common practice, especially in big cities around the United States with particular aim towards black people. More precisely, Time Magazine noted "Most often we use the latter term (racial profiling) to describe the police practice of stopping people for "driving while black," but there are myriad permutations. Actor Danny Glover held a press conference in 1999 because cabdrivers weren't stopping for him in New York City; some called this "hailing while black." (Cloud, 2001). This aspect comes to point out that in fact racial profiling, according…
References
Cloud, John. "What's Race Got To Do With It?" Time Magazine. 2001. Online edition. Available at http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010730/cover.html
Taylor, Leslie. "Police condemned for profiling of letter carrier." The StarI 2009. Available at http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/670484
Dept. Of Justice. Fact Sheet: Racial profiling. June 17, 2003. Available online at http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2003/June/racial_profiling_fact_sheet.pdf
In addition the author suggests that the relationship between police and racial minority citizens has throughout history been controversial, and argues that racial profiling is simply a method by which police agents can perpetuate discrimination and prejudice (Bass, 2001). Mcleod (2003) examines the viewpoint that the problem with racial profiling is that it unmistakable identifies a certain portion of the population as 'them' and pairs that description against 'we' suggesting that
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
Racial Profiling The distinguished Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Studies, was arrested for trying to break into someone's house. It happened to be his own (Project America; 2008). This is but one of numerous cases of racial profiling that has been documented in this country and that points to the injustice and irrationality of singling out ethnic minorities for
Ramirez et al. explains this clearly stating "when law enforcement practices are perceived to be biased, unfair, and disrespectful, communities of color and other minority groups are less willing to trust and confide in law enforcement officers and agencies, to report crimes that come to their attention, to provide intelligence and information, and to serve as witnesses at trials (Ramirez et al., 1996)." The author further explains that as