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

The individual who learns the intensity of the racial hatred that exists through experiential learning knows that it is never wise to walk amongst the roses with one's head in the clouds just thinking or dreaming because living in the world meant watching at all times for approaching insult, breach of rights, danger and even death due to racial profiling. III. Perspective Two: The Public Official The public official is ever

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

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

Racial Profiling: To What End?" By John P. Crank attempts to reason upon the race debate concerning racial profiling. He attempts to focus on broad implications that police policy has on society. It seems to concentrate on whether or not policy is racist concerning inner-city populations with high crime rates. This perspective misses the mark entirely. High crime rates, in dense populations of minorities, mean reactive politics resulting in