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Add to Favorites-A police officer is patrolling a white neighborhood. Suddenly, out of the blue, he spots an African American driving a beat up car. Alarmed, the officer stops him to learn about his whereabouts and to check his documents. He also runs a license plate check at the motor vehicle division office. The African American has a spotless criminal history and so is released.
-Following the acts of terrorism of September 11th, many people of Islamic appearance where stopped and thoroughly checked at the airports, while other people of different races where let through with no problem. Most of these people belonging to the Islamic religion were innocent, simply traveling to see love ones or for business purposes.
In both cases we can say racial profiling was done for identification, however, was this the real case? At a closer look we must realize that there is a very thin line between racial profiling for identification and racial profiling for discrimination.
The real question that can help distinguish the purpose of the search therefore is:
"Was the person stopped because he/she was of a special race/religion/skin color that suggested trouble or was the person stopped because he really acted in a suspicious way that suggested trouble?"
If we think of it, both scenarios really seem to suggest some sort of discrimination. Should the African American driving the beat up car have been a white, would he have been stopped? Or was the beat up car the real source of supposition? Or was it a combination of both?
Were the Islamics stopped at the airport check point simply because they were believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda or were they stopped because they were acting suspiciously? In this case, it looks like they were acting pretty normally and therefore, they were definitely victims of racial profiling.
September 11th, bought big changes in the acceptance of the Islamic communities in our country. At some point security checks were performed to ensure safety to other passengers. People at airports WANTED the Islamic to be checked and there were instances of people refusing to board a plane if an Islamic was not properly checked. A lot of pressure was put into security check points and security personnel working at airports to grant a high level of safety. This came though at a price: discriminating against many innocent people.
In an ideal and just world racial profiling should be used strictly for identification purposes. A search should be performed regardless of race, color of skin or religious affiliation. A search should be only the result of suspicious activity such as hiding an object that may resemble a gun or looking around nervously to complete a drug dealer transaction.
An officer or other law enforcement personnel should ask himself :"Am I stopping/searching this guy based only on physical appearance or is there something else that gives a hint of criminal activity?
Fortunately , racial profiling is a subject incorporated in more and more police academies and that can be found in criminal justice associate text books. Law enforcement officers are trained to avoid racial profiling based simply on discrimination. Rather they are trained to look into more subtle cues suggesting criminal activity.
Racial profiling based on discrimination hurts our country to the core. We are a country based on ethnic diversity where we must accept people of different race/religion/ skin color.
We are the melting pot where should one ingredient go missing, we no longer will be what we are. We must accept, honor and respect our melting pot heritage and stray away from injustice.
As God said, we are all brothers and sisters so we must all live in unity regardless of our diversity...
Learn more about this author, Janet Farricelli.
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Judge
Racial Profiling is illegal because it is a form of discrimination. That should be the end of this debate right there, sadly it isn't. As the mother of black sons, I witness racial profiling often. My middle son, who is the darkest of my 3 boys, has been stopped by local police for DWB (driving while black) sometimes as often as 3 or 4 times every week since he first got his drivers license.
He is not stopped by the police because of any factor other than race. This fine young man was a 4 year letterman in 3 different sports in high school as well as an honor roll student. On top of sports and school, he worked different jobs over the years to earn his own money to purchase a decent car, nice clothes and have spending money. After a year of college, he chose to work full time at a well paying sales job, so he could get married and pay his new wife's way through nursing school. They now have a daughter who is almost a year old. He is a responsible hard working member of society, yet even now in his mid-twenties he still gets pulled over by the police at least once a week.
This is a young man who never dressed "ghetto", doesn't drive around with loud rap music coming out of his little economical Subaru and speaks very proper "slang-free" English. Yet he suffers from racial profiling every time he gets behind the wheel of his car. He has been pulled over by the police literally hundreds of times since he got his drivers license. Once he was even pulled over by dozens of police cars and forced out of his car at gun point, just because he was a black male in a green car and the police were looking for a black male in a green car.
Well, whoever they were looking for, got away while they were accosting my son. Of course once he got out of his car in his work clothes that included a jacket and tie, the police realized their mistake and apologized. It probably even would have been kind of funny, if it didn't happen so often.
I on the other hand, haven't been pulled over by the police in years, and I drive around with loud music a lot, but then I am a middle aged white woman. My oldest son who is 26 and also white, never gets pulled over either and he does drive a beater car with loud rap music blasting out of it. I know that my son is not the only young black man in America that this happens to. All of his black friends experience the same type of racial profiling and discrimination, while his white friend are rarely stopped.
Also If his wife, who is white is driving the same car, she never gets stopped by the police, even when he is in the passenger seat. So as you can imagine, she usually drives when they are together. Racial profiling is definitely a form of discrimination and a crime against humanity. I personally am appalled that my tax dollars are paying the salary of these criminal police officers that are harassing upstanding citizens solely based on the color of their skin, instead of fighting real crime.
Using the events of 9/11 as an excuse for racial profiling is disgusting. Using fear to control the masses is a form of terrorism in and of itself. Politicians and law-makers have used the American publics fears to effectively violate our civil rights, while the cowering American masses smile and actually believe it's for their own protection. Discrimination is illegal, racial profiling is discrimination, the people who are committing this crime should be relieved of duty and prosecuted for their crimes against humanity.
Learn more about this author, Bambi Watson.
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