Racial Profiling
There is several definition of racial profiling. Racial profiling is some kind of a gateway act- as excuse used to approach citizens assumed to be criminals. Another definition of racial profiling is the discriminatory practice by police of treating colors as an indication of possible criminality. Caucasian, African American, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Iraqis, all races have been racial profiled by officers. Racial profiling exist all over the world even till today. All races are being racial profiled today but some people's opinions are basically that More African Americans get more racial profiled that any other races. All different race have come up to the world and told the world what had happened to them. The main focus of the essay is to show the effect of racial profiling on citizens, the origin of racial profiling and also to show that Racial profiling will continue to exist until more, strict punishment are made towards the offenders.
The reasons for racial profiling depend on the people who are causing it to happen. Some officers may be doing this because of some kind of hatred towards other races or maybe they love having some kind of powers in their hands and misusing it, the reasons for racial profiling varies, it goes on and on. Racial profiling have been in the world since the beginning of the world, no one can say that they know when racial profiling started, or which race started because that would be ignorant to say. Proofs that shows that racial profiling had existed for a long period of time can be find in years and years of news of People who come up to the media and tell the world on how they were assaulted by the officers or books that are written by hundreds of writers who write about racial profiling, the history of it and the origin of it which is not know. Writers like heather Mac Donald, the myth of racial profiling, Gene Calahan and William Anderson The roots of racial profiling, wrote about their predictions on racial profiling, their own opinions on racial profiling and the effect that racial profiling has ad on the people.
The bill of right, which was written to protect the rights of the people, showed the length of racial profiling. If the fourteenth amendment was written then there must have been a reason why it was written to protect the rights of citizens from officer's corruption which had occurred and the government tried to put an end to it by implementing the 14th amendment. The fourteenth amendment which says
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
And subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
Of the United States and of the state wherein they
reside. No state shall make or enforce any law,
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws (1868)".
The meaning of this is basically the protection of citizens from unlawful act laws; everybody must be given the equal protection of the law. Even though the amendment says this, some officers do not follow this. This should also set as a proof for the fact that racial profiling has existed for decades. Writers like Heather Mac Donald defined racial profiling as two things, hard profiling and soft profiling. In her book called The Myth of Racial Profiling by Heather Mac Donald spring 2001 vol. 1, no.2 she gave her meaning of both, she states
"hard profiling is an officer sees a
black person and, without more to go on,
pulls him over for a pat-down on the chance
that he may be carrying drugs or weapons".
"Soft" racial profiling is using race as one
factor among others in gauging criminal
suspiciousness… A New Jersey trooper sees a
black motorist speeding in a Pathfinder and
pulls him over in the hope of finding Drugs".
In other words, when it comes to hard profiling, the officers makes his won judgment call without using more common sense to see if the guy is carrying a gun or not. When it comes to soft racial profiling, the officers hopes he can find some type of substance in the driver's car without asking the driver to get out of the car or patting the driver out. There have been so many reports made every year about racial profiling. A lot of people, think that racial profiling occur only to African American but this is not so.
There have been some black leaders that tried to put a stop to racial profiling, leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al sharpton, Martin Luther King, Malcolm x. They all succeeded some times but even when marches are held and voices are heard, the officers who commit this crimes are set free, Some are told to take a week off and then get paid and then are given their jobs back. Today almost every adult is required to carry some form of identification, If you are stopped, and do not have identification, you can be taken to a police station. What were the consequences of failing to carry the required papers during colonial period? For Free Persons of Color, the worst-case scenario was being sold into slavery. Or they could be thrown in jail until a white person came forward on their behalf.
Today, if a citizen is pulled over on a traffic stop, and cannot show proper identification, the outcome is left to the discretion of the officer. Not only can the driver be questioned and detained, the passengers and the car can be searched. If you are a member of a targeted group, you may be taken to the station, and held there until you are cleared and this is just a fact. The alleged crime of driving while black, particularly young, male and black is similar to the alleged crime in previous centuries of walking around without papers to verify the status of "free." Given our roots, it is not a surprise that some feel that racial profiling is necessary and fruitful. Obviously some felt that way about slavery too.
Lately, Racial profiling has been occurring to other races other than African Americans. Ever since the tragedy of the world trade center on September 11th 2001, which 20 or more Middle Eastern hijackers hijacked planes and crashed into the world trade center building, the pentagon. Ever since that day, more Iraqis, Indian, Middle Eastern have been attacked. Some officers take their angers on the Middle Eastern because of what happened on September 11th, some of the officers lost their partners. Some officers pull over a car that they suspected of having bombs or being related to Osama Bin laden, the number one terrorist in the world. All of these were in the news channels, CNN, Upn 9 News, New York 1 news, discussions of Middle eastern being assaulted by the officers had a huge impact on the citizens of America. Other Middle Eastern started to get afraid of going out because the officers could easy pull them over and check their cars without having any reasonable cause for it, by that, the middle easterners feel assaulted by the officers.
Some officers felt as if, they had to take it to the limit even if it means, locking any middle eastern up to questions them for hours because they are protecting the country. After the event that occurred on September 11th 2001, the government started to arrest Middle Eastern people, obtaining them for days just to find out if they have anything to do with the terrorism. There have been movies made on Police brutality. Movies like Crazy in Alabama, which showed an officer abusing his power by assaulting African Americans, and killing one teenager. There are some people who believe that there is no such thing as Racial profiling, that the officer are just doing their jobs, even if it means someone being assaulted because of their race and being assaulted, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Imagine being stopped while you are diving on the road one day, alone and suddenly you hear a police card behind you and then you were asked to step out of the car without being told why or being asked for your license. All of the suddenly you were told to sit on the ground, and then being mocked, and begin asked questions about where you get the money to buy a nice expensive cars. After this, then begin told that they were looking for drugs but in the end find nothing and yet some people believe that the officers are doing their jobs. Searches like this occurs every day in the society. This type of event was mentioned in the Reason Magazine titled The Roots of Racial Profiling August-September 2001 by Gene Callahan and William Anderson. They stated in their own words their own meaning of racial profiling as
" Although there is no single,
Universally accepted definition
of racial profiling we're using the
term to designate the practice of
stopping and inspecting people
who are passing through public
places -- such as drivers on public
highways or pedestrians in airports or
urban areas -- where the reason for the
stop is a statistical profile of the detains
race or ethnicity".
After saying this, by Gene Callahan and William Anderson went further in trying to prove the reasons for racial profiling, the actual root cause of racial profiling. Also they stated the fact that the war on drugs has a major reason to do with the racial profiling. Every time when someone is pulled over, the officers always ask is the driver has a drug or not and also, the officers excused when being charged with racial profiling is that they were looking for drugs and the driver tried to get rough.
Sometimes some people take the whole racial profiling to a new level, some people say that k9s, the cop dogs act on racial profiling even though the dogs are colorblind. In the pittsburgchannel news, POSTED 11:52 a.m. EDT June 11, 2002, which was titled Investigation Clears Police Dog of Racial Profiling. The issue here was that the trainer of the dog who's a cop trained the dog to bit African Americans only. In fact, in the news, it stated
"following Borough Councilwoman
Wanda Jones Dixon claimed that
the dog had been taught to single
out its subjects according to color.
She said she had received
complaints from several other
African-Americans whom the
dog had bitten or threatened".
To agree that this story may be true would be a long shot because there are so many other things to think about. The dog is color blind, how can someone teach a dog to hate other colors and why would anyone want a dog to hate another color.
There are some people who in fact lie about being assaulted by the officers in order to get some kind publicity fame, or money. There are some other cases when a driver get pull over and they are asked what is in their car and they happen to have something in their car. Sometimes the officers take it too far by smashing the driver's head to the car, pining them on the ground, and then talking about the driver's looks and mocking them. There is no need for that.
Some ramification (consequence, punishment) that the officers get for committing these types of crimes range from 2 years in jail to less, or even sometimes these officers are freed because their lawyers find a way to show that the officers were innocent and just doing their jobs. Punishments like 2 years in jail for assaulting a helpless human being is not strict enough, the officers motto is "Do the crime, do the time", so now the government need to make more strict rules that will show these officers that their actions were extremely wrong.
Racial profiling still exist today, and is still going to continue to exist but it is up to the people to take a stand, stand up, and tell the government to take more action. Give more laws against racial profiling, any officers who commit this act should automatically go to prison and server their time fully. The officers took an oath to protect the people not hurt the people, that is their jobs.
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