Essay On Racial Profiling In America
Racial Profiling In America
Michael Miller
Everest University Online
ENC 1102 48 Composition II
Instructor: Deena Shehata
September 22nd 2013
Racial Profiling In America
Everybody has been taught to hate black, whether its black ice, a black cat, or black plague to the black sheep, the verdict is already been handed down, everything black is bad. That’s what history has told the world. From the days of old, to modern times, black has been associated with death, wrong, or misfortune. So it’s no wonder that in today’s society we associate everything bad with black. From a walk in the park, to a drive down the lakefront to quiet bonding with family, those peaceful and contempt situations can be upheaved in an instant by crime, and for those thought to be the perpetrators, there’s the constant threat of harassment. But although those serene moments can be disturbed by …show more content…
dark forces, who’s to say that that it’s the dark skinned race that causes the trouble? Who says that it is predetermined that those of darker descent are the one to blame for this misfortune? Racial profiling may be unjust, but in this day and age, it is necessary to some extent.
Racial Profiling In America
The notion that black is a precursor for bad has been a tradition for years, not only in the United States, but around the world, and there’s no sign that it is letting up. From Emmitt Till to Trayvon Martin, the black population has been a target for the world’s misfortune and short-comings. I can remember as a child that walking in the wrong neighborhood could lead to some of the most dangerous situations one could imagine. Some people would look at me with that “what are you doing around here?” expression, or other kids would chase me and friends just far enough out of their neighborhood until we were back in a “black hood”, then we were ok.
The threat of violence for being the wrong color is very real. We’ve seen both blacks and whites pulled out of cars and beaten for the color of their skin. We’ve seen a young man shot to death for being in the wrong neighborhood. We’ve seen shoppers insulted for looking at items their assumed not to be able to afford. I can remember racial profiling is discrimination and it is plainly unjust, but it is without question very effective in offsetting crime. The practice of it makes people less willing to trust and confide in officers, report crimes, be witnesses at trials, or serve on juries. Recently in New York, the stop and frisk law, which allows people of color to be searched for no apparent reason, is under scrutiny for its legality and its violation of civil rights.
If you’ve ever been randomly searched at the airport, pulled over for no reason, or been watched by a store clerk to see if “there’s anything they could help you with?” you’ve probably been a victim of racial profiling. After the events of September 11th, racial profiling became an acceptable practice to weed out suspected terrorist, but with this new and approved tactic, law enforcement officials increasingly used it to unjustifiably target innocent individuals they deemed guilty of the ability to commit a crime. This goes against the Constitution of the United States, in the Fourteenth Amendment which guarantees every citizen equal protection under the law. It states in section 1: “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.”
But racial profiling goes a lot farther than the definition implies.
Now profiling has been extended to include people who are overweight, those of Muslim faith, and even people with disabilities. Overweight people are targeted by the transportation industry on a daily basis, people with disabilities are infringed upon in the workplace, and people with different faiths are targeted in almost every aspect of society in America. So racial profiling has grown to become a National Pandemic. Nadra Kareem Nittle, a writer for about.com, defines racial profiling as “a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as the primary reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law.” (http://racerelations.about.com/od/thelegalsystem/g/racialprofiling.htm), she goes on to talk about how people of Arab decent have become targets of profiling after the attacks of September 11th. But profiling alone is “the use characteristics to determine whether a person may engage in illegal
activity.”(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling)
But to look at the effect that racial profiling has had on America as a whole, we have to look at it origins. As Anita L. Willis stated in a look at the roots of racial profiling, “The Free Negro Registry was a means of identifying and tracking so-called Free Persons of Color. In colonial Virginia, all Free Persons of Color were required to show identification to any white person on demand. After the Civil War, the laws were reversed, but only to be revived in 1880 as the Jim Crow laws (named after a black minstrel character). Many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed during the 1960 's Civil Rights movement; however, they are resurfacing again in the guise of racial profiling.” So this has been practiced for over 200 years and it probably won’t be ending soon.
References
Nittle, K.N http://racerelations.about.com/od/thelegalsystem/g/racialprofiling.htm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling
United States Constitution (Section 1)
Willis, L A, (The Roots of Racial Profiling) Retrieved on September 22nd 2013 http://hnn.us/article/1167
Michael Miller
Everest University Online
ENC 1102 48 Composition II
Instructor: Deena Shehata
September 22nd 2013
Racial Profiling In America
Everybody has been taught to hate black, whether its black ice, a black cat, or black plague to the black sheep, the verdict is already been handed down, everything black is bad. That’s what history has told the world. From the days of old, to modern times, black has been associated with death, wrong, or misfortune. So it’s no wonder that in today’s society we associate everything bad with black. From a walk in the park, to a drive down the lakefront to quiet bonding with family, those peaceful and contempt situations can be upheaved in an instant by crime, and for those thought to be the perpetrators, there’s the constant threat of harassment. But although those serene moments can be disturbed by …show more content…
dark forces, who’s to say that that it’s the dark skinned race that causes the trouble? Who says that it is predetermined that those of darker descent are the one to blame for this misfortune? Racial profiling may be unjust, but in this day and age, it is necessary to some extent.
Racial Profiling In America
The notion that black is a precursor for bad has been a tradition for years, not only in the United States, but around the world, and there’s no sign that it is letting up. From Emmitt Till to Trayvon Martin, the black population has been a target for the world’s misfortune and short-comings. I can remember as a child that walking in the wrong neighborhood could lead to some of the most dangerous situations one could imagine. Some people would look at me with that “what are you doing around here?” expression, or other kids would chase me and friends just far enough out of their neighborhood until we were back in a “black hood”, then we were ok.
The threat of violence for being the wrong color is very real. We’ve seen both blacks and whites pulled out of cars and beaten for the color of their skin. We’ve seen a young man shot to death for being in the wrong neighborhood. We’ve seen shoppers insulted for looking at items their assumed not to be able to afford. I can remember racial profiling is discrimination and it is plainly unjust, but it is without question very effective in offsetting crime. The practice of it makes people less willing to trust and confide in officers, report crimes, be witnesses at trials, or serve on juries. Recently in New York, the stop and frisk law, which allows people of color to be searched for no apparent reason, is under scrutiny for its legality and its violation of civil rights.
If you’ve ever been randomly searched at the airport, pulled over for no reason, or been watched by a store clerk to see if “there’s anything they could help you with?” you’ve probably been a victim of racial profiling. After the events of September 11th, racial profiling became an acceptable practice to weed out suspected terrorist, but with this new and approved tactic, law enforcement officials increasingly used it to unjustifiably target innocent individuals they deemed guilty of the ability to commit a crime. This goes against the Constitution of the United States, in the Fourteenth Amendment which guarantees every citizen equal protection under the law. It states in section 1: “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.”
But racial profiling goes a lot farther than the definition implies.
Now profiling has been extended to include people who are overweight, those of Muslim faith, and even people with disabilities. Overweight people are targeted by the transportation industry on a daily basis, people with disabilities are infringed upon in the workplace, and people with different faiths are targeted in almost every aspect of society in America. So racial profiling has grown to become a National Pandemic. Nadra Kareem Nittle, a writer for about.com, defines racial profiling as “a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as the primary reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law.” (http://racerelations.about.com/od/thelegalsystem/g/racialprofiling.htm), she goes on to talk about how people of Arab decent have become targets of profiling after the attacks of September 11th. But profiling alone is “the use characteristics to determine whether a person may engage in illegal
activity.”(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling)
But to look at the effect that racial profiling has had on America as a whole, we have to look at it origins. As Anita L. Willis stated in a look at the roots of racial profiling, “The Free Negro Registry was a means of identifying and tracking so-called Free Persons of Color. In colonial Virginia, all Free Persons of Color were required to show identification to any white person on demand. After the Civil War, the laws were reversed, but only to be revived in 1880 as the Jim Crow laws (named after a black minstrel character). Many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed during the 1960 's Civil Rights movement; however, they are resurfacing again in the guise of racial profiling.” So this has been practiced for over 200 years and it probably won’t be ending soon.
References
Nittle, K.N http://racerelations.about.com/od/thelegalsystem/g/racialprofiling.htm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling
United States Constitution (Section 1)
Willis, L A, (The Roots of Racial Profiling) Retrieved on September 22nd 2013 http://hnn.us/article/1167