Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is a controversial topic in today’s society. Many minorities feel targeted by governmental officials such as police officers and U.S. courts. “Statistics have shown that blacks in the U.S. are arrested and imprisoned for committing crimes at higher proportions than any other racial group” (“Crime and Race”)Even though minorities feel targeted by governmental officials and have higher crime rates than whites, racial profiling is just an alleged practice. Minorities feel singled out by law enforcement. Governmental officials are suspected to use the practice of racial profiling; the government activity directed at a suspect or group of suspects based solely on race. Is there use of racial profiling within the United States justice system? In 1976, during the court case United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, a Hispanic man had been stopped by Border Patrol while he was driving in his car near the California-Mexican border. The statistics also show that these experiences are not simply disconnected anecdotes or exaggerated versions of personal experiences, but rather established and persistent patterns of law enforcement conduct. It may be that these stops do not spring from racism on the part of individual officers, or even from the official policies of the police departments for which they work. Nevertheless, the statistics leave little doubt that, whatever the source of this conduct by police; it has a disparate and degrading impact on blacks. But racial profiling is important not only because of the damage it does, but also because of the connections between stops of minority drivers and other, larger issues of criminal justice and race. Put another way, "driving while black" reflects, illustrates, and aggravates some of the most important problems we face today when we debate issues involving race, the police, the courts, punishment, crime control, criminal justice, and constitutional law.