Racial Profiling In America Analysis

Racial Profiling in America: You Have the Right to Remain Silent
“Racial profiling punishes innocent individuals for the past actions of those who look and sound like them.” This statement made by Benjamin Todd Jealous, previously the president and CEO of the NAACP, captures the ideology of those who oppose law enforcement tactics that are solely based on race. While Dan White argues that surveillance based upon crime rates is perfectly acceptable because certain ethnic groups are more likely to commit crimes than others, he fails to address any of the problems associated with profiling. Profiling based on legitimate crime statistics may actually be an effective way to combat crime, however, because the criminal justice system within the United
States is embattled with institutionalized racism, any method based upon such statistics is consequently based upon racism. Therefore until the United States of America can move past its racial issues, profiling should not be used because the statistics are founded upon a racial divide that intrinsically target minorities and forges controversy detrimental to the fabric and unity of the nation.
Dan White and others believe that because racial profiling is based on statistics, it is a legitimate tactic that should be utilized by law enforcement. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly states that “96% of individuals who were shot and 90% of those murdered were black or hispanic”(Kelly). Kelly uses this particular statistic to express the sentiment that stop and frisk is protecting the lives of minorities by profiling them. However, his logic is simply flawed because it essentially proclaims that because victims are of a certain race, the perpetrators must automatically be the aforementioned race. Commissioner Kelly’s position seems to lack a basic understanding that black people can kill white people and white people can kill black people. If Commissioner Kelly were to apply this logic to any terror attack in the United States, the group targeted by racial profiling should be white males. And yet, that is not the case. Instead as a nation, America associates terror with muslims and will never have the capacity to associate it with the group actually responsible for majority of tragedy. Whites are a privileged race because even when one of them turns out to be a domestic terrorist, no one will call for them to be
profiled as terrorists as a result. Dan White states that surveillance and profiling is necessary because certain groups simply harbor more law breakers (White). While there is truth in the notion that certain groups are found to have higher crime rates, it may not be because certain racial groups commit crime at higher rates. In his Pathology Of White Privilege speech at Mount Holyoke women’s college, Tim Wise describes an encounter he has with several law enforcement officers. He asks the men what they assume about a young black or Latino male driving a nice car and about a young white male driving the same car. The minority male is profiled as a “drug dealer” while the white male is profiled a “spoiled little rich kid” (Wise). With law enforcement’s finest making snap judgements like that, it is not much of a surprise that minorities are targeted more frequently and therefore are arrested at higher rates. The statistics that tell law enforcement and others that profiling certain ethnic groups is proactive are a direct product institutionalized racism and the actions they take based on such data merely perpetuates such discrimination.
Institutionalized racism is an issue that has plagued American law enforcement from the Civil War Era onward.
Stop and frisk is prevalent in many major US cities but the New York City Police Department has been known for its particularly violent and discriminatory use of the tactic. Civilians are “menaced out of the blue by the police and forced to spread themselves face down in the street… People who object to the harassment are often threatened with arrest for disorderly conduct” (Herbert). Law enforcement abuse their authority and make this supposed “crime-fighting” tool as miserable as possible for those stopped. These innocent individuals are not treated with respect but rather the with the disregard that convicted criminals likely face. Despite the fact that contraband and weapons are 4 times more likely to be found on whites males stopped (Wise), minorities make up 84% of stops (Herbert). Clearly stop and frisk tactics cannot be adapted to reflect the data that they actually collect. Instead law enforcement must use tactics based on crimes that cannot be battled using stop and frisk. If the main goal of this maneuver is to remove illegal weapons and contraband from the streets of major American cities and the NYPD feels obligated to utilize racial profiling, white males should be stopped in clear proportion to the crimes they are obviously committing. If the main goal of this maneuver is to harass young black and Latino males by the tens of thousands, then there is
no need to change.
Racial profiling and the law enforcement tactics that utilize it, are unraveling the fabric of the United States. As a nation that hails itself, “a melting pot of cultures,” The United States of America seems to have a large problem with exploiting the differences in the many identities that are present in its society. The tension has become incredibly palpable throughout the country with headlines circulating national and international new outlets almost weekly with reports of police brutality against unarmed black teens, racism in the national system of university fraternities and sororities, legislators lack of political correctness, and never-ending support and subsequent criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement throughout social media. As more recent controversy is piled onto the mountain of historical racism present in the United States, each event is more likely to set off the entire nation. Youtube.com is now filled with countless tutorials, instructing black men and women how to survive traffic stops without being shot to death. To nearly every other developed nation on this planet such a video is remarkably absurd but in the United States of America, such a video is necessary to teach minority youth how to survive in a society that views their bodies are weapons. There is no denying that profiling based on race and ethnicity has forged two camps in the American psyche. When a man calls 17% (CDC) of the American population murderers and rapists and is predicted by political scientists to win a presidential nomination there is no longer room for doubt that racism is rampant within this nation.The most recent racially charged debate has been over the admittance of Syrian refugees into the United States. Many Americans believe that terrorists would be entering the country along with these men, women and children displaced by war. Unfortunately this is only the case because these refugees are of middle eastern descent and are predominantly Muslim. It is likely true that if these individuals were of European descent and Christian, there would be an uproar if they were turned away. However, because they fit the preconceived terrorist aesthetic, the words on the Statue of Liberty are merely a broken promise.
The United States of America in 2015 is still an incredibly difficult place to be a minority. High profile police shootings are almost a monthly occurrence and conservative news outlets always find way to paint victims of violence as lawless thugs. While 21st century America is certainly not the same country that Martin Luther King Jr. left after being assassinated, he and many others from the modern civil rights movement would still see that work needs to be done. Law enforcement still “judge[s] people by the color of their skin, [not] by the content of the character.” Police tactics based upon racism are still brimming with “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” The US is still mending a racial divide that King tried so desperately to eliminate but as a nation, “we must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”