Racial profiling
Some people wonder what is racial profiling. Racial profiling derives from fear of the unknown, miss-education, slavery, and incarceration. Since the beginning of slavery African Americans have dealt with profiling due to their identity. Racial profiling deals with selecting a person within a stereotypical criteria according to their specific racial group. The main reason in advocating racial profiling in the background of criminal study can enlarge the possibility of arresting criminals. Paul Bou-Habib stated, “If the rate at which members of a specific racial group commits a crime is higher than that of other criminals will be caught if the police concentrate their efforts on investigating members of the racial group in question?” (2011, p.34). It is not right when police officers, political officials, and judges make decisions based on predetermined racist and some would say ignorant beliefs. For example, my friend was in McDonald’s parking lot and he was in the process of switching seats with his friend because he was exhausted of driving.
. The term “driving while black has been used to describe the practice of law enforcement officials to stop African-American drivers without probable cause” (Weatherspoon, 2004). This is one of the leading minority men are pulled over in their vehicle. Which usually leads to a unwarranted stop and either summons or sometime even arrest depending on the situation. To make matters worse, once the individual is unjustly cited or arrested its almost impossible to fight the case. The justice system usually sides with the officer.
Currently, the mis-education of children in our school systems has played a huge part in this problem. Racist beliefs are an acquired trait. No one can be born a racist. Children are being taught the same things about history that continues to keep the ignorance alive. Certain subjects need to be let go. You can not ever move forward without letting go the past. Dr. Carter G. Woodson published a book called “The Miss-Education of the Negro” in his book it explains how mis-education was a turning point in educating another black Negro scholar.
In most public schools history books had no existence or great scholars presented to black children. Therefore, blacks had no idea about themselves other than television and through pictures portray by the media. Woodson stated, how “dooming the Negro to a brain-washed acceptance of the inferior role assigned to him by the dominant race, and absorbed by him through his schooling” (Woodson, 1933). The public schools in mostly all urban environments are transforming into prison institution whereas the teachers are becoming the police officers.
According to KAMR, a school in Texas called Canadian Independent School District came to conclusion to allow qualified teachers to carry guns in school. Again I would argue how the school system is transforming into a prison industry. Today, schools have been issued metal detectors, excessive cameras and clear book bags to verify that there is no weapons nor drugs inside them. According to Peter Gray, John Jay High and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio issued ID badges for all students to wear. The media reported that the “badges contain radio frequency chips, which allow school officials to monitor the kids’ movements anywhere in the school building or on school grounds” (Gray, 2012). Also in 2010, the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania started viewing students at their house and in school with spyware implanted into school-issued laptops.
Slavery has a correlation or connection of some sort with the prison institution. Slavery dealt with capitalism, physical control, and cruelty. Racial injustice affects the minorities in today’s society, especially the young men. Slavery is still in effect of today just its just being portrayed in a different light . The prison institution has become the new slave trade. Blacks are used for cheap manual labor. Prison companies have established an interest with private corporations to make money off Blacks doing reduced work, “even producing advertisements to bring in business and land contracts, touting prison labor as a cheap alternative to outsourcing to other countries” (Fredrick, 2012). It is a fact that the food that is processed like chicken, beef, and pork inside schools “have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners” (Elk and Sloan, 2011). More labor jobs given to Blacks in jail than Blacks who live in poor communities. It makes me wonder how the mass incarceration of black males in society is so extreme, because of the poor communities many lived in. Many Black males who didn’t receive jobs in America made cheap wages in the prison industry. Is it ironic that a black male cannot afford a job in society, but soon as a black male is incarcerated he has huge amount of work. According to Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) “In 2008, over 2.3 million Americans were in prison or jail, with one of every 48 working-age men behind bars,” (Khalek, 2011). Currently, in America illegal immigrants and teens are racial profiled and processed under a caste system. Research states that incarceration rates between 1880 and 1970 extended about “100 to 200 prisoners per 100,000 people” (Khalek, 2011).
Up until 2001, the public judged racial profiling. President Bill Clinton addressed racial profiling “morally indefensible and deeply corrosive.” (Alschuler, 2002). Blacks and Hispanics are considered poor because of lack of education, unemployed, social environment. However, it is one of the main reasons why Blacks and Hispanics become racially profiled in their communities. Judge Shira Scheindlin, discovered that the New York Police Department altered to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” (Goldstein, 2013). In the inner-cities the amount of stop and frisk are majority Blacks and Hispanics. New York City police have made it a procedure to stop “Blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white” (Goldstein, 2013). New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman fired police superintendent Carl Williams for mentioning, “Blacks are more likely to be involved in trafficking.” (Williams, 2004). The Supreme Court has pointed out that watching community, race can be used as a clear reason in decision making. In New York police officers use race as a factor in stopping people on the streets, sometimes to scare them. Stating that there is enough evidence for a jury to decide. Blacks and Hispanic generally represent more than 85 percent of those who are stopped by police officers. The court marked that the police could take a person Hispanic appearance to jurisdiction when acquiring suspicious hint that a vehicle may obtain illegal immigrants. The attention becomes to the nation focusing on trisomy. Another thing the nation is paying attention to immigration. People moving to the U.S. caused a lot of racial profiling because of new people coming in. everybody should get equally treated. “Background injustice might led us to suspect that when the police racially profile blacks drivers, they might sometimes be motivated by a racist attitudes towards black drivers but not white drivers in a harassing manner, or might selectively impose such profiling on blacks in an unfair way” (Habib, 2010, p.36) immigrants get the same treatment as if they were to violate the laws for them coming here to America. As were blacks get treated differently even if we are in the same category. Michelle Alexander stated, “The likelihood that a person of Mexican ancestry is an “alien” could not be significantly higher than the likelihood that any random black person is a drug criminal” (2010, pg.129). People get the wrong idea of racial injustice, and how it still has an effect on history. The Jim Crow laws found it hard dealing with slavery. However, racial injustice effects the young minorities in today’s society. Poverty is the state of being poor, not having certain necessities to survive in America such as food, shelter, and security. Blacks are the majority of jails, prisons, and the court systems. Justice Hugo Black had put his thought in and commented in a decision Griffin v. Illinois. “There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man get depends on the amount of money he has.” (Olson, 2005). There are three major issues that society have today involving the criminal justice system. One of the first major issues is race. Race such a major issue because of family influences, cultural influences, and because some people are just ignorant.
In the mid-1800s, there were more African Americans in prison than any other race. Slavery was the belief of the foundation that blacks were unequal than everybody else. Slavery destroyed a lot of human beings mental, physical and spiritual health. When slavery ended, it left a lot of remains of racism. It had an effect on the generations. The civil right movement is a movement in the United States beginning in the 1960’s and led by blacks in an effort to establish the civil rights of individual Black Citizens. This movement was very important to us blacks in America. Currently, men have become the spotlight for the prison system. Men are now labeled as a “growing under cast” meaning they have low values. Mean are sometimes denied the right to vote, discriminated from having a job, and public benefits”, during the Jim Crow period. (Alexander, 2010). In the past 30 years crime rates do not explain the unexpected dramatic of incarceration.
The relationship between police officers and ethnicity community’s citizen’s racial groups by different groups and how they interact. Racial profiling is a major part in comprehending racial abuse. Such as suspiciously picking out a black driver not doing anything but, the police think the driver is suspicious so he/she gets pulled over. Another factor was people have the tendency to treats blacks unequal. It may seem that this paper discusses slavery but in all actuality it plays a major role in the injustices, stereotypes, and unequal treatment for minorities in todays society. In order to solve a problem you have to know the root to the evil.
The last major factor is because of black men go to jail, that really affect the household. It’s not the same if the head of the household is gone and getting mis-treated. The bible stated that “the first thing to understand in this discussion is that there is only one race-the human race. Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indians, Arabs, and Jews are not different races. Rather, they are different ethnicities of the human race. All human beings have the physical characteristics. More importantly, all human beings are created in the image and likeliness of god (Genesis 1:26-27). God loved the world so much that he dent Jesus to lay down his life for us (John 3:16). The “world” obviously includes all ethnic groups. (Houndmann, 2002).
In conclusion racial profiling is not a problem that has just recently come on to the scene. It has existed for centuries, it has just been presented in different ways. All the things that created all this hate and discontent such as slavery and mis-education of our youth are the leading causes of why racism even exist. This will ultimately lead to racial profiling because people tend to fear what they don’t understand. We need educate our children about the way life is now and not how it use to be. To make the world a better place. Racial Profiling ends as long as the fear and the lack of knowledge of another race still exist. Eliminate all the seperations of races and create one race where skin color or what part of the world you are from does not matter. All things such as racism, racial profiling and anything in that realm disappears with it.
Reference
Alexander, M.(2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY. The New Press
Baker, A. (2011, August 31). Judge declines to dismiss case alleging racial profiling by city police in street stops. The New York Times
Bou-Habib P. (2011). Racial profiling and background injustice. Journal of Ethics, 15, 33-46. DOI: 10.1007/s10892-010-9091 –x.
Goldstein, J. (2013, August 12). Judge rejects new york’s stop-and-frisk policy. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Houndmann, M. (2002). What does the bible say about racism, prejudice, and discrimination?. Retrieved from http://www.gotquestions.org/racism-Bible.html
Olson, A. (2005). Justice is not blind. People weekly world, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/200609071?accountid=11834
Weatherspoon, F. (2004). Racial profiling of african-american males: Stopped, searched, andstripped of constitutional protection. Marshall Law Review , 439, Retrieved from http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1472:constitutional-protection&catid=130:articles-related-to-racial-profiling&Itemid=241