Nevin Woulas
4/12/05
IDS 3303
Racial Profiling
In the last decade racial profiling has become an extremely controversial subject and been met with heated debate. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, racial profiling is defined as “any police – initiated action that relies on race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads police to a particular individual who has been identified as being or having been engaged in criminal activity”. Racial profiling can be found all throughout history and the term has recently become associated with racial discrimination. Recent topics of debate with regard to racial profiling have been in the area of traffic stops and searches, in drug trafficking, and post September 11th use of racial profiling.
The concept of profiling must be understood first, before presenting and discussing racial profiling. Profiling is a formal summary or analysis of data representing distinctive features or characteristics. Or, more simply, it is the gathering and processing of information, even on an individual level, into classifications or patterns with which a common association develops. Everybody profiles whether it is realized or not. For example, a child may touch a hot iron becoming burned, unaware that it is hot and will burn. This may occur on a few more separate occasions. The result is the child forms a profile about irons. One that says irons can be hot and burn you sometimes and to check before touching them. Another example is a bartender discovering that male customers with facial hair tend to be twenty-one years of age or older resulting in the creation of a
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profile saying that most male customers with facial hair are at least twenty-one, although this will not be true for every male in the establishment. As can be seen here, profiling is a natural thought process that is used often.
Racial profiling has been implemented by law enforcement agencies throughout the country unbeknown in most circumstances. This has occurred from the gathering of crime statistics over the years, which have lead law enforcers to develop profiles of perpetrators of particular crimes. An example of this can found in Heumann and Cassak as they discuss the New Jersey Sate Police and its use of racial profiling. As accusations were made high-ranking New Jersey officials, including the Governor and the Attorney General denied this was happening. Then an Interim Report was released on New Jersey’s State Police declaring they do practice racial profiling. Upon the release of this report state officials retracted their denials and accepted the fact that racial profiling had been in use by state police. Especially after the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office released seventy thousand pages of documents regarding police practices of stopping drivers further confirming the Interim Report’s findings. Then the DEA came under some fire because of Operation Pipeline, which “stressed the involvement of certain racial and ethnic groups in various aspects of the drug trade” (Heumann and Cossak 109), such as Latin Americans or Columbians and cocaine.
This then leads to the question of whether racial profiling is right and works, or whether it is wrong and discriminatory. This is where the heated debate takes place between the critics and defenders of racial profiling. The critics argue it is a discriminatory practice and statistics prove racial profiling targeting of minorities is not a
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success as defenders believe. Saying racial profiling has a negative effect in the community creating a distrust and dislike for police and the law in general by minorities, leading to disregard for the law and hence more crime. Then the defenders are laying claims that the critics statistics have been manipulated to suite the critics’ point of view and that racial profiling has indeed naturally developed from crime statistics. Some believe racial profiling does not even exist, that it is a myth, which has developed from improperly analyzing statistics and law enforcement actions. Arguing minorities in much greater numbers than non-minorities were involved in drug trafficking, and “if police found drugs in the same percentage of stops for white drivers and black drivers who were searched, it demonstrated not disproportionate treatment of minorities but the fact that the police were successfully targeting drug dealers generally” (Heumann and Cossak 111). This debate has recently ended with the Department of Justice declaring, “racial profiling is wrong and will not be tolerated” (USDOJ Fact Sheet 1) in 2003.
Currently the racial profiling debate has taken a turn in post September 11th America. During this age of terrorism the U.S. is faced with many possible threats posed by terrorists. The September 11th attack involved nineteen men who were all born in a Middle Eastern country and were in the age range of early 20’s to mid 30’s. They had limited use of English and appointed a spokesman for the group; they had common financial profiles, and did not want to deal with women. With this information and the skyjacker profile previously created by law enforcement, they developed the “Hijacker Financial Profile”. In the aftermath of this attack racial profiling took a new turn. Many who prior to 9-11 opposed racial profiling altogether were now stumbling with the idea
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and believing it may be necessary to profile Arabs in defense of the country and to prevent any catastrophic terror attacks. Some even continued to strongly condemn racial profiling against African Americans but believed and supported an exception to be made for the profiling of Arab looking persons.
The most interesting aspect of post 9-11 racial profiling is how minorities, who would be the staunchest critics of racial profiling are comfortable with its uses on Arab looking people in airports. An example of this is found in Heumann and Cossak’s description of an African American man who was a victim of racial profiling supporting the notion of the airport scenario. Heumann and Cossak even provide an example of an Arab American receptive to some profiling of Arabs or Muslims. What all this really portrays is that those who have been most subject to racial profiling are still inclined to support it when other groups are at its focus.
Racial profiling is a controversial topic that will not be going away any time soon. As time progresses and society changes as it is met with new and different quandaries, racial profiling will continue to have a presence in America. It will morph and change into a different form of racial profiling as seen with the national security style after 9-11. The critics of racial profiling seemed to have been gaining some hedge way and acquiring support from Washington to put an end to it until September 11th occurred, spawning the debate all over again only in a slightly different form.
Bibliography
Bumgarner, Jeffery B. Profiling and Criminal Justice in America. Santa Barbara: ABC –
CLIO, Inc., 2004.
This book contains a large amount of information about racial profiling, issues in criminal justice profiling and some cases and state statutes regarding racial profiling.
Fact Sheet: Racial Profiling. Department of Justice. 11 Apr. 2005
Source provided the governments definition of racial profiling and is a government acknowledgement that racial profiling is wrong and intends to put an end to it.
Heuman, Milton and Lance Cassak. Good Cop, Bad Cop: Racial Profiling and
Competing Views of Justice. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Provided the bulk of info from research. Discusses racial profiling from when it was brought to national attention with the New Jersey State Police through post September 11th. Contained good information presenting both sides of racial profiling .
MacDonald, Heather. Are Cops Racist?. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.
This book basically attacks racial profiling saying that it has been hyped up and a myth, that it does not even exits. This source provided some insight into the defenders of racial profiling’s views because the majority of other sources seemed to dedicate more to the critics point of view.
MacDonald, Heather. The Myth of Racial Profiling. City Journal . 11 Apr. 2005
This source again just provided some input from the defenders point of view.
Pampel, Fred C. Racial Profiling. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2004.
This book has an overview of racial profiling and deals with law and racial profiling. It also contains information to further research the subject. This book provided some input about post September 11th and racial profiling.
Racial Profiling DataCollectionResourceCenter. Northeastern University. 11 Apr.
2005 <
This web site provided information on traffic stops and racial profiling,
Confirming information obtained from other sources.
Racial Profiling in an Age of Terrorism. MarkkulaCenter for Applied Ethics, Santa
ClaraUniversity. 11 Apr. 2005
This source was used as confirmation to the information which derived
From the other sources pertaining to racial profiling after September 11th.
Williams, Walter E. Racial Profiling. Townhall. 11 Apr. 2005
This web source was interesting because it contains a brief article written
by a black author in support of racial profiling. This is what makes this source significant.