Argument Against Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is, “the use of racial and ethnic characteristics by police in their determining whether a person is likely to commit a crime or engage in deviant and/or antisocial activities” (Siegel). Racial profiling refers to the targeting of particular individuals based on race, ethnicity, national origin and religion by law enforcement authorities to stop, detain, question or subject such people based not on their behavior, but rather on their personal characteristics. Many people charge that the tragic shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was the result of racial profiling. The immense frequency of black people being forced to pull their cars over by white policemen for no apparent traffic or vehicular violation

Is racially profiling something that is wired in our brains? Being racist is something that is learned from negative influences that surround an individual in their lives. Children are not born racist, they learn in from their parents, older siblings, or their peer groups. An individual could racially profile against someone if they were personally victimized, or if a large amount of people are affected by the criminal acts of an ethnic group. Since the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, Middle Eastern and Muslim people have experienced higher scrutiny at airports and other locations. People purposely avoid walking past them on city sidewalks in fear that they are concealing a bomb that they are about to set off, or they fear an intelligent child that was able to build a clock in a classroom. America was the victim of a terrorist attack, that has since changed the way the United States views and conducts things as a nation. Racial profiling will continue to be an issue, and government agencies are doing what they can to try to resolve this epidemic that is plaguing law

Any white person, not just police, engages in racial profiling when they suspect, avoid, follow, report or challenge a black person simply because of their race. Racial profiling affects all people of color, not just the teenager in a hoodie walking the streets after midnight in a large city. People often confuse criminal profiling as racial profiling, and sometimes there is a very thin line between the two. Criminal profiling is where you try to determine if a specific crime occurs a certain way, and if it is occurring by a specific person. It is becoming more so now that people are talking and discussing racial profiling. Researching statistics on minority groups that are arrested for a specific crime. A person could easily be confused between the two types of profiling that most police departments are accused of using. Law enforcement officials have to form a profile of crimes that occur, document who is committing these crimes, and if the area they are creating this profile on is predominately black, one could consider that to be racially profiling. If countless drug deals are reported to be occurring by a group of young black men within city blocks, an officer is going to be on alert for black males that fit the description. The next black male he encounters may not have anything to do with drugs, or even have a criminal