Arguments Against Racial Profiling

Racial profiling, targeting certain individuals for crimes, that is based on their race and ethnicity is a continued debate, throughout societies past and present; especially when it comes to law enforcement. When law enforcement portrays a profile about particular people that commit certain crime can lead an officer to observe individuals and act according to one’s race that the officer sees, rather than their specific behavior or crimes that have been committed. However, with racial profiling being so controversial it is not a surprise that people will have different views on this issue.

Authors Jared Taylor and Glayde Whitney offer reasons to why racial profiling is an acceptable law enforcement strategy by stating, “Nevertheless, blacks

Profiling individuals has played a part in decades in society. It has existed to dates back into slavery and has continued through the Jim Crow events and is even more prevalent in the twenty first century and is spread across the United States. But, we must figure if the issue of racial profiling is an effective way to enforce law, especially in present-day criminology of the different treatment of races and ethnicity. There are individuals, who view racial profiling as a necessary way to stop and prevent crime and only sees, a person's skin color, not their actions, which can make them subject to biased treatment from law enforcement. There is a lot of talk on how law enforcement questions blacks in great numbers; when it comes to crime they are expected to be or become criminals than those of other races such as whites. Taylor and Whitney mention that, “ blacks have committed about one- eighth of the united states population, while one half of them were for murder, rape, and robbery, and about one forth to a third of those crimes were for burglary, larceny, auto theft, and aggravated assault (Taylor and Whitney).” Whitney also pointed out that throughout many regions of the United States, “that the best predictor of the local murder rates was the percent of those who are African American (Taylor and Whitney).” Law

Racial profiling, in law enforcement can be a disadvantage to those of color. Author Michael Lynch does not think that Taylor and Whitney make a valid argument to why racial profiling is not an acceptable law enforcement strategy. Lynch sees that Taylor and Whitney had made several methodology errors in their analyses of criminological data sources which creates results that can be misleading especially, “those that use of prevalence rates rather the incident rates (Lynch).” Failing to use rates that are racially based and adjusted by the population size will give reports that crime is over represent by those that are African American. Crimes that are committed by black and whites will vary from city to city because blacks do no commit all crimes. Crime is seen to be serious to base it on a race factor (Lynch). Michael does not see that racial profiling to be justified by data surveys but as a way to display institutional racism that is legal perspective