Making the streets safe for everyone requires mutual cooperation between the general public and the police. Without community support, the police cannot do it alone. In this regard, respect as been shown to be a better tool for decreasing crime than fear and when fear is present residents tend to avoid contact with local police officials and other government officials that the residents believe may check on their immigration status or the status of family members. Information from these groups regarding criminal activities in their community is non-existent. Respect between law enforcement and community members is far more conducive to developing a good and lawful environment and involving local authorities in immigration enforcement creates an aura of fear. Auras that even the best law enforcement officials will have difficulty overcoming.
The process of racial profiling not only causes problems for law enforcement in enforcing the laws but it also serves as an infringement on the civil rights of the profiling victims. Being stopped and frisked based solely because of one's race or ethnicity may be considered only a minor annoyance but when it such minor annoyance is directed at a specific race or ethnicity it must be considered to be a violation of the profiled victim's equal protection rights. Members of all racial and ethnic groups have the right to expect to be treated like all other groups and when profiling is used by the police this expectation is violated.
In many states and communities legislation has been passed that prohibits the use of racial profiling by their law enforcement agencies. In several others, however, notably Arizona and Alabama, the practice has been actually encouraged. This has led to debate and uneasiness leading to increased levels of prejudice and resentment.
The Arizona statute that virtually mandates racial profiling is a classic example of the problems that the process creates. The Arizona statute requires police officers to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they have a reasonable suspicion may be present in the country illegally. The Arizona legislature, likely in reaction to the public outrage caused by the statute requiring the immigration inquiry, passed legislation prohibiting any police action based on race or ethnicity, but said legislation has had little effect. Instead, the Arizona law enforcement agencies have continued to exercise their authority under the latter statute. What has effectively happened is that Arizona legal authorities are being asked to enforce a law that steps on the civil rights of everyone in Arizona that is Hispanic or even remotely appears to be Hispanic. Regardless if one's family has lived in the United States one day or three generations he or she is subject to the same level of suspicion. Living in Arizona and being Hispanic now means being always subject to possible stop or questioning. The privilege of anonymity so longer treasured by most Americans is forever lost for Arizonian Hispanics or persons who look Hispanic. Unfortunately, Arizona appears to be only the first state considering such a stance. Reportedly a number of other states are considering the enactment of similar type legislation (Weigel, 2010). This is a result that will be a tragedy for the Hispanic community specifically and the United States society in general.
Racial profiling is a social practice that is repressive and undemocratic in nature. It uses group characteristics and applies it to individual racial and ethnic minorities. In recent years this process has been used extensively against the Hispanic and Mexican-American communities in the United States. Its use has been used to impute negative behavior to an entire population of people and caused them to be subject to suspicion-based entirely on their ethnic heritage.
The entire process of racial profiling is unjust but, not surprisingly, it is applied against those in society most vulnerable to attack and least likely to effectuate any political or social pressure to prevent its enforcement. In the case of the Hispanic and Mexican-American communities they are presently, as they were in during the Great Depression, being used as source of blame for at least part of the struggling U.S. economy. Racial profiling serves to reinforce this blaming process by associating deviant behavior with a population group. Because their behavior...
The inverse would also be true. However, that question is not entirely black and white, pardon the pun (Stenning). The reason for this is that race can inform whether or why to stop someone for a traffic stop or on the sidewalk with racism not being the root reason. For example, a young white woman in her 20's would stand out like a sore thumb in a drug-infested area that
Racial Profiling The distinguished Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Studies, was arrested for trying to break into someone's house. It happened to be his own (Project America; 2008). This is but one of numerous cases of racial profiling that has been documented in this country and that points to the injustice and irrationality of singling out ethnic minorities for
Ramirez et al. explains this clearly stating "when law enforcement practices are perceived to be biased, unfair, and disrespectful, communities of color and other minority groups are less willing to trust and confide in law enforcement officers and agencies, to report crimes that come to their attention, to provide intelligence and information, and to serve as witnesses at trials (Ramirez et al., 1996)." The author further explains that as
The individual who learns the intensity of the racial hatred that exists through experiential learning knows that it is never wise to walk amongst the roses with one's head in the clouds just thinking or dreaming because living in the world meant watching at all times for approaching insult, breach of rights, danger and even death due to racial profiling. III. Perspective Two: The Public Official The public official is ever
Detroit has also joined Los Angeles and Chicago in having such a regulation. A similar bill was attempted unsuccessfully thus far in Texas (2001). Responding to the concerns of organizations that represent Hispanics, Muslims and individuals of Arab descent, the Detroit City Council unanimously recently approved an ordinance that prohibits city officials from profiling people based on their appearance, race and similar factors. The regulation also bans city officials from
As such, the question of fairness is not easily decided. Yet, we see that the Supreme Court has upheld racial profiling if used as a complementary technique. The American people as well support the utilitarian view that racial profiling is fair when evaluated in the context of all stakeholders, even if it seems unfair to a small few. The philosophical outlook of some may lead them to label racial
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