Racial Profiling
Racial profiling is defined as
discriminatory process by law enforcement officials who target a group or
person of certain ethnicity, race, religion or national origin on suspicion of
crime. This has been an ongoing issue for a long time. Nowadays certain racial
groups are targeted on a daily basis such as Middle Easterners, African
Americans, and Mexican immigrants. It has become a problem because people are
now being judged by the type of clothes they wear, they color of their skin,
and the issue whether they have legally or illegally entered this country. There are stops being made by law enforcement
officials throughout the day because an African American was driving by looking
suspicious or a Middle Eastern looking person has left his bag near the elevator
to go to the bathroom and people decide to call 9-1-1- because there might be a
bomb in the bag, only to find out it was his laptop and he had just gone to the
bathroom. Numerous amounts of people are affected by racial profiling many of
those which fall under the minority group. Some of the factors such as religion
and race play a huge role. A person with darker skin is more likely to be
pulled over than a person with a lighter skin. A Muslim person is more likely
to be frisked at the airports than a person who is a Christian. The legal
system itself gets sued by many of these individuals and most of the time these
individuals win their cases because of the mistakes that are made by the
officials. The government loses millions of dollars and not all to law suits
but to the funding it provides the departments to properly train their
employees about racial profiling.
There really isn’t anyone who benefits
from this problem since it involves people being disrespected, the government
losing money, and some even losing their lives. For example, Kendrec McDade was
killed by Pasadena police officers who responded to a call of a person who was
robbed at gun point by two black teenagers. When the police responded they
found Kendrec who started running and one of the police officers blocked
Kendrec with his police cruiser while another was on foot chasing him. The
police officers alleged that Kendrec was reaching for something in his waist
therefore he was shot by both of the officers and later died at a nearby
hospital. He was later found to be unarmed and the person who reported the
crime had lied to the police about the gun so they would respond faster. The
police department tried to cover up the mistakes that they did during the investigation
and the lawyer which represented the family stated “They have made millions of
mistakes in this case. The cover up is the worst.” (Pelisek 2012) Parents lost
a son who was unarmed to violence and since he was black he was already
considered dangerous. What made it worse was him trying to pull up his pants
which looked like he was reaching for something in his waistband. People that
contribute to the problem are people who are uneducated about other races. Just
because someone is Muslim doesn’t mean they are a terrorist, just because
someone is Mexican doesn’t mean they are here illegally, and just because
someone is black or brown doesn’t mean they committed a crime. Law enforcement
officers who are not properly educated will continue to racially profile
innocent people and maybe someday it will go too far which will probably have
devastating results. However some law enforcement agencies have implemented
programs to educate their officers about the different types of races and how
to handle a situation related to racial profiling. It’s not just the officers
who are making these mistakes. There are normal citizens who are making this
mistake on a daily basis. Many people are targeted and are affected in some
sort of way by racial profiling. It is time for the government to create
programs that will be educate people and if the problem still persists then there
should be appropriate action taken against the person or people that are making
the same mistake again.
