Racial Profiling

Racial profiling has become quite a catchy phrase as of late. It seems to come up often in political discussions. In recent discussions of racial profiling in law enforcement, a controversial issue has been whether it is constitutional or effective to profile potential suspects of crimes based on their race or ethnicity. Proponents of racial profiling say that it works. Obviously there is reason why our top law enforcement officers practice racial profiling. Should we really doubt their authority and knowledge when it comes to keeping the nation safe? They claim that some crimes truly tend to be committed by people of certain racial groups more often. In rebuttal to those ideas, opponents might argue that racial profiling is unconstitutional, and that police officers have no right to discriminate against individuals purely based on color of skin and ethnic background. They also argue that racial profiling isn’t even effective, because our views and even our statistics about crimes and who commits them are skewed. If the police stop more Hispanics than whites, then of course they’ll find more Hispanics breaking the law. This doesn’t mean that there are less whites breaking the law, it just means that less were stopped.

I would argue that racial profiling is unconstitutional and ineffective. Although in some cases, such as September 11, the attacks were clearly committed by people of Arabic descent, but this does not give us the right to discriminate against all people of this race. Although some might object that we could not have prevented further attacks had the police not practiced racial profiling in airports, etc, I reply that there were many more people that were discriminated against and humiliated that had nothing to do with the attacks. This issue affects us all. Whether we are the ones being discriminated against or the ones being protected by the law, we need to decide whether or not racial profiling is worth it.

One of the major issues has to do with police traffic stops and searches. According to a study done by the Steward Research Group and headed by a professor at the University of Texas at Austin “three out of every four law enforcement agencies pulled over blacks and Latinos at higher rates than whites. Once the cars were pulled over, six in seven agencies reported searching African Americans and Latinos at a higher rate. Statewide, African Americans were about 60% more likely to be searched than whites, and Latinos were 40% more likely to be searched.” The interesting thing is that most of the time this occurs in areas of the state where more drugs and weapons are found on whites. The study found that “less than 10% of Latino drivers who consented to searches of their cars were found to be ‘doing something wrong.’ ‘That means that 90% of them suffered the humiliation and demoralization that searches entail, but were innocent,’ [said Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU in Texas]. ‘From another perspective, that means 90% of the time, police are wasting their time. It is inefficient.’” This study shows us that profiling plays a major role in law enforcement. Even one of the directors of a major law enforcement agency in Texas, Charley Wilkinson, admitted that “officers are taught--they are trained--to profile.” He goes on to explain that “it is unfair and unjust to paint them with a broad brush, [to say] that they are racist or act in a discriminatory way.” But even so, it occurs. And where do you draw the line?

This is what Professor John B. Quigley of Ohio State University asks. He mainly focuses on the screening process that the US government is trying to establish in airport security. He explains that “profiling would be difficult to implement. There are too many persons in whatever racial or ethnic category one might use to make checking sensible… Would it be persons who appear, by facial characteristics, to be Middle Eastern? Or persons whose names sound Middle Eastern? And what is Middle Eastern? Does it include the Indian sub-continent? The London underground bombers were of Pakistani origin, not from Arabic countries. Would persons from countries that are predominantly Muslim be included? That would encompass Indonesia and much of southeast Asia.”

Rachel Ehrenfeld of KRT News Service argues that we shouldn’t risk the safety of the majority of our citizens just to save a few of our citizens some embarrassment. She claims that “political correctness shouldn’t be a factor in assuring security.” But According to Quigley, profiling might actually make the threat of a terrorist attack go up. He points out the disastrous affects that this would have on all peace-making efforts with these countries that have been made in the last decade or so. Countries will not be very likely to cooperate with us if their citizens are being humiliated in our airports. “And beyond the terrorism realm, if ethnic communities are branded as dangerous, the chance for good race relations plummets.”