Racial Profiling in America

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Blacks or African Americans have endured many horrors inflicted upon them by this nation since we have landed here. African Americans have experienced many atrocities that no other race has had the inconvience of experiencing first hand. Africans Americans were mostly kidnapped, shackled and then bought to a land under the most barbaric and uncivilized conditions of the Middle Passage. They were thrown in the bowels of ships to suffer under the most inhumane conditions by the hands of their Europeans counterparts. Deprived of the most basic human rights that most the world had enjoyed by this time they suffered by means of starvation, lack of space, and even fresh air. Africans were piled in these ships one on top of another with no regards to their survival. Millions of Africans were treated horribly with total disregard to their basic rights as humans by their European counterparts. The Europeans justified their actions by saying that blacks were inferior and not human therefore they do not deserve the basic rights that every other person enjoys.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In order to understand racial profiling, it must first be correctly defined. Although different authors use different criteria for the term racial profiling, Merriam-Webster's definition for the word racial is "of, relating to, or based on a race (Merriam-Webster, 2006; p.855)." The definition the dictionary puts forth for profiling is "the act of suspecting or targeting a person solely on the basis of observed characteristics or behavior (Merriam-Webster, 2006; p.830)." Based on these definitions, racial profiling could be defined for criminal justice purposes as targeting a person based solely on the characteristic of race. Most people, law enforcement officers included, would consider racial profiling based on this definition as ethically wrong. However, a case must be made for the use of profiling based on race in some circumstances.

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Critics claim that racial profiling has no place within the justice system because it targets minorities who are not necessarily doing anything illegal. They argue that the evidence that shows that racial profiling as a successful tool in the law enforcement arsenal is skewed, and that those targeted are actually less likely to perform illegal acts than others who are not targeted, because those who are not are less likely to get caught, while those who are targeted are much more likely to be caught in an illegal act, so they will perform less illegal activity.

The evidence supporting racial profiling states that this argument is invalid because many illegal acts are cited as being done by minorities, specifically in terms of gang activity. Many people feel that racial profiling is ethically sound because in order to obtain a suspect, an officer must be looking for a person with certain characteristics. For example, it would be absurd for an officer to be looking for a young male that is tall, wearing a red shirt, black baseball cap, and jeans, who has brown eyes, and a goatee, without mentioning whether he is white or black, Asian or Hispanic. The description would be incomplete without race and could possibly describe many people who would be stopped for nothing other than fitting a vague description. However, it would also be outrageous to have officers look for a white man. This description is also much too vague to be valuable to officers.

Theories

Michael Boylan wrote in a special issue focusing on racial profiling in The Journal of Ethics. He argued that there are different kinds of racial profiling, and different scenarios in which it would be appropriate. His argument was that racial profiling can be done in an ethical manner when it is used as part of the investigative process, but that it cannot be done before determining whether or not a crime has been committed. Token analysis is the term Boylan used because it

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Places the "emphasis on the individual", meaning that it does not target a wide range of people but rather a specific yet unnamed individual (Boylan, 2010; p.137). He argued that type analysis is ethically wrong because it focuses on the abstract (Boylan, 2010; p.137). Boylan recognized that racial profiling is a point of contention among advocates and critics. However, he believed that by putting a system in place where race is only discussed after it has been determined that a crime has been committed and evidence has been gathered and analyzed that racial profiling is an ethically sound tool in the arsenal of law enforcement officers.

J . Angelo Corlett, who also wrote in the same volume as Michael Boylan, also agreed that racial profiling is not, in and of itself, unethical. He argued that even the term racial profiling is inaccurate and preferred the term "color profiling" because race is an obscure idea that everyone has differing opinions on. However, by using the term color, it can become a concrete idea and therefore less individual discretion will be used. Once an idea is termed correctly, concrete methods follow. He argued that police officers must be able to gather enough of a physical description of a suspect to be able to look for a specific person (Corlett, 2006; p.26). He actually went as far as to lay out the groundwork for ethical color profiling. First, the profile cannot be too broad and cannot include too many people as suspects (Corlett, 2006; p.28). Second, "ethnic background of the witnesses from whom the profiles are drawn must be taken into account", meaning that if someone is racist or has other negative characteristics, the account of race might be false (Corlett, 2006; p. 28). Lastly, he argued that the same tactics must be used for everyone, no matter race, class, et cetera (Corlett, 2006; p.29).

Other authors had opinions on the topic of racial profiling. In Crime and Policing in Rural and Small-Town America, the authors bemoaned the lack of research that has been done about

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Race and crime in suburban and rural areas, claiming that the research that abounds regarding urban areas is incompatible with suburban and rural areas (Weisheit, Falcone, and Wells, 2006; p.38). They believed that by putting more effort in to the area of race in rural and suburban areas, it will be proven that minorities are actually underrepresented in the justice system in rural areas (Weisheit, Falcone, and Wells, 2006; p.38). This argument could go further by saying that the current research that favors the critics' side of racial profiling might be inaccurate.