Racial Profiling | EssayIvy.com

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Racial Profiling In the US Police Community

Introduction

Racial profiling is the use of religion, race, gender, national origin, or ethnicity as a factor

by the law enforcement officers in making the decision of whom to arrest, investigate, or detain

without having the necessary evidence of a specific criminal behavior or crime. At the base of

racial profiling are stereotyping and racism and assumptions on the worst of people according to

an unfair reality perception that is multiplied and projected, influencing and endangering every

person of same ethnicity, race, or religion. The paper evaluates the racial profiling in the U.S

police force as meted out to the African American people based on biased perception of their

behavior and deviant criminal character.

History of Racial Profiling in U.S

When the problem of racial profiling is mentioned, most people perceive as a recent

problem emanating mostly in the 1980s when the Black Americans were pulled over for “driving

while black.” However, this is a problem dating back to the later centuries and eras of 1700s,

when in 1704 in South Carolina, a white men patrol guard was formed to supervise and hunt

black slaves who escaped from the plantations where they were working. The majority of black

people who were working in the plantations had to show special passes to prove that they had

authorized permission to be off in the plantation. In the process, they were subjected to

harassments, interrogations, and whippings among other physical punishment if they were

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construed to have ran away. Like in the contemporary profiling, it’s the African American person

skin color, instead of their actions, that subjected them to inequitable treatment from the

authorities charged with law enforcement(Rushing, 2013).

In the modern U.S, the African American people are accused and suspected of

committing various crimes such as being in possession of drugs necessitating for vehicle search,

pat down, or stop-and-frisk action. The common factor in all these actions of the police officers

is the racist association of blackness with wrongdoing and criminality despite the fact that the era

of slavery is firmly behind us in over 150 years since its inception.

In the 20

century and in the aftermath of slavery, black people especially men were

forced into another form of servitude referred to as convict leasing. In this form of enslavement,

the black men would be leased to work in private corporations and plantations, mostly in the

companies dealing with rail and road construction.

Specific laws known as black codes were formulated meant to force convict leasing, and

their target were the black men by asserting control while enriching the white people through

acquiring of free labour from the blacks. One example of the black code laws is “vagrancy”

which stood for one staying without employment. The conviction for that crime, mostly the black

men, was to work off their sentences.

The essential thing to consider and emphasize concerning the racial profiling, black codes

and convict leasing is that they all violated the fundamental principle of U.S democracy, of the

equal protection by the law of the land. In 1868, a 14

amendment was appended into the

constitution in response to the convict leasing and black codes since its was evident that the law

mattered and applied different to the whites and blacks in the country. The 14

amendment

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avowed the citizenship of the African American people and guaranteed equal protection by the

law, including the right to property, life, liberty and due process(Rushing, 2013).

Reasons for the Racial Profiling In the Police Force from Multi-Individual View

Recently high profile cases have emerged of black men who are unarmed dying at the

hands of police in US sparking a wave of civil unrest and protests in various cities in America.

The deaths of Freddie Gray, Michael brown, and Eric Garner are evidence of the long-standing

problem of racism and use of excess force by the police. In an inquiry programme, the BBC

World Service conducted an expert witness talk with four key informants including Charles

Ramsey, the head of police reform taskforce during President Barrack Obama’s tenure, with a

view of examining the underlying reasons behind this racial profiling in the force. One of the

witnesses is Sam Sinyangwe, an activist, researcher and initiator of the Mapping Police Violence

project. According to him, the incidences of black people being killed by police are not isolated

cases.

Sam being a black man says he felt infuriated by killing of fellow black people and je

started the project in the wake of Mike Brown shooting with the aim of providing answers to his

deeply rooted vice among the police. The motivation behind the project was based on the lack of

records on the number of people killed by police whereas statistical records exist for all other

types of crime. Sam conducted a count of people from all ethnic groups killed by police since

2014 and it came to 1,149. From his analysis, he deduced that black people are three times more

likely to be killed by police than white people, considering that they account for just 12 percent

of the population in U.S. His work leads to the big question, whether this is a pattern, or an

isolated incident(BBC World News, 2015).

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The second witness was white middle class woman, Lorie Fridell, an associate professor

in University of South Florida dealing with criminology and she is a research director at the

Police Executive Research Forum. To her, some police officers in the force are guilty of black

crime implicit bias. She accepts that she has bias herself and she is more likely to see threat in a

Black American more that she would in a Caucasian person. She further goes ahead and says that

almost every person holds an implicit bias whereby we associate groups to stereotype perhaps

producing discriminatory behavior. She attributes the rise in the racial profiling of the black

people by police to black crime implicit bias, but she states categorically that does not give the

license to treat every black individual as if they fit into that stereotype(BBC World News, 2015).

The third witness in the inquiry programme is Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and

currently working as a professor of law in South Carolina University. According to him, ‘warrior

police’ culture puts in danger the lives of civilians. The ‘warrior culture’ according to Stoughton

is the belief among police officers that theyare soldiers who are involved in a battle with the

various criminal elements- something that has contributed to the occurrence of the black people

shootings. Stoughton believes there needs to be change in the training manual of the police force

in the academy and eliminate the ‘warrior culture’ ingrained in their training(BBC World News,

2015).

The fourth witness in the inquiry programme Charles Ramsey, a police commissioner in

the Philadelphia police department. In the former U.S administration, the former president

barrack Obama tasked him with day to day running of president taskforce on 21

century

policing reforms. According to Ramsey, the problem of racial profiling occurred to wider social

problems that require to be fixed first before the problem is finally wiped out. He says that in the

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current U.S society, everybody wants to point an accusing finger, but there are many underlying

social problems such as poor housing, poverty, and education.

He points Philadelphia as an example of areas that have highest poverty rates in USA

where all the vices such as prostitution, drugs, and illegal cigarette are supplied by the

underground economy. This explains why police are deployed in large numbers in such

neighborhoods where they are tasked with dealing with high levels of disproportionate crime in

the localities and neighborhoods(BBC World News, 2015).

The Department of Justice produced a report criticizing the excessive use of force by the

Philadelphia police, which stirredCommissioner Ramsey into introducing a new training of the

officers emphasizing on de-escalation together with armed response. De-escalation involves

putting them in situations where they exercise good judgment and able to review the real live

situations and have their response, and reaction being more consistent with the actual threat.

Does Racial Discrimination In the Wider Society Contribute To the Killings?

In light of escalating killing of blacks, new research has shown that the number of black

people killed in US communities is determined by the racism levels in that society. The study

shows a direct link in the racial bias of the white community to the number of black people killed

by police in that area. The study further highlighted the widely known statistic African

Americans are three times more likely to be killed by the police, with the indigenous Americans

almost likely at three times to suffer such untimely fate, and Hispanic men being twice more

likely(Buncombe, 2017).

This new report brings a new twist and suggestion that prejudices and biases held by

white residents in a particular area correlates with the number of African Americans killed in that

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area in the hands of officers. The researchers: Eric Hehman from Ryerson University, Ludwig’s

Freiburg University Jimmy Calanchini and Jessica Flake from university of Toronto, did not

anticipate this kind findings but to their dismay, implicit bias, association of someone to certain

social group and threat were the primary determinants of the level of lethal force used by the

police. Their research indicated that in areas where the regional implicit bias or stereotype

towards the black is strong, more African Americans are likely to be killed by the police.

“[The results] indicate that this is not specifically a problem of police officers, but

reveals that there is something about the broader communities and contexts in which

these officers make speeded, life and death decisions that is associated with killing more

African-Americans,” Mr. Hehman.(Buncombe, 2017)

This new research introduces another paradigm as to whether the problem lies with the

police officers or it is a manifestation of the broader situation in the country. The criminal justice

system would want to take up the findings of this research and use them to correct the rampant

force discriminating the women and men and colour. Alternatively, it opens a way for further

research where the focus would be whether the black people exhibit more violent and force in

their mass reactions triggering the police to construe them as violent people and thereby exercise

caution while dealing with them.

Conclusion

As the popular civil rights champion, Martin Luther King once remarked:

“That old law about eye for an eye leaves everybody blind; the time is always to do the

right thing,”(Sharpton, 2015)

In echoing the words of the human rights icon, what is required is renewed commitment

in dealing with these challenging times. Violence either one that is meted to the police officer or

the civilian should not be condoned with the main objective being on stemming the misconduct

of police, not just eliminating killing of blacks. The solution lies in instituting proper policing,

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good cops helping rooting out the rogue ones and observing decorum while voicing our

discontentment and disapproval of the killings.

The law should avail equal protection regardless of the colour, religion, race, or ethnicity

of the people living in U.S. According to Washington Post in 2016 alone, police killed about 123

African American people while the Guardian, in their project dubbed, The Counted, gave the

figure standing at 138. The supreme question is, how many cops have been incarcerated for this

deaths and the answer is zero. This is unthinkable and unjustifiable that police can kill such a

high number of people and fail not to be convicted of any crime. Another solution would be

having police patrol and man areas and neighborhoods why they reside. With this action, they

will not be policing strangers, but rather common people and neighbors they see at the grocery

store, in the streets and also in the areas of the residence. With this, they will have prior

knowledge on the character of the person before they take any action to the person.

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Works Cited

BBC World News . Why do US police keep killing unarmed black men? 2015,

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32740523.

Buncombe , Andrew . “Racism levels in US communities predict how many black people

police will kill there, study shows.” THE INDEPENDENT, 2017,

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/police-killing-racial-bias-white-people-us-african-

americans-shot-dead-shooting-study-racist-culture-a7863501.html.

Rushing, Keith . “Dissecting the Long, Deep Roots of Racial Profiling in

America.” HUFFPOST, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-rushing/dissecting-racial-

profiling_b_2740246.html.

Sharpton , Al . “Police and black Americans: a relationship worse than in the 90s.” The

guardian , 2016, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/10/police-black-american-

relationship-reform-justice-al-sharpton.

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