Becker's Labelling Theory Of Racial Profiling

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A quote by Anatole France: “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing” can be interpreted in such a way that the stated opinion can be seen as the dominant culture’s opinion of the “others,” therefore creating an image of foolishness for those outside of the dominant culture. The farther away a person is from the dominant culture in terms of class, ethnicity, “race,” age, gender and other determinants, the higher the likelihood is for stigmatization and marginalization to happen and being labeled as deviant such as from racializing deviance. Every culture or group has a certain degree of expectations (norms) for its members, which is not all equally achievable by its members, especially the innate features …show more content…

To attach certain crimes or other deviant knacks to a certain racial group through the media is the definition of racializing deviance. Bringing Becker’s Labelling theory (1963) into racializing deviance, a black youth would internalize a label associated with crime through encounters with others that accepts the media portrayal of black people and crime. Racial profiling is the situation where Becker’s labelling theory (1963) affects, a youth being stopped and questioned by a police officer on a quiet street at night, the youth’s choice would be to either stay quiet and accept the expectations that youth disproportionately causes crime, and thus, accept his deviant status, or to resist or be uncooperative and therefore, deviant. Racial profiling includes actions justified by reasons of public safety, these actions taken “based on racial stereotypes, rather than being based on reasonable suspicion” (Steckley and Letts 2013:440) The labels put a strain for the receiver that could make the person abide or strictly abstain from the labels, but either way, the labels affect the person in an unnecessary and intrusive way. Another concept around “shaping other people’s lives,” this time not through racial expectations from others, but gender expectations in the ideology of the fag - which consist of influencing people to act out their gender roles, a tactic more often used on young males where young males are expected to …show more content…

A new criterion for the ideal person must be made to not include things such as sex, but to judge a person based on his or her capabilities in doing what he or she does. The question remains on the support for equal treatment based on age, which is a very controversial debate, as factors such as higher wage from experience, or even having the contemporary knowledge for a certain job. One thing is for sure though, on a common view that as people reach old age, they become physically weaker, which may cause employers to not want to hire seniors that needs money to get by, which goes to show how there are many seniors out on the streets searching through public garbage cans for recycles in exchange for a meager income - with an out of portion amount of seniors of colour in such a circumstances goes to show an obvious language barrier still prominent throughout society. What amounts to a “fair” and “equal” treatment of the

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