Racial Profiling of the Black Male

696 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racial profiling in today's society

Racial Profiling of the Black Male
Racial profiling occurs when authority uses someone’s race or ethnicity to decide whether or not to use enforcement. This controversial act is highly illegal and is mostly caused by stereotypes of certain races and ethnicities. Black males are mostly targeted due to the color of their skin, the type of car they drive, the genre of music they are listening to and how they are dressed. Some call this act DWB, driving while black. Black males are stopped and searched constantly with no probable cause just because of their race and gender. If a group of black males are riding in a car with hats on, and loud music they are more likely to get stopped than a group of white males doing the same thing. It is strongly believed that black males are racially profiled more often than any other race.
In an ABC news article, an african american male was stopped and handcuffed by two undercover cops after buying a Ferragamo belt from the department store Barney’s. He was falsely accused of his card being fake and having fraudulent identification. Even after showing identification that matched the credentials for his purchase, the employees still did not believe his information was correct. He was suspicious to the employees due to the color of his skin and his gender. Because of his race and gender, should he have not been able to afford the belt and why did he have to purchase the belt fraudulently? These are questions that should constantly be asked to society each day. The stereotype of black people is they are poor, criminals and undereducated. According to Lorie Fridell, a 2001 Gallup poll indicated that 44% of blacks surveyed believed that “police have stopped them at some point in their life because o...

... middle of paper ...

...gender is not always correct, they will soon negate this tactic. When the controversial issue between race, gender and criminality stops being such a huge issue, racial profiling will be no longer useful.

Works Cited

"Barneys Department Store Accused of Racially Profiling Customers." YouTube. YouTube, 26 Oct. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.

Braham, Peter "Racial Discrimination." Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity & Culture. London: Sage UK, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 4 April 2014.

Fridell, Lorie "Profiling, Racial." Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005. Credo Reference. Web. 3 April 2014.
Fruitvale Station. Dir. Ryan Coogler. Perf. Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer. Significant Productions, 2013. Film.
FRIEDERSDORF, CONOR. Conservative Hypocrisy on Racial Profiling and Affirmative Action. 2013. N.p.

Show More
Related

  • Everything Isn T Racial Profiling By Linda Chavez Summary

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Angelie Ortiz Ms. Matlen ERWC Period: 1 Racial Profiling In the United States of America today, racial profiling is a deeply troubling national problem. Many people, usually minorities, experience it every day, as they suffer the humiliation of being stopped by police while driving, flying, or even walking for no other reason than their color, religion, or ethnicity. Racial profiling is a law enforcement practice steeped in racial stereotypes and different assumptions about the inclination of African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American or Arab people to commit particular types of crimes. The idea that people stay silent because they live in fear of being judged based on their race, allows racial profiling to live on.

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling In Bob Herbert's Hounding The Innocent

    378 Words  | 1 Pages

    First of all, racial profiling is unfair to its victims . Racial profiling is seen through the police in “Hounding the Innocent”, which is unfair since a person shouldn’t be pulled over more because of their race and that many of these stops have little to no connection to an actual crime. “Young black and Hispanic males are being stopped, frisked, and harassed in breathtaking numbers” (Herbert, 29) This is unfair to all victims of racial

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling in Today's Society

    1740 Words  | 4 Pages

    Racial profiling is the tactic of stopping someone because of the color of his or her skin and a fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior (Meeks, p. 4-5). This practice can be conducted with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, the number of people in the car and the race of the driver and passengers. The practice of racial profiling may seem more prevalent in today’s society, but in reality has been a part of American culture since the days of slavery. According to Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, racial profiling is an old concept. The historical roots “can be traced to a time in early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to ‘take up’ all black persons seen ‘gadding abroad’ without their master’s permission” (Meeks, p. 5). Although slavery is long since gone, the frequency in which racial profiling takes place remains the same. However, because of our advanced electronic media, this issue has been brought to the American public’s attention.

    Read More

  • Race-Based Traffic Stops in the US

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine driving home, on a pleasant evening, after a tedious day at work. Just as you are about to arrive to your neighborhood, you notice blue and red flashing lights and pull over. It seems the police officer has no reason for stopping you, except to search your vehicle because of your suspiciously perceived skin tone. This unnecessary traffic stop, designed for people of colored skin, happens on numerous occasions and has been termed Driving While Black or Brown. Racial profiling is the act of using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

    Read More

  • Stop-and-Frisk Policy

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the biggest reason stop-and-frisk should be abolished is in hopes to decrease such blatant racial profiling that has been going on under the name of “stop-and-frisk”. In 2007, 55% of the people stopped in New York were blacks and 30% were Hispanic (“Update: Crime and Race”). When checked again in 2011 a total of 685,000 people were stopped by the police of that 685,000, 52.9% were African Americans, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white (“Racial Profiling”). There is a story of an innocent victim of the stop-and-frisk policy, a man by the name of Robert Taylor. Police in Torrance stopped the elderly man and claimed he fit the description of a suspect that was linked to a robbery. But there was one simple problem; Taylor is a light complexioned, tall, 60 year-old man and the suspect was believed to be a short, dark complexioned, stocky man in his thirties; nothing like Taylor at all (Hutchinson). His shows that the police do not always stop people based on the right reasons, they tend to stop people based on the color of thei...

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling: Is it Intentional? Can We Correct it?

    986 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racial profiling is a wide spread term in the American justice system today, but what does it really mean? Is racial profiling just a term cooked up by criminals looking for a way to get out of trouble and have a scapegoat for their crimes? Is it really occurring in our justice system, and if so is it done intentionally? Most importantly, if racial profiling exists what steps do we take to correct it? The answer to these questions are almost impossible to find, racial profiling is one of many things within our justice system that can be disputed from any angle and has no clear cut answers. All that can be done is to study it from different views and sources and come up with one’s own conclusion on the issue.

    Read More

  • An Argument Against Racial Profiling by Police

    1389 Words  | 3 Pages

    Racial profiling in the dictionary is “the assumption of criminality among ethnic groups: the alleged policy of some police to attribute criminal intentions to members of some ethnic groups and to stop and question them in disproportionate numbers without probable cause (“Racial Profiling”).” In other words racial profiling is making assumptions that certain individuals are more likely to be involved in misconduct or criminal activity based on that individual’s race or ethnicity. Racial profiling propels a brutalizing message to citizens of the United States that they are pre-judged by the color of their skin rather than who they are and this then leads to assumptions of ruthlessness inside the American criminal justice system. With race-based assumptions in the law enforcement system a “lose-lose” situation is created due to America’s diverse democracy and destroys the ability to keep the criminal justice system just and fair. Although most police officers perform their duties with fairness, honor, and dedication, the few officers who portray to be biased then harm the whole justice system resulting in the general public stereotyping every law enforcement officer as a racial profiler (Fact Sheet Racial Profiling). When thinking about racial profiling many people automatically think it happens only to blacks but sadly this is mistaken for far more ethnic groups and races such as Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, Native Americans, and many more are racially profiled on a day to day basis. Many people believe racial profiling to be a myth because they see it as police officers merely taking precautions of preventing a crime before it happens, but in reality racial profiling has just become an approved term for discrimination and unjust actio...

    Read More

  • Analysis of 'Black Men and Public Space' vs 'Right Place, Wrong Face'

    888 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racism still exists today in this day and age. African American men are particularly stereotyped to be drug dealers, criminals, and gangsters. People have there on opinion about black men, if someone is sitting in their car, and a black man walks by they’re going to lock their door, because they’re scared there going to get robed. The stereotypes about African American men are not true. There are educated African American men just like any other race. Two articles “Black Men in Public Space” and “Right Place, Wrong Face” deal with the issue of two educated African American men that get treated differently, because of the color of their skin. The articles are focused on times when both

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling by Police in Canada

    2887 Words  | 6 Pages

    The key to understanding racialized profiling is to understand what systemic discrimination and profiling mean. Systemic discrimination sometimes called systemic racism is defined as, “Patterns and practices… which, although they may not be intended to disadvantage any group, can have the effect of disadvantaging or permitting discrimination against… racial minorities” (Comack, 2012, p30). Profiling in policing is defined as,

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Of African Americans

    1600 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling Thesis Statement

    1640 Words  | 4 Pages

    Racial profiling in America, as evidenced by recent events, has reached a critical breaking point. No longer can an African American, male or female, walk into a store, school, or any public place without fear of being stereotyped as a person of suspicion. Society constantly portrays the African American

    Read More

  • An Argument Against Racial Profiling

    1120 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before any argument can be made against racial profiling, it is important to understand what racial profiling is. The American Civil Liberties Union, defines racial profiling as "the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin"(Racial Profiling: Definition). Using this definition we can determine that racial profiling excludes any evidence of wrong-doing and relies solely on the characteristics listed above. We can also see that racial profiling is different from criminal profiling, which uses evidence of wrong-doing and facts which can include information obtained from outside sources and evidence gathered from investigation. Based on these definitions, I will show that racial profiling is unfair and ineffective because it relies on stereotyping, encourages discrimination, and in many cases can be circumvented.

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to a 2011 report from Washington Press, “the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found evidence of widespread racial profiling, showing that African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be stopped and searched by police, even though they’re less likely to be found possessing contraband or committing a criminal act”( Natarajan) Racial profiling has its origins in the nineteenth century, when many scientists in Europe and America tried to prove that people of certain physiques bore positive and negative personality traits that matched their physical features as stated in Racial Profiling: An

    Read More

  • Sexism In The Movie Crash

    1096 Words  | 3 Pages

    A current event that vaguely mirrors police misconduct and the racial prejudice in similar traffic stops like Cameron and Christian by Officer Ryan is the “arrest of Raymond Wiley, a 66-year-old black man”, on Friday morning when he “was stopped by a police officer and ultimately arrested” as he was taking a walk about four blocks from his house, wearing a pair of gloves to pick up any recyclables in his path as he is a scrapper and travels to automobile shops to collect spare pieces of metal for sale (Winkley). He was also “carrying a shortened cane with duct tape” for protection against unleashed dogs he’s encountered previously. According to police officials, an officer spotted Wiley and suspected he was casing nearby vehicles(Winkley). When stopped and searched, the officer found his car keys (which police officials claim could be utilized to break into vehicles) as well as $2,500 in cash. Wiley was soon arrested on suspicion of two felony charges: possession of a baton as well as burglary tools. His lawyer claims the only thing “Wiley is guilty of being black and living in Encanto”(Winkley). The original article, published by the San Diego Union Tribune appears to have no underlying biases, as it gives both sides a platform to tell their story and remains neutral throughout the

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Police Uniforms

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movement BlackLivesMatter have outed hundreds unlawful officers and victims that never got the justice needed. The same characteristics (color and style) that emulates strong, noble people can backfire. Black people in this country who actively resist dehumanization makes a call to action and a response to anti-Black racism in our current society. (Cullors, 2015) The growth of the movement has moved country-wide, first starting in the south; the south had always had history of racism and anti-black impulses. This movement is continuing to carry up north and west, and is projected that any officer can be the next one to unlawfully kill another black individual. These immoral police officers are no different from the rest of the police force, their uniforms are no different color or style they do not have different titles, there is no distinction between the these two types of officers. African Americans are persuaded to be more cautious and angry towards police officers; anyone with a cop uniform can be considered a threat to their life. Innocent cops were murdered in retaliation to the unfair judicial systems that are not punishing these cops. Once a police-like uniform is worn it not only once symbolizes honor and power, but t too many communities

    Read More

More about Racial Profiling of the Black Male

Open Document