Driving While Black

1175 Words5 Pages
Driving While Black By Bob Johnson Professor Glenn Miller 4/1/10 Are cops racist? Not all of them are but sadly there are still some on the streets today who are. The United States is a largely diverse country with many different nationalities and cultures. Every state has a culture and within those cultures are subcultures for the generations. For this reason Americans act differently. Racial profiling in the police community is statistically-based, and there are many documented cases to prove it. In Kenneth Meeks’ book, Driving While Black, there are numerous examples and events that happened in our country. In our society we place cops in a separate category by thinking they can do whatever they want and even though there are some reasons behind it, the fact is they are just people. Racism is not only a police problem; it is a problem this entire country faces every day. In order to solve the problem of racist cops, we must first solve the problem of racist societies. Racial profiling is difficult to prove. A reason behind this is many encounters of racism and racial profiling go undocumented, or attempted to be documented too late. “From a legal Point of view racial profiling is tricky because it can be difficult to prove. Seldom do investigators recover a smoking gun with fingerprints on it” (Meeks 7). Unless the encounter was recorded, either by audio or video, it is hard to prove unless there are physical signs. Being a victim of racial profiling is humiliating, embarrassing, and singles the individual(s) out from everyone else in society for no reason. In many cases most of the victims point out that whether it was by being pulled over, stopped in a mall or on the streets, other people look at you differently. One story in the book is about a young black male that told the story of when he was racially profiled by being thrown up against

More about Driving While Black

Open Document