Racial Profiling Definition

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Marginalization and Racial Profiling “To serve and protect,” are the words that are often heard when referring to law enforcement personnel. At a young age, children are taught to respect their elders, not to talk to strangers, and to call the police when there is trouble. Police are considered the heroes that catch the bad guys. When a crime takes place officers must use their better judgment in assessing the crime scene. Law enforcers look for suspicious characters and evidence in order to seek out the guilty party. In most cases, there are repeat offenders. Crimes have become so common that law enforcers have gotten accustomed to labeling a specific profile as the guilty party for a crime. A profile of certain types of people identifies…show more content…
For example, racial profiling is considered to be a form of stereotyping and discrimination, which fuels the injustice of racial inequality – racism. There are countless examples from centuries past and up to now that support claims of racial discrimination amongst minority groups. For example, “during the eras of lynching in the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, southern sheriffs sat idly by while racists like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans (ACLU, 2013).” More recently, another example is “the targeting that has been ongoing since the September 11th attacks, of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for detention on minor immigrant violations in the absence of any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon (ACLU,…show more content…
This young, unarmed, African American teen was followed, attacked, and gunned down by George Zimmerman, a self-glorified neighborhood watch patrolman who just so happened to be Hispanic. I wonder if their views on “justifiable” profiling would change. But, for now, “public opinion about the non-guilty Zimmerman verdict reflects how the justice system and race is largely divided across racial lines. For example, 75% of African American respondents said they would have found Zimmerman guilty of a crime, whereas only 34% of White respondents said the same (Siddiqui,

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