Ending Racial Profiling
The federal government should end racial profiling by requiring policemen and other law enforcement officers to keep detailed records of each individual they stop to question or search. These records should include the person's race; the reason stopped; how long the car was detained; and whether a ticket was issued, the car searched, or any illegal goods or weapons were found when the traffic stop was made. Racial profiling is the police practice of stopping and searching African-American and Hispanic drivers at rates far disproportionate to their numbers on the road. I personally, have repeatedly been an innocent victim of racial profiling in the city in which I reside and while visiting other cities in the United States. Famous African-American men such as Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee, Wesley Snipes, Blair Underwood, Christopher Darden, and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume have also been stopped by police, allegedly for no other reason than the color of their skin. Robert L. Wilkins, a Harvard-educated Washington attorney, was traveling along U.S. Interstate 68 in 1992, returning from his grandfather's funeral, when a Maryland state trooper pulled the families rented Cadillac over
Several recommendations have been made as to ways to end racial profiling. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) make the following recommendations: (1) an end to the use of pretext stops as a crime-fighting tactic, (2) passage of remedial legislation in every state, and (3) collection of city-by-city traffic stop data on a voluntary basis. Statistics such as these make it seem as if racial profiling is not the result of bigotry, and that the factual claim upon which the practice rests is sound. But, racial profiling is still wrong because racial distinctions are and should be different from other lines of social stratification. That is why, since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, courts have typically ruled-based on the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause-that mere reasonableness is an insufficient justification for officials to discriminate on racial grounds. In such cases, courts have generally insisted on applying "strict scrutiny"-the most intense level of judicial review-to government actions. Under this tough standard, the use of race in governmental decisions making may be upheld only if it serves a compelling government objective and only if it is "narrowly tailored" to advance that objective (Kennedy 70-74). Jones, Joyce. "Policing the Police" Black Enterprise June 2000: 38-40. Racial profiling should be ended even if the generalizations on which the technique is based are supported by empirical or factual evidence. There are actually many contexts in which the law properly forbids us from playing racial odds even when doing so would advance legitimate goals. For example, public opinion surveys have established that blacks distrust laws enforcement more than whites. Thus, it would be rational-and not necessarily racist-for a prosecutor to use ethnic origin as a factor in excluding black potential jurors. And, because demographics show that in the United States, whites tend to live longer than blacks, it would be perfectly rational for insurers to charge blacks higher life-insurance premiums. However, the law forbids both practices, and it should forbid racial profiling (Kennedy 70-74). Cannon, Angie. "DWB: Driving While Black" U.S. News &World Report Kennedy, Randall. "You Cant' Judge a Crook by His Color.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1531
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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