Taylor Martinez
Dr. Preston
Expository Reading And
Writing
11-12-13
Racial
Profiling Goes On
Racial profiling is a
popular method used by law officers in order to hypothetically enhance crime prevention
by targeting minorities, because they are more likely to commit a crime. Racial profiling according to Wikipedia, is
the use of an individual's race by law enforcement personal as a key factor in
whether to engage a person or not. Personally
I can't think of an easier way to stop crime by using racial profiling. I know in some cases it's bad practice to use
because if you use this method of preventing crime on mostly Mexicans and or Blacks,
you're more likely to assume that they might commit a crime. If you stop them more than you stop Whites or
Asians, then you're going to assume the Mexican did the crime before you assume
the white guy did it. Who knows? Maybe the white guy did do it and the Mexican
is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Personally I think that Racial Profiling is misused a lot. People just assume instead of trying to find
that facts out first.
I personally have never experienced racial profiling (at
least that I can remember of). I'm not
going to lie and say that I have never been racist and or used racial profiling
before, but I can understand the method that law enforcement officers use. Mainly because you don't see a lot of white
people in gangs, living in the projects or bad neighborhoods. You mostly see Mexicans or Blacks in the bad
neighborhoods or in gangs (in Santa Maria at least). It's too bad that they're automatically accused
of committing a crime or being gang affiliated.
I just read this article about a Black teen buying a pricy bracelet from
a store called Barney's and it said that this teen was arrested and handcuffed after he/she left
the store. See, I don't know what
exactly happened after the teen left the store, but the fact that he/she was
arrested for buying a pricy bracelet is kind of ridiculous. Just because he/she is a teenager, doesn't
mean that they didn't save up the money or worked for that money to buy that
item. I know the average teenager won't
save up money for an expensive bracelet because they would rather buy other
stuff, but maybe they are more interested in buying jewelry than they are buying a video games or
other things. But assuming that that
teenager can't afford that item because he/she is a teenager is
ridiculous. Who cares what race or age
they are, if they the money for it and they want to buy it, let them have
it! You have it in the store for a
reason, because you're trying to make money by selling it.
It got me thinking to wonder how racist America is
compared to other countries like the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Germany,
Iran, The Netherlands, Canada, etc. I
did some research and found out that the top 10 most racist countries
(including hatred against religion, minority, skin color, etc.) are #10 India
#9 Pakistan #8 Russia #7 Israel #6 Germany #5 Japan #4 Rwanda #3 Australia #2
United Kingdom and #1 United States of America.
What I found out was that Africans have it the worst when it comes to
racism. I'm kind of surprised that some
of the top 10 countries are in the top 10.
It's a shame that America has to be number 1 country in the world in
racism. I found out that racism in
America is the most common in the South.
Mainly because of the times when Slavery was a big deal back then. I guess because of all the hatred that was
built up between the Whites and Blacks, still to this day people treat each
other poorly because of it. I think that
I just won't understand what a white person from the South feels like when they
see an African American in the town/city that they live in just because I
wasn't raised up in the South or by a white family that used to own slaves back
then. It's ridiculous that the mindset
of the Americans that live in the South hasn't changed. I mean they should know that they're not
going to get their family's slave farm back.
So why do they still need to treat them like crap? Or say mean or derogatory things about them?
In class we talked about hate speech, saying racist things
and the 1st Amendment. We also talked
about how hate speech is said. It's not
always said so direct. Some people try
to say it in a more clever way so you
don't realize its racism until the end of the confrontation or if you
really listen to how they say it. It
doesn't matter how you talk about someone in a racist way, it's still racism no
matter what. According to Wikipedia,
hate speech is, outside the law, communication
that vilifies a person or a group based on discrimination against that person
or group. I think that it's sad
when someone says they don't belong in this country just because of their skin
color, religion or ethnicity. Yes their
ancestors aren't originally from here, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve
to be here. I think that it's stupid how Whites think that they are originally from
America. If you think about it, if think
far enough back, we are just as foreign as Africans, Asians and Europeans. Sure Whites have been here longer than the
other races, but that doesn't mean that we belong here in America and Africans,
Asians, and Europeans don't.
Bibliography
Negi, Dimple. "Top 10 Most Racist Countries in the
World". List Dose.com Web date: June 27, 2013.
Nockleby, John T. (2000), “Hate Speech,” in Encyclopedia
of the American Constitution, ed. Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst,
vol. 3. (2nd ed.), Detroit: Macmillan Reference US, pp. 1277-1279. Cited in
"Library 2.0 and the Problem of Hate Speech," by Margaret Brown-Sica
and Jeffrey Beall.
Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, and
Charles M. Judd Bernd Wittenbrink, "The Definition of Racial Profiling". The Police Officer's Dilemma: Target
Ethnicity and the Decision to Shoot, University of Colorado at
Boulder/University of Chicago, http://psych.colorado.edu/~jcorrell/SPSP2002.pdf Web date: November 23, 2005.
