The United States it is said to be the land of opportunity where everyone has a right to succeed and be equal, but is it actually true? Racial Profiling has been a problem since the beginning of time, and it is still continuing especially throughout the United States. Racial Profiling is known as different groups of races that are being accused of everything because of their skin color; as a result, they are more of a target towards police officers. Racial Profiling has affected minorities living there, the community, and has occurred in our society for as long as can be. Thankfully, there are five sources that can help demonstrate evidence on how this is true.
First, racial profiling has played a role in our lives, it begins to impact minorities who live there as well. Police officers have started to take more actions in arresting, pulling over, and accusing a huge population of African-Americans, Latinos, and even a few Asians. As this continues, it causes many minorities to feel emotions of being afraid, angry, and humiliated since they feel they have lost all power and dignity they had. For example, in New York, African-Americans and Hispanics have felt they are being harassed and humiliated by police officers arresting them in public, and the article, “Jim Crow Policing” by Bob Herbert believes that “The nonstop humiliation of young black and Hispanic New Yorkers, including children by police officers who feel no obligation to treat them fairly or with any respect at all is an abomination” (Herbert 43) which introduces evidence towards how citizens of color feel attacked by police officers. In LA, the police department began to cause minorities to fear leaving their own homes because of accusations of stealing nice cars they owned or being pulled over for little actions that were not necessarily causing problems. In the article, “LAPD searches blacks and Latinos more. But they’re less likely to have contraband than whites” by Ben Poston and Cindy Chang explain how a man named Bryant Mangum was pulled over near his own house for having a white BMW with tinted windows. The officers assumed that since he was African-American he must have stolen the car or been a gang member; as a result, they started to search his car without him giving consent to do so. Afterwards they found nothing and left him alone, “I can’t even enjoy it where I live. I’m more worried about cops than criminals” ( Poston and Chang 6). If this continues then many minorities will eventually not leave their homes and feel as though they are trapped in an unequal community.
Second, racial profiling has occured in our communities by causing more complaints to spread about inequality to minorities, riots in individuals, and some fights that were revealed on videos in LA. In the Ted Talk by Jamil Jivani, he explains how he feels unsafe ever since the age of 8. To continue this, he explains how the mayor states “All residents of the city believe that there is no racial divide in the city of Ferguston” as there is a riot occurring at the same time about racial profiling. Jivani was soon arrested for false accusations of someone else, which afterwards he furiously filed complaints. As he met the officers who falsely accused him, he understood they were flawed as well and started to come up with some solutions to stop racial profiling in our community. Some examples he gave were increasing complaints, talking to the police officers more, and cameras on their body armor. In the article, “The Bias in Fresno’s Justice System” by Reis Thebault and Alexandria Fuller discuss how in the Fresno community minorities of mostly African-Americans are more targeted, especially in schools since “Black and brown students were suspended and expelled at higher rates than white students-a statewide trend that is particularly profound in Fresno” (Thebault and Fuller 4). As known, there have been some video evidence from some citizens who were being attacked by police officers for small actions prevented, for example, they were beaten up for speeding. A group of police officers began to swarm the citizen and one by one beat him up badly. Nobody was able to do anything because they were afraid the same thing would happen to them, and it was also going to be their first encountered evidence on how police officers are demonstrating racial profiling.
Lastly, racial profiling has started to impact our society since there have been more complaints made by citizens who were either African-American or Hispanic/Latino since they felt racially profilied from police officers. In the article, “What Racial Profiling? Police Testify Complaint Is Rarely Made” by Joseph Goldstein discusses how police officers do not see a problem about racial profiling because they were never confronted directly about it by minorities. Eventually, they are put through court, and instead of coming clean the police officers started to explain how there have been complaints, but it was never about racial profiling. Additionally, as this continued there have been proof regarding to racial profiling complaints that were discovered, and the observations were “...Mr. Esposito’s office recieves about 30 complaints from the public involving race each year, which are labeled under a board category of “general dissatification” (Goldstein 2) which demonstates how police officers do not acknowledge racial profiling complains; additionally, they ignore it. The judge who played a part in this situation was also very confused to know that the police officers kept on stating how there were no complaints about racial profiling; in addition, the judge asked multiple times if the police officers were sure that what they are saying was right. Sadly, the case was closed afterwards since Charles Ortiz, a retired Bronx precinct commander testified that nobody filed any complaints about racial profiling, so the judge decided to close the case dealing with racial profiling complaints.
Overall, racial profiling is a big occurrence everywhere in the United States with a majority of citizens who cannot stop the preventions of police officers racially profiling other minorities. Racial profiling is known as a group of different races being accused of problems because of what they look like, mostly not looking white. Thankfully, there has been multiple evidence to help support that police officers throughout the Unites States have demonstrated racial profiling; thus, giving minorites the ability to stand up for themselves. Additionally, the main three sub points contained how racial profiling is affecting minorities, the community, and society.
Work Cited
Goldstein, Joseph. 'What Racial Profiling? Police Testify Complaint Is Rarely Made.' The New York Times. 12 May 2013, p. 4.
Herbert, Bob. 'Jim Crow Policing.' The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2010, pp. 43-44.
Jivani, Jamil. 'How racial profiling hurt everyone, including the police.' Youtube, 8 Oct. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCX_Th-IjjE&t=193s. Accessed 14 Nov. 2019.
Poston, Ben and Chang, Cindy. 'LAPD searches blacks and Latinos more. But they're less likely to have contraband than whites.' Los Angeles Times, p. 7.
Thebault, Reis and Fuller, Alexandria. 'The Bias in Fresno's Justice System.' The Atlantic, 24 Aug. 2018, p. 5.