The statement that the United States of America has entered the “post-racial” era is rather common these days, yet there are still many evidences that prove the opposite. Viewing the issue rationally, one my ask themselves a question: “The United States’ society has been through two hundred and forty years of slavery, and then multiple decades of legal racial segregation, also, up to the beginning of the 2000s racial inequality has been mainly ignored, so how come today only one and a half decade later we state that racial prejudices in this country no longer exist?” This paper is intended to bring up the problems of white privilege and racial profiling and emphasize that both of these phenomena are common in the contemporary America.
Racial profiling refers to “the targeting of individuals and groups by law enforcement officials, even partially, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion that links persons belonging to one of the aforementioned groups to an identified criminal incident or scheme”( Threat and humiliation: Racial profiling, domestic security, and human rights in the United States, 2004). Today, a huge number of people living on the territory of the USA suffer from racial profiling.
Over thirty millions of individuals have already reported that at some point they became victims of this phenomenon, and millions of others are under a risk of getting affected by it in the nearest future. The groups harmed by racial profiling include the Americans of Hispanic, Asian, African, Arab, and Persian background. Indigenous people and Muslim individuals are also frequently targeted, captured, and questioned without a particular reason. Racial profiling creates a threat for people of both sexes and all ages.
The history of racial profiling includes numerous cases affecting African American people. For example, the chances of an African American driver to be pulled over by the police in such states as Missouri, Oklahoma, and California have increased over the last decade (Zengerle, 2014; Threat and humiliation: Racial profiling, domestic security, and human rights in the United States, 2004).
Besides, African Americans are often targeted while shopping. For example, Amnesty International (2004) reports that an African American woman shopping for holidays in New York was stopped by the store security and held together with other suspects of theft, all of which were people of color. Her demonstration of receipts did not make any difference. Hours later the woman was released, but everything she bought was kept by the security.
Other cases of racial profiling target individuals while walking in the streets, passing the airport security, travelling, and making business. Immigrant communities suffer from multiple raids from the side of law enforcement, which inevitably leads to alienation of these groups from the police and the government representatives. Today, a number of activists are fighting racial profiling and trying to prevent its unreasonable intrusion into the lives of innocent Americans.
Racial profiling has been a very troubling issue for the American society for years. It happens on the daily basis and carries a number of negative consequences. One of them is a growing conflict and occasional confrontation between the communities and the law enforcement services (Racial Profiling, 2014). Besides, this phenomenon is undemocratic, illegal, and it breaks the basic claims of the American Constitution about protecting all of the citizens equally and preserving the law unbiased and unprejudiced.
Reference List
Racial Profiling. (2014). ACLU.
Threat and humiliation: Racial profiling, domestic security, and human rights in the United States (2004). Amnesty International. Web.
Zengerle, J. (2014). Michael Brown’s Death Was Shocking. So Are the Racial Profiling Stats We’ve Been Ignoring.