Racial Profiling Essay, Research Paper

Despite the civil rights victories of 30 years ago, official racial prejudice is still reflected throughout the criminal justice system. For people of color in cities large and small across this nation, north and south, east and west, Jim Crow “justice” is alive and well. Today skin color makes you a suspect in America. It makes you more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, and more likely to be arrested and imprisoned. There is nothing new about this problem. Police abuse against people of color is a legacy of African American enslavement, repression, and legal inequality. Hopefully, by analyzing the causes, the effects, and the possible solutions of this problem we can attempt to deter future police from using this dangerous tactic of apprehension.Tens of thousands of innocent motorists on highways across the country are victims of racial profiling, and these discriminatory police stops have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. No person of color is safe from this treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law, their age, the type of car they drive, or their station in life. In short, skin color has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime, and police use this “evidence” against minority drivers on the road all the time. It is essential that an end to the practice of racial profiling be reached and by analyzing the causes, its effects, and its solutions we will become better at targeting the problem and prevent it from occurring in the future.