The Pros And Cons Of Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is a controversial issue that still occurs in today’s society. For some time, policemen have used racial profiling to determine those at fault during criminal activity. However, racial profiling must be stopped because it shows ineffectiveness and is embarrassing for the victims. Law enforcement should not be allowed to be discriminative towards a race solely because of their appearance and instincts. Minorities must be protected at all costs in order to have all the American values be fulfilled. Therefore, we need to have more people realize that racial profiling is not an effective system and instead demoralizes people of color. While some believe racial profiling can help stop crime, criminal behavior cannot be determined
In Terrence McCoy’s, “The Secret Surveillance of ‘suspicious’ blacks in one of the nation’s poshest neighborhoods,” he addresses the issue that many people are targeting blacks when reporting criminal activity on a new phone application. According to McCoy, he talks about the application uploading, “hundreds of pictures to the chatroom, many of which they took clandestinely. Since March last year, the images have shown more than 230 shoppers, more than 90 percent of whom are African American,” (McCoy par 10). With a quick and easy application to help report crime, people are prone to use this to their advantage by stating false accusations of innocent black people. This then leads black people to be under suspicion by the police, even though they do nothing illegal to begin with. Because of this, minorities are becoming angry that people are able to get away with reporting false crimes based on racial profiling. This allows them to feel harassed and violated because they are not able to live freely without the fear of being arrested over wrong accusations. This connects with the argument that racial profiling must gain notice and be stopped because people believe it is okay for them to take advantage of people. This shows how society creates an image that black people are aggressive and commit crimes. People should realize this
Even with discriminative police realizing that racial profiling is wrong, they still continue to follow this method because they know they are able to get away with it by lying. Toobin’s, “Rights and Wrongs,” expresses how policemen judge people based on their skin and are able to lie when they are facing lawsuits. Toobin believes that judges occasionally do not believe the cops’ claims because of them lying in the past court cases. Noted researcher Jeffrey Toobin argues that, “In decision after decision, she has found that cops have lied, discriminated against people of color, and violated the rights of citizens,” (Toobin par 4). What Toobin is trying to say is that police have constantly violated people’s rights because they constantly criticize minorities based on their skin tone. Once they realize that they are in trouble, they lie to protect themselves when they should not have violated the citizen’s rights in the first place. The stereotypes that are given to black people and Hispanic people are discriminative and immoral. This is because society has shaped people to believe that they are more dangerous than the other races. This quote shows that American society continuously discriminates other races because of suspicion and no evidence when stopping and frisking citizens. This issue must be noticed because it is