Is racial profiling racism?

[BrianLewis]

I was watching the news today and I am amazed that the vast majority of people do not know the difference between racism and racial profiling. What's your opinion? Do you consider them to be the same thing, or do you see a distinctive difference.

Personally, I consider racial profiling the same as job experience. I really can't picture anyone going into a job in law enforcement with the mentality that they want to pull over more blacks than any other ethnicity. However, if one were to have 10 years of experience on the job and 80% (invented number) were drug related, violent crimes involving black individuals, I would see no problem with that police officer focusing his efforts on that profile. Conversely, if 80% of drug related, violent crimes were involving caucasian or asian ethnicities, I would see absolutely no problem in profiling them in order to increase the effectiveness of the justice system.

I assume that the common citizen considers crime to be equally distributed among all ethnicities, and therefore consider profiling wrong in that respect. However, my personal experience differs, and when talking to officers they seem to agree with my opinion that violent crimes and crimes involving drugs are usually skewed heavily towards blacks, and, to a lesser degree, hispanics. If it is truly is skewed, how can any experienced officer not profile based on ethnicity?

 

[nahadef]

Due enturely to past experience, I know that Brian Lewis is a racist. Whatever the topic, he will side with the American-white majority. This entirely discounts his experience. Is this racial profiling? Yeah, I guess.

He's had a relatively easy life. He feels pretty comfortable pointing fingers.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Aren't you being a troll here, nahadef? Just dropping into a thread to flame the OP?

You imply that the "American white majority" are racist. Does this mean all whites, who comprise the majority of Americans, are racist? Or do you mean the majority of whites?

I'm white and have had I suppose a privileged, if not always easy, life. If "easy" means having the money you worked hard to get, I'm guilty.

Brian raised an interesting issue. I was set to chip in my two cents, until you left a bad taste in my mouth. Oh, well. Maybe later.

 

[nahadef]

I didn't imply that the mass of white Americans are racist at all. Just Brian Lewis. No matter the issue, he's on the side of the privileged masses, as one could argue I'm against them. I fight for the little guy. He fights for the big guy. I find that pretty distasteful.

Chip in as much as you'd like. If you're right, you're right, and no troll can take that from you.

 

[alecgraham]

Brian, I think that racial profiling is both one kind of racism and job experience. It is a racist procedure with a cruel effectiveness.

Quick story: years ago, when I was working in a cubicle, a well-dressed man waltzed through the floor I was on and left with a laptop and various other office items that did not belong to him. My boss, a person of color -- she's an islander and hates being called African American, because, well, she's not -- was the one person to get a look at him, so the black cop who came to interview us about the theft focused on her. "What did he look like", he asked my boss.

Boss: Tall, well-dressed-
Cop: What was his complexion?
Boss: Complexion. You know, maybe a little razor b-
Cop: Was he black?
Boss: ...yeah.

Imagine a white cop asking the same question, instead of "What was the ethnicity?" I guess you can say the black cop asked a racist question and got away with it and moreover, he only saved himself two seconds in this case. I think he was just anxious to get to the point, and he was acknowledging a statistic.

But, imagine you're a black teenager who has to go through stop-and-frisk every other day he wants to walk home from school? To paraphrase a black man who said it best: to be born black is to be born with a stamp on you. (Note to def: he was talking about the whole world, by the way, not the United States). We who perpetuate that stamp are going to ruin this kid's life. I know I would go nuts if it happened to me for than a few times.

Actually, it *did* happen to me in Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport, 3 times in 3 hours. But airports are different. I'm all for racial profiling in airports if effectively reduces airplane terrorism. If that makes old women of Swedish extraction more comfortable and young men of Arab extraction uncomfortable, so be it.
So I guess I appear inconsistent with my views on racial profiling. Like I told you, it has a cruel effectiveness. And my own apparent inconsistency is actually consistently based on the mathematics of saving lives, and weighing that vs the harm it causes the innocent but profiled.

 

[BrianLewis]

You know police officers have 'tells' that they follow, right? I suppose I failed to mention that racial profiling is just one of the 'tells' and not the entirety of what the officer is looking for. For example, a teenage black male driving a beat up Cadillac with a male friend, both smoking cigarettes, joking around and driving 10mph under the speed limit, vs a family of 4 in a minivan with camping gear on their roof, following the flow of traffic. I can pretty much guarantee that the former will be followed and scrutinized, while the latter would be completely ignored. So here, I can see no racial element involved, just an officer doing his job.

Due enturely to past experience, I know that Brian Lewis is a racist. Whatever the topic, he will side with the American-white majority. This entirely discounts his experience. Is this racial profiling? Yeah, I guess.

He's had a relatively easy life. He feels pretty comfortable pointing fingers.

That's the sort of thing that can get you in trouble on any forum. You should read the rules about issuing personal insults in threads meant for debate. That's a rather universal rule of etiquette on any forum, and I know that it does mention it on this one. Furthermore, your statement holds no weight, considering you know nothing of my financial background. If you can't contribute to the discussion, you should not comment at all.

 

[theBrokenMonkey]

You know police officers have 'tells' that they follow, right? I suppose I failed to mention that racial profiling is just one of the 'tells' and not the entirety of what the officer is looking for. For example, a teenage black male driving a beat up Cadillac with a male friend, both smoking cigarettes, joking around and driving 10mph under the speed limit, vs a family of 4 in a minivan with camping gear on their roof, following the flow of traffic. I can pretty much guarantee that the former will be followed and scrutinized, while the latter would be completely ignored. So here, I can see no racial element involved, just an officer doing his job.

That's the sort of thing that can get you in trouble on any forum. You should read the rules about issuing personal insults in threads meant for debate. That's a rather universal rule of etiquette on any forum, and I know that it does mention it on this one. Furthermore, your statement holds no weight, considering you know nothing of my financial background. If you can't contribute to the discussion, you should not comment at all.

What about a teenage white male driving a beat up Cadillac with a male friend, both smoking cigarettes, joking around and driving 10mph under the speed limit, vs a family of 4 in a minivan with camping gear on their roof, following the flow of traffic?

 

[alecgraham]

On the other hand, Chris Rock has (half-)joked about being pulled over for "being black on a sunny day." In other words, for doing nothing suspicious but having black skin, and I do believe him.

 

[thomas]

Gentlemen, this thread has been reported. While the topic is certainly controversial, it is worth being debated. I therefore ask you to avoid any personal attacks. Thank you.

 

[BrianLewis]

On the other hand, Chris Rock has (half-)joked about being pulled over for "being black on a sunny day." In other words, for doing nothing suspicious but having black skin, and I do believe him.

Maybe they pulled him over on suspicion of being a comedian! You know they love their coke, right?

Joking aside, it's a sad fact that racial profiling works for law enforcement, to some extent. We can always hope for a day that it will cease to be effective, and thus cease to be used, but for that to happen we would need a relatively effective cultural revolution on several ethnic fronts.

 

[nahadef]

Gentlemen, this thread has been reported. While the topic is certainly controversial, it is worth being debated. I therefore ask you to avoid any personal attacks. Thank you.

Apologies. It was a combination of the history of the poster and the topic being started within hours of the Trayvan Martin case being decided (a case of definite, deadly racial profiling, which is being justified again and again in American media in the days since) rubbing me really the wrong way, and I made an emotionally charged post.

So, yeah, I crossed forum lines. I apologize, and will leave the thread to its discussion.

 

[alecgraham]

I disagree with my friend def above, and since there is no specific thread on the Zimmerman case (the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin), I will take this time to say that:
- this was not a case of racial profiling on the part of Zimmerman. He was an overzealous town watchman who couldn't behave himself well enough to keep a job as a security guard, and I don't like him but, he was well within his rights to stop anyone unfamiliar in his gated community, a neighborhood which had recently been burglarized many times.
- it turns out George Zimmerman's suspicions were right: Mr Martin was very much a thug. Instead of all those sweet pictures of a 12-year-old Martin -- he was seventeen and nearly 6' tall at the time of his death -- the media should have provided more facts, like
* Martin's 3 schools suspensions within a single year(!);
* his alleged assault of a bus driver;
*his text attempts to find a "codiene connect" (sic) (codeine is mixed with sweetened tea to make a dangerous beverage called "drank" in the States, btw);
* the burglary he committed.
- the jury came to the only reasonable verdict, because according to Florida law, he should not have been charged in the first place.
- there certainly was racism involved, and it was perpetrated by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, well known race hustlers who exploit sensitive situations like this just to make a buck and to feel special.
- Jason Riley said it best, although I fear the article may be subscription-only.

All that really mattered in that courtroom is whether Mr. Zimmerman reasonably believed that his life was in danger when he pulled the trigger. Critics of the verdict might not like the statutes that allowed for this outcome, but the proper response would not have been for the jury to ignore them and convict.
Did the perception of black criminality play a role in Martin's death? We may never know for certain, but we do know that those negative perceptions of young black men are rooted in hard data on who commits crimes. We also know that young black men will not change how they are perceived until they change how they behave.

Jason Riley: Race, Politics and the Zimmerman Trial - WSJ.com

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Good post, alecgraham. I don't know if your allegations about Martin are true, but this quoted passage is true:

"All that really mattered in that courtroom is whether Mr. Zimmerman reasonably believed that his life was in danger when he pulled the trigger. Critics of the verdict might not like the statutes that allowed for this outcome, but the proper response would not have been for the jury to ignore them and convict."

The Florida statutes mirror the common law which the US got from England. Of course the modern English, in their zeal to deny people the human right of self defense, would have imprisoned Zimmerman just for possessing a handgun in the first place.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Is racial profiling racism? It can be.

If you pull people over, or deny them a job, just because of their race? Nah, we all know that black people are criminals and lazy. Okay, so that's nonsense. Racial discrimination in employment or housing is illegal in the US (apparently not in Japan, though). But I don't know of any laws against racial profiling in your private life.

If you're walking down a deserted sidewalk and see three young black guys in hoodies strolling toward you, would you keep going or cross the street? Be honest. Are you a profiler? Btw, I think these hoodies make people as cautious as anything, since they conceal a person's facial features.

I don't think of myself as a racist, but I do engage in racial profiling. If I encounter a young black man or Native Alaskan on a deserted street the alarm light in my head goes off; I watch out to see if the one might pose a threat and the other drunk and going to ask me for money. Sorry, but these thoughts spring from my subconscious. I'm not proud of them, but they do have some prior bad experiences behind them.

There was no evidence that Zimmerman engaged in racial profiling, btw.

 

[alecgraham]

I'm happy to supply links to any who want them.

I don't think of myself as a racist, but I do engage in racial profiling. If I encounter a young black man or Native Alaskan on a deserted street the alarm light in my head goes off; I watch out to see if the one might pose a threat and the other drunk and going to ask me for money. Sorry, but these thoughts spring from my subconscious.

A famous African-American has been quoted as saying if someone is behind him in a dark alley or behind him on the street at night, and if he turns around and it's a white guy behind him, he sighs with relief. Who said that? Jesse Jackson. The point being, due to crime statistics, blacks also profile blacks. I think this was in the Jason Riley video interview, companion to the article I quoted above.