Police Profiling is Racist

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Many people in the United States are against police profiling in our cities and towns against African-Americans and other minorities, while they are supporters of racial profiling in our airports. This research paper investigates how profiling everywhere can help improve our security, while not crossing the fine line into racism. This paper also shows some examples of when profiling has turned into racism, and how we can prevent this.

There are many people in the United States that are against police profiling. Profiling is defined as “the use of specific characteristics, as race or age, to make generalizations about a person, as whether he or she may be engaged in illegal activity” according to dictionary.com. Police are defined as “an organized civil force for maintaining order, preventing and detecting crime, and enforcing the laws” according to dictionary.com. Combine these two definitions, and you can define police profiling as an organized civil force that maintains order and prevents crime by using specific characteristics to make generalizations about a person. Many people today are against police profiling because of what has happened in history. They associate police profiling with police corruption and brutality, as well as with racism. They look at what happened in big name cases such as the Rodney King beating, and associate police profiling with it. To combine these three separate definitions into one is not correct, as they are three separate things.

Since the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001, police profiling has turned into two separate parts – profiling minorities in communities, and profiling persons of Arab decent or followers of Islam in our airports. You will find many people in the Unit...

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