Jeff Parsont

Authorities and Race: The Harmful Effect of Modern-Day Criminal Profiling

A friend of mine was wrongfully stopped and searched by the police a few months ago.
He was on the sidewalk waiting for me to arrive when a squad car pulled up behind him. I got
there shortly after this to see him being patted down by one police officer while another was
forcefully questioning him about his name, address, his plans and why he was out late. I could
not imagine what my friend could have done to evoke a search. So we stood by until the police
finally released him. They left him with the following statement: We stopped you because you
fit the profile of a young, thin black male that we have been looking for on suspicion of assault.
The officers apologized and were on their way. But my friend was clearly offended and shaken
up by this encounter, because he is neither a violent person nor a criminal. Although I dont
agree with Stop and Frisk, it is currently the law and this is a prime example of racial profiling
today. It proves that stereotypes about difference continue to be used without consideration of
the negative impact.
Stereotypes can be used lightheartedly, because we have been desensitized to them. But
this issue is not seen only with youth; it continues on in our lives as we grow up. Racial profiling
is the effect of racial stereotypes. While the system of profiling is based on crime rate, race is
often the first thing taken into account when looking for a criminal. This can have a very
negative impact on an average person if they are assumed to be criminal based on their skin
color, and that needs to change. My friend was insulted because being pulled out of a group of
kids and accused of something awful based on his skin was demeaning and unfair. He was more
than insulted; he was disrespected and belittled by this. It then in turn ruined his night, and put a
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damper on all of us for a couple days. This is the negative impact I have been referring to, and
action should be taken to stop it.
The first thing an authority looks for when searching for a criminal is his or her outward
appearance, and because of this they become accustomed to profiling by prominent skin color
rather than by a persons actions. In a recent New York Times article by Benjamin Weiser and
Joseph Goldstein, they state police stopped more than 200,000 people in the first quarter of
2012, most of which were black and Latino. A vast majority of those stopped were found to have
done nothing wrong.
1
This is in only a quarter of a year, and a very recent year at that which
puts in perspective just how often this still happens. If each of these stops took it personally as
my friend did, you can see how much unnecessary disrespect racial profiling is causing. I believe
a reason this is happening is because stereotypes are so prevalent today. People have become
accustomed to them, and many people have racial assumptions that seem normal without
recognizing their negative impact. Officers of the law are no exception. These are people who
are supposed to be looking out for us, yet they continue to stereotype and profile people based on
their race. How can people of color feel safe and look up to authority when they know that they
will be categorized and assumed a criminal based on the color of their skin?
Racial stereotypes and their prevalence drive police officers to racially profile people.
These negative stereotypes are, indirectly, putting people beneath the officers because they are
different. This is called social categorization. I believe social categorization is a common
mentality because it helps us wrap our minds around the broad population of people on this
Earth. Having a few common groups of people in our thoughts is much easier than billions of
individual people, and officers tend to take this easy route. But authority figures need to resist

1
Benjamin Weiser and Joseph Goldstein, Mayor Says New York Will Settle Suits on Stop-and-Frisk Tactics, The
New York Times, January 30, 2014.
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this state of mind, because if it becomes a factor in something as serious as a criminal case, the
risk is run of falsely jailing an innocent person or damaging their mental well-being. People
should not be subjected to aggressive searches based on their appearance alone.
In his article Racially Profiled in Palm Beach, legal scholar Kevin Noble Maillard tells
the story of how he was pulled over on his bicycle twice in a matter of minutes because he
supposedly fit the profile of a suspected robber.
2
Maillard writes, Duke undergrad, Edinburgh
Junior Year, Michigan Masters, Penn Law, Michigan PhD. I've worked hard to get where I am.
But that doesn't matter now. Now, I'm a suspicious black dude out on a bike past sundown.
3

Basically, what Maillard is saying is that the police did not look at any attributes he had other
than his skin color when assessing him. They did not take things like his age, education or
occupation into account. Rather, the officers in this case saw a black man out late at night and
suspicion rose immediately. Maillards story strengthens my argument that while police may be
profiling on the basis of crime, race is still taken into high consideration before age, education,
class, and any other attributes a person may have. This happens too often and is unfair to hard-
working and law-abiding citizens that happen to have darker skin.
Racism has changed very much over time and we are in a better world than we have been
in the past. But if you examine the current state of our country, you can see that there is still a
long way to go. White people earn more money and have a better quality of life than people of
other ethnicities, and men still have higher pay than women do. Discrimination still exists and it
will be a long time before it can be totally eradicated. Although racial profiling can be seen
happening at the hand of authorities often, many officers themselves will not admit to it. They

2
Kevin Noble Maillard, Racially Profiled in Palm Beach, The Atlantic, July 23, 2013.
3
Ibid.
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describe it as profiling that is driven by crime
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. But with the statistics mentioned before by
Weiser and Goldstein, it is very difficult to argue that race is not one of the first things accounted
for by officers when they are profiling.
All of this being said, the continuing conflict that exists between authorities and the black
community is understandable. The relationship African Americans have had with the police in
the past is not a good one; oppressive Jim Crow laws were in place for more than 50 years in the
South, and police constantly disrespected and discriminated against blacks. The current situation
we are in now with racial profiling, brutality and improper searches is a reflection of our past. In
a collaborative study done by scholar Susan E. Howell and her colleagues Huey L. Perry and
Matthew Vile, Howell speaks to the fact that police brutality and profiling towards African
Americans still exists due to the horrors of our past. She also states that there is a consistent
pattern of greater criminal activity in black neighborhoods, making it difficult for officers to
decide how much force to use on those neighborhoods in comparison to others.
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But despite the
difficulties our authorities face when dealing with potentially dangerous or aggressive people,
they need to stop seeing race as a defining factor of this aggressiveness. It becomes detrimental
to innocent civilians when they are discriminated against because of it.
In conclusion, the unjust and demeaning search my friend had to go through is a prime
example of a big problem our society has today. People in our era are still very affected by
stereotypes, but when someone becomes a police officer they have to learn to forget about these
racial differences and see everyone equally while still keeping the safety of the public in mind.
Racial profiling and unfair stops and searches happen all the time, my experience being one of
many. This leads me to believe that they will continue to exist for a long time to come, and the

4
Daniel Bergner, Is Stop-and-Frisk Worth It?, The Atlantic, March 19, 2014.
5
Susan E. Howell, Huey L. Perry and Matthew Vile, Black Cities/White Cities: Evaluating the Police. Political
Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 1 (March, 2004), 45-68.
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change will be a slow one. Maillard expresses his view of the unlawful system of profiling and
bias through his own personal experience, stating that police take race into account first and
foremost when looking for a criminal. Howells study of different relations between people of
certain races and authorities touches on the fact that black people and police have a dark past,
which gives a different perspective on the tension between the two. But the harm caused by this
tension is unacceptable. When police wrongfully profile someone based on their skin color, they
are assuming a civilian is a criminal based on how they look. This is degrading and harmful to
ones image of him or herself and should not be happening. Police are figures of authority and
people that we encourage our youth to look up to, and they have more power than the average
person. This power should be not be used in ways that harm members of our society, and police
need to start realizing this.