Major Approaches to Racial Profiling - Essay Example

Racial Profiling can be defined as “Racial Profiling is a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as a reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law” (Nittle, n.d.). Racial profiling is a behaviour that not only remained with black Americans but also took the American Muslims and Arab Americans into its grasp after September 9/11. Earlier only Black Americans were sidelined and suspected without any proof or reason. The only reason for treating them this way was their skin colour. Be it traffic stops or be it any other case, the person with black skin was held responsible for disobeying the law.

This is a very serious problem and threat to the harmony of society. If all the people are not treated equally by law enforcement or the general public, no one can ensure peaceful living and true brotherhood in the public. The people being victimized of racism or racial profiling, start hating the people of other races. Jealousy creeps in and groupings and divisions are automatically made. It creates a negative atmosphere in the entire society (Wilkins, n.d.).

There are two approaches which kind of support racial profiling or think of it as useful. One of the approaches is called the Consequentialist Approach. According to this approach, Racial Profiling can be used as an effective tool to decrease the time taken by the police to arrest the criminals and in that way, it serves society and gives justice quickly to the affected parties. It is a hypothetical statement to believe that the damage done by Racial Profiling is far less than the benefits it provides in the shape of effective crime investigation (Keller, 2008).

The other approach is named as Contractualist Approach. It gives a very different perspective of Racial Profiling by saying that it can be useful for those members of society who could become the victim of the crime committed by the profiled group. People will feel safe by the fact that they are watched out by law enforcement agencies more than the other profiled groups. The people who are not in the profiled group feel Profiling is a step to assure their security (Keller, 2008).

However, these approaches are still hypothetical and do not provide a satisfactory justification to blindly perceive every Black American for example to be a criminal even before gathering the facts and forensic proof. These weak arguments still do not tell why police should target and watch Black Americans as potential criminals. Why in the first place people of a specific race should be thought of as responsible for the breaking of law, remains unexplained.

Racial profiling should be condemned in any situation and it is not a wise decision for society. It is an ill-conceived technique and it is a myth that it is useful if only used by law enforcement (Head, n.d.). These arguments seem logical and to conclude the discussion if a simple thing is considered, it will make the thesis clear. If a person is declared suspicious day after day of committing crimes, would not it create anguish in him and increase the chances of him doing the actions against the law in anger as he has already been thought of as a criminal? So this is not a good idea to reduce the crime rate at all, instead what will reduce it is equal and unbiased behaviour and treatment of all the citizens of a country regardless of his/her race, religion, colour and ethnicity. Read More