Race: A Fallacy of Logic - Essay Example

In 1993 a Maryland lawsuit named the police department as a defendant against Robert Wilkins, a Harvard Law student who felt that when the police stopped he and his family, searched them, and brought in drug-sniffing dogs that it had been done due to his race. His point was proven “when a State Police memo surfaced during discovery instructing troopers to look for drug couriers who were described as "predominantly black males and black females,". (Harris) The use of racial profiling has created an atmosphere of hostility towards law enforcement within the African American community.

Security becomes less stable when it has been made clear that one can do nothing other than wear color skin to be subject to interruption of daily responsibilities.The issue then becomes a question that asks if the higher incidents of arrest and prosecution of those with darker skin colors aren’t more relevant to the increased use of racial profiling by law enforcement rather than an actual increase of crime by people who are categorized this way. As well, the idea that ethnic origin is a basis for profiling insinuates that more often than not someone of a particular ethnicity would be responsible for an act of terrorism, while statistically most of the domestic terrorist acts on American soil were committed by Americans.

The Columbine shooting, the Oklahoma bombing in 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the Tacoma Mall Shooting of 2008, all were done by none Arab attackers.Furthermore, the issue of race has been denied validity by the anthropological community and should be obliterated as a way of categorizing and defining individuals. Ethnicity can be defined by geography, cultural identity, and similarity of root origin that is without reference to skin color. Race is a social construct that cannot be quantified and has been denounced as an unscientific means of categorization.

Therefore, the idea that skin color is relevant to social disorder is false logic. The idea the racial profiling can save time for law enforcement also represents a false logic. If the race cannot be quantified and therefore cannot have scientific relevance, then the race cannot be used as a determining factor for any investigative approach. As well, to lump an entire group into a criminal category increases the necessity of further reducing a group and will distract agencies from pursuing true leads when presented with leads built on prejudicial artifice.

Racial profiling makes no sense on any level.