Racial Profiling Term Paper

Racial profiling is a popular method used by law officers in order to hypothetically enhance crime prevention by targeting minorities, because they are more likely to commit a crime. According to Wikipedia, racial profiling is defined as: the inclusion of race in the profile of a person considered likely to commit a particular crime or type of crime. In other words, it is targeting specific ethnic groups because they are more likely to commit certain crimes. Racial profiling is a flagrant form of racism. According to Dictionary.com, racism is defined as hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be confused with stereotyping, because they are two different things even if racial profiling is heavily inspired by racial stereotypes. But why would law officers use such a discriminating approach? Racial profiling, in some cases can lead to police brutality or in extreme cases, murder such as Amadou Diallo's case, who died in february 1999 after he was shot 41 times in front of his Bronx house by for cops, who were later acquitted

of all charges.

Racial Profiling has been around for years and quite frankly, I don't see it fading away any time soon because it is practiced in many parts of the world and thus cannot be prevented. Being racially profiled can happen to anyone no matter the race or gender. According to an article called "Chief Moose on Racial Profiling" published in October 2004, Chief Moose, a black officer, once got arrested simply because he was black and gives his opinion about it:" I love this country," he said. "I stayed out of jail, I got a good job, a doctorate degree and leadership positions. Yet still this happens to me because of the color of my skin... It's hard to respond nonviolently and seek legal remedies."

Racial profiling is just one example of how minorities are still victims of unfair treatment under a variety of institutions throughout the world. Here are some arguments that make the claim that racial profiling is morally wrong. According to the article entitled "The Secret Ambition of Racial Profiling", published in the Yale Journal in November of 2005,one of the authors, Banks, claims that "the empirical [argument] that racial profiling is unjustified because blacks and Latinos are no more likely than whites to commit drug crimes." This empirical argument also supports the related claim that racial profiling "is not, in fact, a sensible crime fighting tool.

Let us see racial profiling under Deontology. It would be immoral for a number of reasons. First, because minorities are being used as a means to an end to prevent crime since they are supposedly more likely to commit a punishable offence in the first place according to my graph. Second, according to the categorical imperatives utilized by Kant, one of the moral standards to consider here would be the Universalization Principle.

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