Racial Profiling Essay Example for Free

Racial Profiling Essay On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22 year-old immigrant from New Guinea, West Africa, was shot and killed in the narrow vestibule of the apartment building where he lived. Four white officers, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy fired 41 bullets, hitting Diallo 19 times. All four were members of the New York City Police Departments Street Crimes Unit, which, under the slogan, We Own the Night, used aggressive stop and frisk tactics against African- Americans at a rate double that groups population percentage. A report on the unit by the state attorney general found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or had reports insufficiently filled out to make a determination. Thousands attended Diallos funeral. Demonstrations were held almost daily, along with the arrests of over 1,200 people in planned civil disobedience. In a trial that was moved out of the community where Diallo lived and to Albany in upstate New York, the four officers who killed Diallo were acquitted of all charges (â€Å"The Diallo† online). Racial Profiling is any police or private security practice in which a person is treated as a suspect because of his or her race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. This occurs when police investigate, stop, frisk, search or use force against a person based on such characteristics instead of evidence of a persons criminal behavior. It often involves the stopping and searching of people of color for traffic violations, known as â€Å"DWB† or â€Å"driving while black or brown. † (Meeks 17). After 9/11, racial profiling has become widely accepted as an appropriate form of crime prevention. People were sought after based solely on the fact that they were of Arab descent. But racial profiling did not start with September 11th racial profiling has been around for ages. Tracy Maclin, a professor at Boston University School of Law, says that racial profiling â€Å"can trace its historical roots [back] to a time in early American society when court officials in cities like Philadelphia permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to take up all black persons seen gadding abroad without their masters permission. † (Meeks 164). The term profiling first became associated with law enforcement’s nterference in drug trafficking during the late 1970s. In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Administration instituted Operation Pipeline, an intelligence-based assessment of the method by which drug networks transported bulk drugs to drug markets, and began training local and state police in applying a drug courier profile as part of highway drug interdiction techniques. Under Operation Pipeline, police were trained to apply a profile that included evidence of concealment in the vehicle, indications of fast, point-to-point driving, as well as the age and race characteristics of the probable drivers. In some cases, the profiling technique was distorted, so that officers began targeting black and Hispanic male drivers by stopping them for technical traffic violations as a pretext for determining whether or not drivers were carrying drugs (Weitzer 133). A 1998 Department of Justice investigation of these practices raised awareness of this issue and defined racial profiling as the practice of singling out members of racial or ethnic groups for relatively minor traffic or petty criminal offenses in order to question and/or search them for drugs, guns, or other contraband (â€Å"History† 1). In 1999, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a nationwide campaign against racial profiling, entitled â€Å"Arrest the Racism: Racial Profiling in America. † This campaign included research, phone hotlines to report incidents, online complaint forms, advertising campaigns that included radio, television, print and billboards, advocacy for legislation, and a communications program synchronized with litigation efforts across the country. This campaign has inspired a movement against racial profiling by local, state and national organizations. Community organizations have been involved in advocating for legislation, increasing visibility of their racial profiling concerns, and encouraging police departments to begin data collection. More than 20 states have passed legislation prohibiting racial profiling and/or mandating data collection on stops and searches, hundreds of individual jurisdictions have voluntarily begun to collect data, and several jurisdictions are collecting data on racial profiling as a result of federal or state court settlements or consent decrees. In February 2001, during an address to a joint session of Congress, President George W.  Bush said of racial profiling, â€Å"It is wrong and we will end it in America. † (â€Å"History† 1) California, alone, has enacted legislation which mandates sensitivity training, but there is currently no legislation mandating data collection. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis vetoed legislation that would have required law enforcement agencies to collect data to show whether people of color are stopped by police at disproportionate rates. Bills that would have prohibited racial profiling and required data collection either died on inactive file or had important content removed before being passed. A large number of individual jurisdictions are collecting data either voluntarily, through court settlements, or through federal consent decrees. S. B. 205, which amended the California Penal Code section 13519. 4, entitled Racial and Cultural Diversity Training, defines racial profiling as â€Å"the practice of detaining a suspect based on a broad set of criteria which casts suspicion on an entire class of people without any individualized suspicion of the particular person being stopped. † This legislation outlines the inappropriateness of racial profiling, and mandates cultural awareness training for civil servants. The federal code which is used to address racial profiling and other questionable procedures is Title 42, U. S. C. , Section 14141, which makes it unlawful for state or local law enforcement agencies to allow officers to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives persons of rights protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. This law is commonly referred to as the Police Misconduct Statute. This law gives the Department of Justice the right to reprimand and/or sanction law enforcement agencies that use policies or practices which support a pattern of misconduct by officers. The action taken by the department is directed against the agency as a whole, not against individual officers. Although efforts have been made to ban the use of racial profiling as a law enforcement tool, no jurisdiction in the U. S. has addressed the problem in a way that is both effective and all-inclusive. Currently, twenty-nine states have passed laws concerning racial profiling, but state and federal protections against this problem continue to be extremely lacking. Further, some states are even passing legislation that supports racial profiling, such as Arizona’s new SB 1070, which aims to curb the problem of illegal entry into the U.  S. While immigration issues continue to be a problem in the U. S. , this law basically allows law enforcement officials to stop any citizen randomly to verify their legal residence in the country. Police practices that are viewed as racially motivated will ultimately lead to more frequent and severe interactions with law enforcement, and eventually leads to a distrust of the police. This is an unhealthy position, as law enforcement practices aren’t effective when you are fearful of those whose job is to protect and serve the citizens (Blumer 4). There is not much research available that addresses the question of why racial differences exist in citizens’ relations with the police. Part of the explanation can be found in the group-position thesis, which is discussed in the research by Bob Hutchings 64), and states: â€Å"the group-position thesis focuses on inter-group competition over material rewards, status, and power. Racial attitudes which reflect individual-level feelings and beliefs also mirror a collective sense of group cohesion, unlike other racial groups. These perceptions include (1) perceived threats: dominant group members’ fears that their group is at risk of losing privileges or resources to competing racial groups, and (2) perceived advantages: minority group members’ beliefs that their group interests will be enhanced by challenging the prevailing racial order. The group-position thesis has been used to explain inter-group racial attitudes. † The thesis further outlines the entitlement of dominant groups to resources, and the attraction to institutions that serve their interests; an example of this would be the attraction of the White race to the criminal justice system. The police are often seen as allies by the â€Å"dominant ethnic group†, especially in deeply divided societies where the police can be used as an instrument for suppressing â€Å"subordinate groups† (Bobo ump; Hutchings 70). This relationship between the police and dominant groups is less obvious in more democratic societies, but the authors state that even in these societies, the superior group builds strong relations with the police. In the United States, white people’s support for the police has traditionally been strong and, at the same time, whites tend to see racial minorities as inclined to criminal or violent behavior. In the 2000 General Social Survey, for example, half of whites viewed blacks as ‘violence-prone’. †(Weitzer ump; Tuch 1021) For whites who follow these views, there is a tendency to condone police suspicion and disparate treatment of minorities as â€Å"rational discrimination† (Weitzer 153). These attitudes may b e more strongly held by some whites than by others, but the group-position thesis predicts that these views are fairly common throughout the white population (Bobo ump; Hutchings 72). Racial profiling has been occurring throughout our nation, and even the world, for as far back as any of us can remember. Racial profiling stems from racism, and fear of people who are different, ethnically and culturally, than the person making the judgments. Sadly, it spreads even further than that, and clouds the judgment of the people who are in positions of authority, even when they come from the same ethnic background. Racism, classism, sexism and all the other –isms combine to create trends such as these, which affect more than just the person being judged; it affects their families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, etc. Like all other issues that deal with the problem of –isms, the only way to change the dominant perception is to change the way people are programmed throughout life and their experiences. Until that day, no legislation or rule is going to change the way people feel about the minority, or perceived lower class, group.

Alcohol and Sexual Assault - Its Time to Stop Sex Bias :: Argumentative Persuasive

Alcohol and Sexual Assault - It's Time to Stop Sex Bias If we are serious about sexual assault, we should reject principles that perplex us when honestly applied to the problem. Some are now advising us to accept, as a guide to personal responsibility and the prevention of sexual assault, the intoxication principle: an intoxicated person cannot consent to sex. So should we accept it? If so, how shall we apply it to Jack and Jill, who had sex while both were intoxicated? According to this principle, neither Jack nor Jill consented to sex, which is perplexing about which, if either, has been assaulted. If Jill has, so has Jack, and if Jack has not, neither has Jill. Consider a replacement: the has-been-drinking principle: a person who has been drinking cannot consent to sex. But what if Jack and Jill have sex after drinking but neither is intoxicated? The issue of sexual assault is no less baffling here than before: if Jill has been assaulted, so has Jack, and if Jack has not, neither has Jill. Moreover, the has-been-drinking principle excuses too much. Surely responsibility for resisting the non-intoxicating effects of alcohol applies to men and women alike. Should we then reconsider the intoxication principle? What if Jack and Jill have sex while Jack has been drinking and Jill is intoxicated? On the intoxication principle, Jack is responsible for having sex but Jill is not, which undoubtedly is sometimes sexual assault. There are two nagging difficulties, however. Suppose when Jill sobers she sincerely denies being sexually assaulted because she wanted to have sex while intoxicated. Must we conclude that a sober, intelligent woman cannot know whether she was assaulted? What, then, are we to think when she says that she was? Also, what if Jack and Jill have sex when he is intoxicated and she has simply been drinking? An even-handed, honest application of the intoxication principle should conclude that Jill sexually assaulted Jack. But many do not find this sexual assault at all, even if Jack sincerely objects when sober that he never consented to sex. In charging men with assault, universities sometimes evoke principles that hold men, but not women, responsible for sex when alcohol is involved. For well thought-out reasons, our legal system rejects such principles, prompting universities to devise legal systems all their own. They sometimes implement a gender-differentiated drinking principle: if a woman has been drinking, she cannot consent to sex, but a man consents to all his sexual behavior whether he is fully sober, has been drinking or is intoxicated.

American Beauty – Paper

American Beauty In the movie â€Å"American Beauty† there is a list of interpersonal conflicts. Lester and Carolyn Burnham are a seemingly ordinary couple in an anonymous suburban neighborhood, whose marriage and lives are slowly unraveling. They both have become so distant but remain together to keep up appearances. This relationship shows all the factors that Daniel Dana considers being a conflict. Two people are independent; they each need something from the other, both parties blame the other or find fault with them for causing the problem, one or more of the parties is angry or emotionally upset, the parties’ behaviors are affecting their relationship with each other and/or their relationships with others. †(Dana, 2000) In the movie there are many conflicts but the interpersonal conflict that stands out is that between Lester and Carolyn. The conflict between Lester and Carolyn is hard to ignore. They have stopped communicating effectively to one another. Les ter is a middle aged man, whom sees no satisfaction in his life anymore.Carolyn is a middle aged woman, whom only shows her satisfaction, but it is a mask; to make it seem that she is happy. Lester, at first, seems to have a passive communication style, compared to Carolyn’s aggressive communication style. In the narration from Lester in the beginning of the film; he seems to be tired of his life and how it is going. They live in a big white house with a red door and a white picket fence; living the American dream. Unfortunately it is anything but. They have a daughter Jane who Lester believes he has failed. One night, Lester and Carolyn go to one of her work functions.Almost immediately they go their own ways at the function. Carolyn is being entertained by the â€Å"King† of real estate, drinking. While Lester has found himself outside with the new neighbor boy Ricky Fitts, smoking the illicit drug marijuana. When they go home and are in bed, their problems come to f ruition. At this point the â€Å"blame game† comes into the picture; with much negativity. They fight back and forth sarcastically, saying hurtful things, until Carolyn jumps up out of bed and bursts out â€Å"This isn’t a marriage†. Then Lester finally speaks up and tells her what he has been feeling for years.One factor is the lack of sex between them. Also, he states that he has been her puppet for years; since she received her realtors license, and finally that he has been extremely unhappy. Then he continues saying that the only reason she is mad and saying anything is because he is finally fighting back. His dramatic and angry speech makes Carolyn silent. At this point in the film, I am more aware that they haven’t had effective communication to resolve their conflicts, for many years now. This situation escalated from their root cause of both of them becoming withdrawn, and not resolving their conflicts. When conflict erupts, emotions are involved, and the relationship can be threatened if the conflict is not resolved amicably. †(Sole, 2011) I think what started their downfall, years ago, is that they avoided conflict. This can be destructive in any relationship and/or marriage. If you don’t have the skills of resolving conflict; you run the risk of ruining your marriage, separate friendships, and shatter your family. Since both parties did not obtain the skills necessary to resolve their conflicts, it resulted in Carolyn stepping out of their marriage; to have an affair with her real-estate rival, Buddy Kane the â€Å"King†, of real-estate.Also, resulting in Lester acting out, quitting his job, smoking marijuana, buying a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and working out to impress a 17 year old girl; what some may call a mid-life crisis. Amazingly enough, this could have all been resolved, as long as they both are willing with positive emotions during their conflicts. Research has shown that interjecting positive e motions, along with negative emotions, during discussions result in happier marriages.I think that is Lester and Carolyn would have used some basic elements like humor, light-hearted fun, or some playfulness during their conversations, their marriage could have remained happy. Then if they could know and understand one another’s communication style, they would be better at resolving conflicts between them. Lester started out having a passive communication style, and then it quickly moved to a passive-aggressive communication style. I believed this happened because he was fed up with how his life was going and started to display resentment.With negative feelings, this indirectly sabotaged his life. If Carolyn held an assertive communication style, rather than an aggressive communication style, I believe they would have been able to eventually resolve their conflicts. All in all, if they had effective interpersonal communication, they would have continued to go down the path, t o be a happily married couple. References Sole, K. ,Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication,(2011),BridgePoint Education Inc. Retrieved From: https://content. ashford. edu/books

The Battle Of Civilizations By Samuel P. Huntington

There came the competition of global dominance in the modern era, over four hundred years of Western civilizations interacting, competing, and fighting. The Cold War which lasted over forty years of the Twentieth Century changed the course of the world and in the end, ushered in a new world order. In his article â€Å"The Clash of Civilizations†, Samuel P. Huntington captured what the world was like at the end of the Cold War. The question during the Cold War was â€Å"What side are you on?† became now â€Å"Who are you?† Huntington illustrates that culture and cultural identities are the primary causes of conflict in the post-Cold war. Nations were attempting to answer the question they face: Who are we? To do so, they reference things that mean the†¦show more content†¦The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2006 led many to believe that it was the start of clash of civilizations, which Said argued as one not seeing the whole picture. The Egyptian revol ution, of thousands pouring onto Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding the self-determination they were denied, shows that the clash of civilization was a myth. The world is filled with clashes and significant conflicts, through the perspective of Huntington’s thesis, one will understand the main cause will be rooted in cultural differences. Through the perspective of Said’s thesis, one will understand that any conflicts in the beginning of the twenty-first century must be thoroughly understood rather than viewing it through the lenses of an outdated concept. Since the Peace of Westphalia, the balance of power amongst civilizations is shifting. Although nation states will still be a dominant player in world politics but the main friction of global conflicts will take place among civilizations. The international system began with the Treaty of Westphalia and the conflict between monarchies in the effort to gain more armies, territory and money. Then the system began t o shift towards nation states with the French Revolution. Instead of conflicts between nations, the aftermath of the Russian revolution led to the conflicts of ideologies, including communism versus fascism versus liberal democracy. Seen in the Cold War, the battle of communism versus liberal democracy was between twoShow MoreRelatedThe Cold War Was Easy : Capitalism Vs. Communism1402 Words   |  6 PagesUniversal Civilization.† Although he stated that, â€Å"you need to start with a certain kind of sensibility† he admitted, â€Å"I have no unifying theory of things† as well as, â€Å"I am not going to attempt to define this civilization.† Not accepting Naipaul’s theory that, â€Å"in general, the cultural coming together of humanity and the increasing acceptance of common values, beliefs, orientations, practices and institutions by peoples throughout the world†¦Ã¢â‚¬  would create this â€Å"Universal Civilization,† Samuel P. Hunt ingtonRead MoreA Summary Of The Clash Of Civilization1608 Words   |  7 Pageseconomic lifestyles of multiple civilizations created with are two of the greatest theories on the future of the world. First, Huntington P. Samuel writing the â€Å"Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of World Order, then Edward Said writing a scholarly essay on his theory known as Orientalism. These two theories both established in the same era refer to issues within economies like the Women in the Middle World. Clash of Civilization The Clash of Civilizations is a theory or hypothesis that cameRead MoreWhy Are Intra State Conflicts So Difficult? Resolve?1748 Words   |  7 Pagesinterventions in intra-state conflict by international actors are highlighted as to why such conflicts are so difficult to resolve. 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Though some have winced at the President’s use of such absolute moral terms to portray the tragic events of that fateful day, others have applauded his courageous use of such unfashionableRead MoreArab Refugee Crises And The Balkan Wars Of The 1990s1626 Words   |  7 PagesRefugees in Europe p 60-70) As Samuel Huntington says in The Clash of Civilizations, â€Å"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash ofRead MoreThe Globalization of Animated Features and the Merging of Cultures1030 Words   |  5 Pagescooperation, and civic mutuality. On the other hand, Barbers work provides a better analysis than some others like Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, a theory about peoples cultural and religious identities. Barbers study does include both economic and cultural features, along with discussions of the culture conflict within civilizations. Huntingtons analysis is considered weak in comparison to Barber. He believed that as the â€Å"perfect time† had ended,Read MoreThe Treatment of Arab Americans2303 Words   |  10 PagesSodhi is an extreme example of what political scientist Samuel P. Huntington calls the clash of civilizations. The clash of civilizations is a theory that peoples culture and religious identities are the reason for conflict in the world. Huntington proposes numerous reasons why civilizations clash and suggests that most conflict arises between Western and non-Western nations. 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Chloe Varlack, Gillian Smith, Patricia Luna P.3 Introduction ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is an extremist group that branched from the Sunni terrorist group, al Qaeda, specifically the Iraq faction. Although ISIS has primarily focused on initiatives in the Middle Eastern region, the recent killing of American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotlof following U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS, has causedRead MoreUnderstanding Religious Identity and the Causes of Religious Violence7269 Words   |  30 Pagestheories such as Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, is a compelling enough reason to explore whether the world order is really in the process of being redefined by major civilizations and religious groups. Amongst the many possibilities of confrontations that Huntington’s thesis examines, foremost are the existing frictions and hostilities between Islam and the West, the latter, to a certain extent, being an allusion to Christian culture and values.2 Huntington maintains that trends in global conflict