Racial Discrimination

In this TED Talk, Jamil Jivani draws attention to one major growing issue today—distrust in the police department. Jivani explains how statistically, minorities are consistently being sought out more than whites. He expresses his own experience with two cops and how they targeted him without any evidence. Instead of believing he was innocent until proven guilty, they assumed he was guilty and requested documentation. Jivani utilizes his story to illustrate the difficulties minorities face every day with their police. Furthermore, cops are the visible faces of government and if citizens do not trust cops then they do not trust the government. This distrust doesn’t occur overnight, but instead it builds over time due to small incidents of racial

Recently, there has been much in the media about clashes between African Americans and the police. Two such cases, being the shootings of Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald - both incidents resulting in public outrage. These cases result in questions about racial profiling by police. Through research, it is clear that African Americans are the target of racial bias by many police departments in the United States; in order to remedy this situation, law enforcement agencies need to (and are beginning to) undergo scrutiny on their interactions with the public and, additionally must receive training on diversity.

Besides enacting racial bias screening and training requirements, police departments need to change the way they operate, by changing poor police protocol currently in place. In other words, in some cases, this issue of racial profiling can stem from police chiefs who provide their officers with patrol assignments targeting minority neighborhoods due to implicit biases which they have. In Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways, David Harris suggests, “Because police look for drugs primarily among African Americans and Latinos, they find a disproportionate number of them with contraband” (Harris). Certain police chiefs intentionally target minority neighborhoods and put a greater effort on catching the people living there for their wrongdoings, thus making those minority groups appear as higher threats to society. The picture of crime would be reversed if the police targeted White people rather than minorities.

Law enforcement officers may also feel as if they are above the law, allowing personal bias and prejudices to guide their actions and who their actions target. Though the law does not facilitate around racial bias, “those enforcing the law are abusing their discretion by discriminating against individuals based on racial profiling” (Neubauer & Fradella, 2017). Racial profiling can be a result of formal, institutionalized rules within law enforcement agencies that may encourage racial profiling, whether they are aware of their actions or not. It is difficult to change such an action when it occurs worldwide, and most of the time it goes unnoticed or unreported. The criminal justice field needs to act against the practice of racial profiling and discrimination that occurs between law enforcement personnel and members of the community; a community that includes individuals who rely on the criminal justice field to serve and protect

One of the most polarizing policy issues in the United States is the process of using race, ethnicity, and/or national origin by law enforcement as a chief predictor of criminal behavior. In the presence of social media and modern technological innovation, there has been increased documentation on the very problematic ways in which police officers use their position of authority against minorities. The countless cases of murder and police brutality have prompted national dialogue regarding to what extent race should be used in methods of policing. Against a troubled backdrop of incessant clashes with minorities and law enforcement, navigating the situation requires a degree of care that does not diminish the

In the year 2018, there are still numerous signs of racial bias that’s evident throughout the criminal justice system. The way in which policing tries to serve and protect the major population is sometimes seen being done in discriminating ways. Racial profiling is another key contributor to racial bias throughout America especially towards African Americans. African Americans are noticeably given harsher sentences than whites in situations where the offense was the same for both. There are deviant and corrupt agents throughout much of the criminal justice system and it still hasn’t been addressed properly in a way that everyone starts to understand the negative impacts that are being done together. Some police officers may feel the need to

Race and crime are interwoven with how justice and criminology are handled. Police have a racial bias against blacks and incarcerate them in larger numbers than any other race. Statistically, blacks have a higher arrest and incarceration rate than other races do. Due to police being taught that racial profiling is a necessary part of the job, blacks have now become a prime target for many false arrests and often serve jail time for a crime they may not have committed. The black community often expresses their distaste with the criminal justice system, and how their community is handled, but encounter opposition from a group of people who believe nothing is wrong. With justice and bias, there are many improvements that need to be made regarding how criminals are arrested and charged, especially when race is a factor.

Multicultural understanding is critical, as currently members of racial and ethnic minorities account for more than one in three Americans, and projections indicate that members of minorities will constitute a majority of the nation’s population by 2050. One of the most significant problems facing the police during the past three decades has been the tension, and often upright hostility, between the police and minority group citizens. Over the last few decades, minority representation has increased significantly in U.S. police departments. However, African America, Hispanic American, and other minorities are still seriously underrepresented in U.S. police departments.

The perception of racial discrimination in the United States is a highly sensitive subject that has many associated factors that leads the view of an unjust criminal justice system. Cole and Gertz (2013) believed that racial status must be taken into account when evaluating police interaction

Upon examining former FBI Director James Comey’s 2015 speech and question and answer session which focused on law enforcement and race relations, many points were made to what got us to this point and possible remedies moving forward. Comey mentioned areas of debates which includes law enforcement’s relationship with communities, appropriate use of force, and the real and perceived biases within and outside of law enforcement. Several points were made during the speech and question and answer session which included data driven intelligence, understanding racial bias, cynicism, unjust laws, militarizing the police, and the impact of the media. Of the many points made by Comey, the two points that I found most important and compelling were

Of the data collected by Maryland State Police from 1995-1997, it proved higher quantities of drugs were confiscated from African American and Hispanic drivers in the consent-based searches conducted. By no means can it be said that racial profiling or prejudicial motivations do not exist at all. However, the national news media does an amazing job of reporting as though it is more rampant than it actually is, in my opinion. A study conducted by George Washington University shows that mainstream media plays a vital role in the perception of law enforcement when reporting on alleged racial profiling and misconduct (Weitzer & Tuch, 2005). Confabulation and sensationalized stories within the media have created a misinterpreted view of law enforcement

The history of American policing has been tainted by legal authorization of biases, disparate service delivery, and tarnished by the enforcement of racially motivated laws and statutes. Consequently, the present-day relationship between minorities and the police in America is one that has been impacted by the historical legacies of slavery, segregation, and discrimination, all impacting  racism at the societal, institutional, and individual levels. The negative perception of ethnic minorities over the past three decades has spread rapidly, researchers suggest that specific stereotypes are commonly used by police officers to classify people

Racial profiling and other law enforcement strategies start the disturbing process by which minorities are excessively brought into the criminal justice system. But such disparities do not stop once a suspect is arrested. At every stage of the criminal process -- from the start of the first plea negotiations between the suspect and the prosecutor, to the imposition of a prison sentence by a judge -- the slight biases and stereotypes that causes police officers to rely on racial profiling are compounded by the racially distorted

Comey, on the topic of “Law Enforcement and Race” stated that “something happens to people in law enforcement” (Comey, 2015). Comey states that it is a “hard truth”, but the truth. Comey believes that many law enforcement officers develop cynicism, it is one that officers may work hard to resist because they are what he calls “lazy mental shortcuts” (Comey, 2015). These shortcuts can include something along the lines of an officer believing that everyone he or she speaks to about any law enforcement issue is lying and that no one is honest. This type of cynicism is what makes communities feel targeted and racially profiled. It is also true that many law enforcement officers patrol in areas of minorities where there is an unequal percentage of street crime committed by minorities compared to majorities, primarily young men of color. The contact police have, involving use of force with young men of color, can easily influence their working environment creating mental shortcuts. These shortcuts almost become impossible to ignore because of the number of encounters that occur between police and colored men. From this point on, it is easy for an officer to accept the worst from a group of colored men on the street opposed to a group of white men on the street. Just because the number of colored arrests is larger than those of whites does not mean that a law enforcement officer disregards the fact that whites can also

Do Americans feel like there is still racial discrimination in today's everyday life? Racial discrimination is treating someone differently because of the color of his or her skin. Racial discrimination has been around for a long time. There are laws that are supposed to protect non whites from being racially discriminated against but these laws are not applied to everyone equally. There are a lot of different types of discrimination such as gender and age but the main type is racial. Racial discrimination still exist in America based on discrimination at work, police brutality, and arrest rates.