Racism in America Essay examples

Racial profiling in the dictionary is “the assumption of criminality among ethnic groups: the alleged policy of some police to attribute criminal intentions to members of some ethnic groups and to stop and question them in disproportionate numbers without probable cause (“Racial Profiling”).” In other words racial profiling is making assumptions that certain individuals are more likely to be involved in misconduct or criminal activity based on that individual’s race or ethnicity. Racial profiling propels a brutalizing message to citizens of the United States that they are pre-judged by the color of their skin rather than who they are and this then leads to assumptions of ruthlessness inside the American criminal justice system. With

The stop and frisk policy came about many years ago. The stop and frisk is used for protection for the officer or officers. An officer can stop a suspect and frisk him/her for weapons, contraband or any other items if the officer feels any other suspicion. A Stop and Frisk do not require a warrant. This practice is very common now days, but similar procedures to stop and frisk policy started in the 1980s. According to Clark (2015), the earliest origins of stop and frisk were used in 1994 by Street Crime Unit to prevent the carrying of illegal guns in well-known hot spots and areas with high crime rates. The crime rates decreased over time, but it caused another issue in the communities.

Stop and Frisk is the practice by which a police initiates a stop of an individual on the street based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. The Stop and Frisk policy was adopted from laws in a number of different courts in America. Under Stop and Frisk, a police officer has the power to stop, question, and frisk suspects with reason. These questions may determine whether the suspected person should be detained and investigated.

The criminal justice system in the United States is evident of several deep flaws relating to the treatment of black men and women accused of committing criminal offenses. It is logical to believe that due to the U.S.’s rather dark past surrounding the treatment of black Americans, systematic racism is included under the guise of the criminal justice system. The U.S. is historically infamous for it’s open racial discrimination against black Americans, up until systematic racism became one of the more dominant forms of discrimination in the most recent years. Systematic racism has been shrouded under societal ignorance and regulated particularly by social and political groups in order to keep the human rights of black Americans frigid and

Eighty-seven percent of stops in 2012, were Black and Hispanic people. Compare that percentage to the amount of water on Earth, only seventy percent. Now, imagine eighty-seven percent water covering the Earth. That would make the world unbalanced and difficult to live in, which is how life is for the minorities impacted by Stop and Frisk. One of the most debated and controversial topics in New York City is the Stop and Frisk policy, and the impact it has on police, Latinos, and African Americans. Stop and Frisk fails to promote justice and equitable society because it creates a society where one group is lesser than another. The Stop and Frisk policy was created in Ohio, 1968, because of the a Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio (US Courts).

The statistics show that to be an African American or Hispanic in New York you are more than twice as likely to get stopped as a white or Asian person. Studies of reports show that 15,000 or 30% of stops are deemed unconstitutional; and those are just the ones that are reported, imagine all of those that go unreported. Imagine all of those people who were victimized just because of the color of their skin. The stop-and-frisk procedure was once a good thing that helped clean up the streets, but now it’s becoming an epidemic of racial profiling, and teaching racism and intolerance to anyone who is a victim or witness of these stops.

Stop and frisk is a tactic where police are stopping an individual whom they think are a suspect of committing or about to commit a crime. The officer will frisk the individual by lightly patting and feeling around his/her outer garments to either find a concealed weapon or contraband. This is something that is not new but this been dated to been used back when Britain had a king. In the last past ten to fifteen year the numbers of stop and frisk had increased substantially. Currently New York uses stop and frisk as their main tactic to arrest young African American and Latino men. Since the police implemented the stop and frisk tactic there been rumors that the crime went down, but there are no true statics to back this up.

The stop and frisk policy is a practice employed by the New York Police Department where officers can temporarily detain, question, and with reasonable suspicion, search civilians on the street for illegal contraband and weapons. This policy has gained a high controversial status due to questions about its constitutionality, effectiveness, and racial profiling causing it became a hot topic for debate during the 2016 presidential election. This election led to an even further increase in awareness within the American public as it became sensationalized fostering more controversy within the public. Although it can act as a deterrence for unlawful possession of illegal substances, the stop and frisk policy instated in New York City is both ineffective

First, the reduction of violent crime has not provided correlation with the number of stops made. Secondly, one of the purposes articulated was to reduce gun use, a data from 2008 to 2011 shows 27% increase in stop-and –frisks and shootings had not gone down, the number of shooting actually rose. Third, the stop-and-frisk policy was just another form of crime fighting tool implemented by the NYPD and it is difficult to isolate the effectiveness of this policy. In other words, there was no benefit of this policy. However, it cost community policing-relations with minority to diminish due to how law enforcement treated minorities during the implementation of stop-and-frisk. There are specific recommendations that can be set forth to improve the stop-and-frisk. The first recommendation involved (1) improving training of NYPDs officers as to the laws governing the policy to ensure that the officers are in accordance with the law; (2) changing the current incentives from measuring the number of stops to considering the results of the stops; (3) considering pilot program testing to use audio or visual recording stop-and-frisks; and (4) establishing an oversight monitor to ensure the implementation of the

“E Pluribus Unum”, “Out of Many, One”; Originally used to suggest that out of many colonies or states shall emerge a single unified nation, but over the years it has become the melting pot of the many people, races, religions, cultures and ancestries that have come together to form a unified whole, and even though America prides itself on being this melting pot racism is still alive and well today. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, the country that calls to so many; calling to them with the promise of freedom and prosperity, to live their lives as they see fit. As stated in the National Anthem, America is "the land of the free and the home of the brave." America is the country where dreams can come true. So if America has

The terms “stop-and-frisk” is used as one, then the reality is that its two separate acts. Stops are the first act with frisks being the second that requires the police officer to have two different legal justifications. When a police officer stops a subject that officer must have reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is in the act to commit a crime. To frisk a person by a police officer that officer must have reasonable suspicion to believe that the person who is stopped poses a threat to the officer’s safety which may include a concealed weapon ("Report on the NYPD 's stop and frisk policy," 2013).

Benjamin Todd Jealous once said, “Racial profiling punishes innocent individuals for the past actions of those who look and sound like them. It misdirects crucial resources and undercuts the trust needed between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”(Jealous, 2015). I couldn’t agree more with him. In today’s society more and more Black men and women suffer from police bias. Police is a powerful organization that was meant to serve and protect. Enforce laws and keeping communities safe. The problem is we fail to acknowledge that police are humans with real life bias. The problem with police is how much racial profiling is going up,

"The legacy of past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure." - Stanford Historian George Frederickson.

There is a reason why blacks are quicker to be arrested then whites, or why white neighborhoods look nicer then black neighborhoods, or why blacks are accused of crimes more than whites. Most people will think it is the way of the world. Racial discrimination will always exist in America. It doesn’t need to be this way. Our government does not care enough about the black people and it clearly shown. There should be a law against police just arresting blacks for no reason. They should have their neighborhoods fixed up too. It shouldn’t be legal to just be able to accuse a black person of a crime because he happened to be standing there. There are so many more examples of this and it just shows how are government thinks impartially too and doesn’t believe the black people are important or worth their time. Richard Hughes was very bothered by this and he did a study with his students to show them how blacks are treated unfairly. They analyzed crimes and arrests of black people in the past few months. The looked at how much less money the government puts into black housing then whites. “The sources include historical and recent statistics on race, wealth, and housing; a 1937 photograph by Margaret Bourke-White juxtaposing African American flood victims and a billboard proclaiming, “There’s No Way Like the American Way” (Hughes139). The students after doing this all got the point and all felt the same way as the teacher. “a broader sense of racial discrimination,” one student wrote, “Even after their emancipation after the Civil War, African Americans have faced many forces preventing them from living the „American Dream‟ (139). He felt the importance of his students going into the world after school, understanding this and maybe trying to get the government to handle this issue.

Race relations are becoming increasingly important in our civilization. Despite this increasing importance, the question, 'Is our society racist?' is commonly debated. After investigating this subject, it is evident to me that American society is racist.