Racial Profiling and Its Effects

Racial Profiling and Its Effect 1

Racial Profiling and Its Effect on Professionalism and International Relations

Chey Bradley

May 9, 2016

ENG 302.03


Abstract

The topic I have chosen to research is racial profiling and its effect on professionalism

and international relations. The U.S. has been a hotbed for racial discrimination for centuries and

has a violent history regarding racial prejudice. These prejudices have not faded from the

spotlight like many would believe. Our society is constantly taught and pressured to remain

racially divided by the media, our unique upbringings, and social politics. This comprehensive

report is meant to help others gain a better understanding of the sub-world perceptions that rule

our society. People need to become more aware of how their perceptions may influence their

professionalism. By compiling studies, current articles and relevant research data I hope to

educate and encourage tolerance.


Racial Profiling and Its Effect on Professionalism and International Relations

In today’s day and age it is very easy to think that racial profiling and stereotyping are

ideologies of the past. This sentiment, although hopeful, could not be further from the truth

especially considering our current political atmosphere. Whether or not you or I personally hold

these prejudices close to heart is not the issue. Many of these prejudices are sentiments that have

been passed down from generation to generation. They exist on both a subconscious and tangible

level in our society.

Racial Profiling

Prejudices and Stereotypes

They are like subliminal messages that flash for a moment in our brains when we see

someone that we perceive to be different from ourselves. These initial reactions create a label in

our minds of who a person is or why they act the way that they do. Positive first impressions are

essential in both business and life. First impressions guide our judgement of other people’s

characters and rate their trustworthiness. If your mind is trained to think negatively of someone

for whatever reason then you are more likely to treat that person with suspicion or caution. This

form of judgement is known as racial profiling or stereotyping based on ethnicity.

Profiling Defined

The legal definition of profiling, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is; “the

practice of singling out persons for law enforcement procedures on the basis of predetermined

characteristics; specifically: the discriminatory practice of profiling based on race or ethnicity

<racial profiling>” (Profiling, 2011). This form of profiling effects the way we perceive people,


the way we act around them and ultimately the way we treat them. In short, our minds have been

subconsciously or actively trained judge and label people with just a glance.

In Our Society

We as a society like our labels and cling to them like they are shields that will keep the

bad guys away. It has become second nature to see someone, give them a label, and then file

them away with the rest of their “people”. We have dehumanized and objectified the unique

cultures of people and turned them into dividers. Somehow we feel safer believing that because

some looks a certain way or acts a certain way we know who they are as a person. Many law

enforcement agencies and officers actively used racial profiling as professional tool.

Are some racial/ ethnic communities more prone to crime than others? Yes. Does this

mean that every person who identifies with the race/ ethnicity that populates that community is a

criminal? No. Many of these surges of crime are socio-economically driven and racial statistics

just happen to correlate. Low income neighborhoods that have high crime rates are

predominately populated by people that have little money, lower level educations, and have

limited opportunities for upward mobility. Their circumstances fuel their crimes and thus makes

labeling them all criminals easier.

In the Workplace

Our cubicles are like the boxes that we use to sort society. The separate us from one

another and unless we visit someone’s cube we never truly know what it is like on their side.

Fiona Ong is a lawyer, with Shawe Rosenthal LLP, that deals mostly with cases involving

employee discrimination, wrongful discharge, and wage/hour regulation. In her article, Ong

delved into how employers look at and define racial profiling. Under Title IX regulations an


employer cannot discriminate against an employee or applicant based on their race, ethnicity,

sexual orientation, gender, or religion.

The case the Ong analyzes in her article, Anderson v. The Nebraska Medical Center,

involved a male nurse that was fired after two incidents where patients filed complaints against

him. Nurse Anderson filed a charge with NEOC and claimed that he had been fired because of

his race. “The Court, however, criticized the NEOC’s definition of racial profiling…[and] went

on to state, reasonably and logically, “… when an eyewitness identifies a perpetrator with a

physical description, and authorities narrow the suspects based on that physical description, that

is not ‘profiling,’” (Ong 2014).

Lena Sun’s article in The Washington Post is a prime example of ethnic discrimination in

the workplace. Sun’s article is of a unique religious identity and workplace discrimination

against American Muslim doctors study that was conducted between 2013-2014. Well before the

Paris and San Bernardino incidents that have since been fuel for Presidential Candidate Donald

Trump’s anti-Muslim campaign.

“The study of American Muslim doctors and workplace discrimination was published

this week in AJOB Empirical Bioethics, which is affiliated with the American Journal of

Bioethics. It involved a random sampling of members of the Islamic Medical Association of

North America. A questionnaire was mailed to 626 doctors, and more than 40 percent completed

the survey” (Sun 2015).

The study found:

- Almost 10 percent of the physicians said patients had refused their care because they

are Muslim.


- 14 percent of doctors said they were experiencing religious discrimination at their

current workplace; including from some of their own colleagues.

Effects on Minorities

Racial profiling as a law enforcement tool was brought up for debate before the 9/11

attacks that have since spurred change. Following the LA riots in 1992, the Department of

Justice (DOJ) filed suits against police departments in three cities to prevent the future use of

racial profiling and improper use of force. “In June 2001, Representative John Conyers and

Senator Russell Feingold introduced a bill in both houses of Congress that prohibits racial

profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and mandates comprehensive data

collection and reporting,” (Ashar, 2002, p. 1195).

Sameer Ashar is a Clinical Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law. In his paper,

Ashar analyzes the parallels between the treatment of his client and the methods of immigration

enforcement after September 11, 2001. He goes on to recount the questionable containment and

treatment of his client in this period when immigration policies were changing rapidly. Ashar

referenced the findings of a study that highlights the race profiles that INS has utilized. The

Immigration Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law found:

“of a random sample of INS workplace raid files closed in a two-year period revealed

that INS agents used the playing of ‘Spanish music’ and ‘Hispanic appearance’ to substantiate

tips regarding the presence of undocumented works. As a result, the INS continues to arrest and

deport Latino workers at a rate vastly disproportionate to the percentage of the undocumented

population that is Latino,” (Ashar, 2002, p. 1194).


Ashar’s client was a fifty-eight year old man from Pakistan that arrived in 2000 on a

visitor’s visa. He had come to America to build a life for himself and worked several low wage

jobs during his time in the country. He was living in the basement of a mosque where he was

working when INS officers questioned and arrested him in mid-November. Ashar’s client was

held in Passaic County Jail for almost three weeks before INS issued a Notice to Appear and

Warrant for Arrest of Alien.

“INS failed to follow the regulation it adopted on September 20, 2001, allowing it to

detain individuals without charge for 48 hours or for ‘an additional reasonable period of time’ in

the event of an emergency or other extraordinary circumstances,” (Ashar, 2002, p. 1189).

Unfortunately Ashar’s client is not the first to experience this kind of maltreatment at

government official’s hands. Many detainees that were arrested after September 11, with no

connection to the attacks, were forced to spend months waiting in jail for the FBI to clear their

“potential terrorist” statuses (Ashar, 2002, p. 1188).

On the Frontlines as a Tool

Law enforcement officers, since policies have changed, are trained to create race-neutral

profiles for their cases and investigations. This ambiguity is both a step forward and an obstacle

for our society. Personal perceptions and stereotypes are ingrained in us as children before this

kind of training is taught. Ambiguity like this also raises the issue of where and how to draw the

line for profiles.

Paul Heaton, the Director for Research for RAND Corporation, compiled a study for

understanding the consequences of antiprofiling policies. Heaton’s study identifies how racial

profiling has become synonymous for criminal profiling. As stated, officers and agencies were


trained to use racial profiles to build their cases and fuel their investigations. His research

provides data that shows there is a tenuous correlation between active policing based on racial

profiling and crime rates. Heaton’s research, presents evidence that, as policing against

minorities decreased, motor vehicle theft increased in areas populated by minorities (Heaton,

2010, p. 29). His study compares data of Black vs. White arrests rates prior to and after profiling

scandals hit the news. Arrests involving Black offenders were significantly lower in the years

following the scandal compared to their White counterparts.

“The scandal was precipitated by an incident in April 1998 in which white police officers

shot four African American and Hispanic men driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. Although

police claimed that the drivers were speeding and engaging in threatening behavior, it was later

revealed that none of the victims were armed and that the police did not have radar equipment

that would have permitted them to ascertain the speed of the targeted vehicle” (Heaton, 2010, p.

32).

The New Jersey scandal led to many reforms in police training which now includes

sensitivity training, and changes in administrative policy to increase the discipline of individual

officers who are perceived as being overly aggressive toward minorities.

In his study, Heaton reports that: “Patrol officers are often required to make rapid

decisions about whether to follow, pull over, or search motorists on the basis of their own

subjective suspicions of wrongdoing. Officers concerned that enforcement effort directed at

minority drivers would be perceived as violating antiprofiling policies and are therefore[more]

reluctant to scrutinize vehicles with black drivers” (Heaton, 2010, p. 33-34). Although Heaton’s


research is relatively unbiased, his comparisons and data suggest that racial profiling is in fact a

partially useful tool.

However, Heaton also suggests a solution that might help prevent the unbalance between

crime rates and arrests that occurs when profiling is not utilized. He suggests that policy makers

might design programs that reduce profiling that also curb the increases in offending that could

result from lessened police scrutiny of some groups. (Heaton, 2010, p. 31)

Discrimination Against Muslims

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks there was an extreme increase in

arrests of and hate crimes against Arab-American and Muslim immigrants. The Bush

administration’s mass detainment and arrests of suspected “terrorists” were based on the ethnic

profile built off the 9/11 hijackers’ identities. Several hundred male Arabs throughout the United

States were unjustly arrested, covertly detained or deported. Many of these men were detained

far beyond the legal limit of 18 days without charge and also forced to sit through unethical

interrogations (Norgren & Nanda).

For the Islam practicing Americans that were arrested, several in turn sued the courts

citing Habeas Corpus and reported that they were denied their constitutional right to a fair and

just trial. Of the arrests or detentions that occurred following 9/11 none of the accused were ever

found responsible for the attacks or any other terrorist activity. In the years following 9/11,

several media outlets exploited peoples’ fear and Islamic culture ignorance to inflame suspicions.

The United States’ “War on Terror” was the start of yet another ethnic group falling victim to

legitimized discrimination by the government (Norgren & Nanda).


Just as labeling has become second nature so has fearing the presence of Muslims. This

sad truth unfortunately is not new for many of us. Men who wear turbans or head dresses and

women who wear hijab or burkas are stared at when they’re out in public. We are like cavemen

that fear what we do not know. But this fear is born out of ignorance and the belief that because

Muslims “don’t look like us” that they are dangerous. “Anti-Muslim

attacks have ranked among the most common forms of religiously

motivated hate crimes reported in the United States since 2001. In 2014,

the most recent year for which national data is available from the FBI,

religiously motivated hate crimes tied for second with sexual

orientation-related bias crimes. Together, the two were almost as common as the No. 1 hate

crime, race-related attacks,” (Ross 2015).

"Anti-Arab" sentiment are counted among the 734 hate crimes in the United States

directed at White Americans. This is rather ironic since most Muslims do not identify as being

Caucasian and their aggressors are more often than not White. Due to these staggering numbers

the FBI began collecting data on so-called "Anti-Arab" hate crimes in 2015. However, this data

will not be available until sometime next year (Ross 2015).

US vs. the Middle East

Many young adults don’t remember living in a world where there wasn’t fear or

suspicion of foreigners. We don’t know what it’s like to be able to arrive at the airport, board the

plane and take off without fear. In our reality, any flight leaving or coming back into the US is at

risk for being hijacked. But what if this misguided fear no longer applied? What if we looked at

Muslim people as real people and learned to respect their culture?


Mainstream Perception

For my generation Anti-Muslim prejudice is as mainstream as Instagram and Twitter. In

the US, there are 42 anti-Muslim groups that are “becoming increasingly well-resourced…where

eight foundations have donated more than £38m [which equals $43289600.00 USD] since the

9/11 attacks,” (Townsend, 2015). According to Hope Not Hate, an anti-racist group based in the

UK, there are 920 anti-Muslim organizations throughout the world. Hope Not Hate’s chief

executive Nick Lowles claims, “The very fabric of our multi- racial and multifaith societies is

going to be severely tested in the next few years and it is incumbent on us all to strengthen the

bonds that unify liberal democracies,” (Qtd. in Townsend).

As tensions in Europe increase with the influx of Syrian refugees to small European

countries global that cannot financially support them perception of Muslims will continue to

decline. “A study by the Pew Research Center thinktank in 2014 of seven European Union

countries found that at least half of those surveyed in Italy and Greece had a negative opinion of

Muslims living in their country, with the most favourable rating of 72% in France,” (Townsend

2015).

First and Second Generation Muslim Immigrants in America

“I was born and raised in America. I feel like that’s the only identification

I should have on me.” - Ayesha Khan, Student at City College, 20, Born

in Brooklyn

In response to Presidential Candidate Donald Trump’s call to bar

Muslims from immigration The New York Times reporter Liz Robbins took to the streets of New


York City to survey people who practice Islam. The people that Robbins interviewed ranged in

age, occupation, and national origin. Some like Takhia Hussein, a high school social studies

teacher had positive experiences to talk about. Hussein said, “I work in a very diverse school, so

many of my students interact with Muslim students all day. I’ll be honest, they never have asked

me, ‘Why do you wear the hijab?’ A lot of them are just like, ‘Oh they practice the Muslim faith.

They wear it because of modesty’” (Qtd. in Robbins, 2015).

Others like Adeel Rana had sad memories to recount. Rana is a New York police

lieutenant and spoke with Robbins about his experience the day after the 9/11 attacks.

“I was in the military, and each soldier was assigned to a police officer to help

protect the World Trade Center. We were talking, and he said, ‘Killing is in their

religion,’ and I let him talk. Then I said, ‘What do you think I am?’ I said, ‘I’m

Muslim,’ and his jaw dropped and his eyes widened and he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I said,

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault because whatever you hear, you believe,’” (Qtd. in

Robbins, 2015).

This is the sad state of our country since September 11, 2001. We have let prejudice and

ignorance blind us. We judge people and treat them poorly before without trying to know them.

I sat down with new friends that I never expected to make this year and they completely

changed my perspective on Muslim people. In my time at the University at Albany, I met young

girls from Islam practicing families that are “modern American” girls that don’t wear hijab. I

have also met girls that do wear hijab and they are just like any other girl my age. They want to

graduate college, have careers, get married, and have families.


Here at the College at Brockport I took a chance and befriended a classmate that was new

to campus too. She and I are now good friends and each take turns teaching the other about their

culture. The first time I ate a meal with my new friends I was so nervous. I did not know what to

expect and I did not want to embarrass myself or my hosts. I made sure to do a little research and

to politely ask questions beforehand so I would not offend anyone. We may have different

beliefs and live our lives differently but at the end of the day we are still human beings. Through

simple interactions like these we are slowly bridging the gap between ignorance and peace.

Conclusion

In a world that is constantly growing smaller society’s standards need to evolve and

better accommodate the people. Tolerance and cultural sensitivity need to integrate into every

day practice. Healthy interactions between people of different cultures can only be established

with respect and patience. America is a world power but our people’s lack of compassion and

respect for others will tear our country a part. If we do not make an effort to understand and

protect the people within our borders how will other countries respect us?

I strongly believe that in order to overcome these problems we need to make a series of

personal, political and social changes. We’re already on the path to success we just need to keep

moving forward in a positive direction. Society’s norms and standards for what is acceptable are

being challenged all over the world. People are slowly beginning to take steps towards

acknowledging and celebrating the traits that make everyone different. Business is about turning

first impressions into successful business relationships. Through this bridge we can spread

tolerance and respect.


References

Ashar, S. M. (2002). Immigration enforcement and subordination: the consequences of racial

profiling after september 11. Connecticut Law Review, 34, 1185-1199. Retrieved from

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=925719

Heaton, P. (2010). Understanding the effects of antiprofiling policies. The Journal of Law &

Economics,53(1), 29–64. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/649645?

seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Norgren, J. & Nanda, S. (2006). Cultural pluralism and the rule of law post 9/11. American

Cultural Pluralism and Law. (3rd ed.) Wesport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Ong, F. W. (2014 January 15). Racial profiling in the workplace? In The Labor and Employment

Report. Shawe and Rosenthal LLP. Retrieved from

http://www.laboremploymentreport.com/2014/01/15/racial-profiling-in-the-workplace/

Profiling. (2011). In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved from

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling

Robbins, L. (2015, December 10). 'Do you know me? do you know my heart?'. The New York

Times. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/10/nyregion/muslims-in-new-york-react-to-

donald-trump.html?_r=1

Ross, J. (2015, December 13). Anti-Muslim sentiment is all over the news. but it is hardly new.

The Washington Post. Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/13/anti-muslim-sentiment-is-

all-over-the-news-but-it-is-hardly-new/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profiling

http://www.laboremploymentreport.com/2014/01/15/racial-profiling-in-the-workplace/

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=925719


Sun, L. H. (2015, December 11). American muslim doctors feel greater scrutiny, even patients’

suspicions. The Washington Post. Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/11/american-muslim-

doctors-feel-greater-scrutiny-even-patients-suspicions/?tid=a_inl

Townsend, M. (2015, December 5). Anti-Muslim prejudice ‘is moving to the mainstream’.

Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/anti-muslim-prejudice-

is-moving-to-the-mainstream-2015-12

http://www.businessinsider.com/anti-muslim-prejudice-is-moving-to-the-mainstream-2015-12

http://www.businessinsider.com/anti-muslim-prejudice-is-moving-to-the-mainstream-2015-12

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/11/american-muslim-doctors-feel-greater-scrutiny-even-patients-suspicions/?tid=a_inl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/11/american-muslim-doctors-feel-greater-scrutiny-even-patients-suspicions/?tid=a_inl

Racial Profiling and Its Effects

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