Eric H. Michigan

Racial Profiling

This is about Racial profiling and what it causes and why it needs to be stopped.

Dear, Future president

Many people remember what happened to Trayvon Martin and what got him killed.If you don’t it was Racial Profiling and Stereotyping that got him killed. Everybody profiles people by their looks or their race all the time, but that's just like judging a book by its cover. In other words you won’t know a person just by looking at them but the most racial profiling comes from the law enforcement . One of the most heated issues in law enforcement is the profiling of individuals based solely upon the race, ethnicity, or national origin of the individual. Statistics show that African Americans are several times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than white Americans. As of 2000, fewer African American men were in college than were in prison.furthermore, black children were nine times as likely as white children to have at least one parent in prison.

Some of the causes of racial profiling on an Black person or an hispanic person, mostly teen or early adulthood, are due to the history or background of these races dealing with crime or drugs. With that being said some police officers will look at a person of color and see where they live, and if they live in a poor neighborhood but are wearing or has something expensive the officer will sometimes assume that either that person is dealing with drugs in some type of way or that person is a thief. Which sometimes the officer maybe correct about that person, but at the same time you can’t look at people the same way all the time. A prime example of the police racial profiling black people. In 1996, the television network ABC aired a report entitled "Driving While Black," in which it paid three younger black men to drive around the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, in a Mercedes-Benz. Three officers in the city pulled over the car for a minor traffic infraction and then proceeded to search the car and the young men. The show demonstrated with little doubt that the only reason the three men were pulled over was their race.

Major effect of racial profiling is that the community loses trust in their police offices. In oakland an officer's says “Gang members don’t want help from the police, they’re lying in a pool of their own blood, dying and they will say “I got this” and I’m like “Dude I can help you, I’m a police officer, don’t you want us to find the guy who did this?” and he’s like “I’ll take care of it” and he dies.” So people would rather die than get help from the police because how they been being treated by the police in that area. Many parents of black or hispanic teens are scared to let their kids go out at night because if they are driving and get pulled over they won’t know what the police might do know of days so instead of letting them out and taking a chance with that they just keep them in and the teen has to suffer for that night. Solutions for this problem for the police to start treating everybody the same and try to get all the teens away from the crime and drugs so the police know that they are not doing anything.

Hopefully remembering or knowing what happened to Trayvon Martin will make people wanna stop racial profiling or help find a solution for it.

Sincerely, Eric Hunter