Race, Ethnicity, and Equality



Race, ethnicity, and equality

Introduction

The terms “Race” and “Ethnicity” have been employed in public debates refer to government activity directed at a suspect or a group of suspects because of their color, gender, whether intentional or due to the disproportionate numbers of contacts based upon other pre-textual basis.

United States has a long history of racism and racial discrimination. For many century conflicts have taken place between the Whites, Blacks, Mexicans, Arabs and the Asians. It is the region with a vast variety of cultures and races.

Racial and Ethnicity Discrimination

“To treat differently a person or group of people based on their racial origins. Power is a necessary precondition, for it depends on the ability to give or withhold social benefits, facilities, services, opportunities etc., from someone who should be entitled to them, and are denied on the basis of race, colors or national origin.” (Web, 1)

After the event of September 11, federal state and local law enforcement agencies worked anxiously to investigate those responsible for the most reprehensible violence on United States Soil and to evaluate the state of vulnerability to more acts of terrorism. As part of those conclusions, about the national origin and ethnicity of the prime suspects was inescapable. This crime was committed by a terrorist organization of foreign nationals of Middle Eastern descent.

Immediately law enforcement agencies focused special investigative efforts upon people from Middle Eastern countries often in disregard of any other issues warranting doubt.

Heather MacDonald of New York's City Journal wrote in spring 2001 issue: “What we may call hard profiling uses race as the only factor in assessing criminal suspiciousness: an officer sees a black person and, without more to go on, pulls him over for a pat-down on the chance that he may be carrying drugs or weapons. Soft racial profiling is use race as one factor among others in gauging criminal suspiciousness: the highway police, for example, have intelligence that Jamaican drug posses with a fondness for Nissan Pathfinders are transporting marijuana along the northeast corridor. A trooper sees a black motorist speeding in a Pathfinder and pulls him over in the hope of finding drugs”. (Web, 2)

The mission of responsible law enforcement officials in combating domestic terrorism is to take what they know to be true about the ethnic identity of the September 11th assailants, and combine it with other factors developed through investigation and analysis to focus investigative efforts and avoid casting a net too wide. Ethnicity alone is not enough. If ethnic profiling of Middle Eastern men is enough to warrant disparate treatment, we accept that all or most Middle Eastern men have a proclivity for terrorism, just as during World War II all resident Japanese had a proclivity for espionage.

Racial and Ethnicity at Airports

On a much larger domestic level, a new and disturbing pattern of racial and ethnic profiling at American airport have emerged involving the removal of passengers after clearing airport security and boarding; simply because airline crew members or other passengers ...