Racial Profiling

Introduction

Racial Profiling has as the process of targeting people and groups of people with the help of law enforcement officials simply on the basis of their race, ethnic background, nationality or geographic origin or religion without any trustworthy information of their involvement in any type of identified criminal incident or conspiracy with regards to time and location relevancy so that the person or group cold be linked to that incident (Ramirez et.al, 2000). Chan also suggest “that racial profiling is surveillance or scrutiny based on racial or ethic factors rather than reasonable suspicion” (Chan, 2011). The issue of racial profiling in USA is quite old and serious with regards to human rights problem that is currently affecting millions of people belonging to different minority groups in the country. Surprisingly, these people are affected or are the victims of racial profiling in some of the most daily and routine aspects of their lives which has made it even more badly and common as an issue.

Discussion

Amnesty International USA conducted a study and survey with the help of its Domestic Human Rights Programs. The duration of this program was one year long and it was conducted to find out the unlawful and illegal role of police in racism and expansion of immigrating and increase in airport security procedures due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took place in the year 2001. This survey and study further reports that absence of sufficient relevant laws against racial profiling which is further worsening the situation. The survey shows overwhelming and shocking figures when it comes to the number of people and minority groups being affected by racial profiling at the hand of law enforcement officials. Following are some of the important findings of the survey that show the variation and type of racial profiling affecting people belonging to different parts of the world but residing in USA due to professional or other personal reasons.

It has been suggest that around 32 million of Americans which is equivalent to the population of Canada are affected or have been the victim of racism and predictions have been made that around 87 million more Americans are at the risk of being affected by similar circumstances and situations of racial profiling in the future or at least once in their life time. The issue of racial profiling has been reported to affect minority groups like Asians, Hispanics, Africans, Arabs, Persians, Muslims, Native American and even many immigrants and people who visit the country for different reasons under certain situation or circumstances (Lewis, 2004). The people that are affected consist of both the genders man and women and different age groups that range from children, teenagers to older people belonging to all types of social and economic background. In terms of geographical locations these people belong to all three areas that are rural, suburbs and urban areas. The survey also shows that the number of people belonging to Muslim religion and especially those belonging to the middles east side and south ...