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/
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

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