Racial profiling means using the race or ethnicity of an individual to decide whether to enforce a law or not. Racial profiling may include various kinds of actions such as “racially-biased stop and frisk,” using race to make a traffic stop and ethnic discrimination. Racial profiling in the United States dates back to the 17th century when police officials were allowed to stop and detain Negroes. The practice has continued since that time despite the abolishment of slavery and American ideology of liberty and equal rights. In the modern age, several ethnic minority groups are victims of racial profiling including African Americans and Latinos. However, the latest and currently the biggest victims of racial profiling are the Middle-Easterners/Muslims. In the post 9/11 era, the word Muslim has become synonymous with terrorism/violence. As a result, they have been subject to various forms governmental and social retaliation despite having no relations with terrorism in any way.
The 9/11 incident led to the racialization of Islam or Muslims where Arabs, Middle-Easterners, Iranians and South Asians were all consolidated in to a single race. They became victims of hate crimes, public discrimination and governmental prejudice. On the public level, numerous …show more content…
It is a defensive counterterrorism measure that seeks to reduce the likelihood of future terrorist attack on American soil by Muslim extremists. Many people support it and consider it right while others consider it a breach of civil rights of American Muslims. However, there is no empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such a defensive measure. Furthermore, defensive counterterrorism measures are tricky to implement and are known to backfire. Therefore, there is big question mark on the effectiveness of racial profiling even though a large group of people have to give up their