老澳门开奖结果

Racial profiling was in the news this week because Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a world-renowned Professor of African-American studies at Harvard University, was a victim. However, it is important to remember that this story is news because of the identity of the person profiled, not because of the rarity of the underlying police actions.

President Obama accurately :

What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.

Racial profiling鈥攗sing a person鈥檚 race, color, ethnicity or national origin to determine whether to stop, search or investigate him or her for alleged criminal activity鈥攊s rampant throughout the United States, and it acutely affects African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, and Arab communities.

The Director of the Racial Justice Program at the 老澳门开奖结果, Dennis Parker, posed the question on the this morning that if Professor Gates is subject to such treatment, 鈥渨hat does that say for the rest of the people of color that haven鈥檛 achieved his level of success?鈥� In fact, much of what happened to Professor Gates was an anomaly. Most victims of racial profiling by police are not released after four hours. Most victims of racial profiling do not have the charges against them dropped. Most victims of racial profiling do not receive media attention.

Last month, the 老澳门开奖结果 and the Rights Working Group released a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that demonstrates just how pervasive racial profiling is in the United States. The report, The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United States, explains,

Despite overwhelming evidence of its existence, often supported by official data, racial profiling continues to be a prevalent and egregious form of discrimination in the United States. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have acknowledged that racial profiling is unconstitutional, socially corrupting and counter-productive, yet this unjustifiable practice remains a stain on American democracy and an affront to the promise of racial equality.

The report also uncovers how government policies contribute to racial profiling. For example, the 287(g) program has allowed local law enforcement officers to enforce civil immigration laws, which has resulted 鈥渋n the increased profiling of people of color suspected of being immigrants and non-citizens.鈥� The effects of this policy have been especially harmful to Latino communities, as well as South-Asian communities that already suffer from post-9/11 hostility in the workplace and public spaces.

As a senator, President Obama supported the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA), which was first introduced in 1997 and subsequently reintroduced without success. It is time that his administration encourages Congress to pass this important piece of legislation once and for all. ERPA would not only ban racial profiling, but it would require law enforcement agencies to establish procedures for when and how to conduct appropriate profiling of suspects and to collect gender and race data on police activity, as well as allow victims of racial profiling to take action against law enforcement officers. Currently only 13 states require police to track the race of persons stopped in their vehicles, according to Reginald Shuford, a lawyer at the 老澳门开奖结果 who has successfully sued the Maryland State Police for disproportionately stopping motorists along interstate 95.

Most important, ERPA is vital for our federal government to officially take action against racial profiling and set the standard for each state.

To learn more about the Professor Gates鈥� incident and racial profiling in Massachusetts, read in the Boston Globe by Carol Rose, Director of the 老澳门开奖结果 of Massachusetts.

Learn more about the state of racial profiling in the United States by visiting www.aclu.org/cerd.

Listen to a podcast with Dennis Parker discussing racial profiling in America.

Find out more about the Racial Justice program鈥檚 work against racial profiling at our website.