Academic Research

After in depth research of academic sources, I have begun to see the implications of both sides of the racial profiling binary. Academic studies have shown that racial profiling in general is rooted in psychology. Psychological research has shown that the ideas and beliefs of ones peers are largely adopted by the individual, through subconscious conformity. This phenomenon, combined with the social respondent conditioning of an individual (phenomenon in which the experiences and observations of an individual are extrapolated to stereotype a person, situation or occurrence) ingrains in an individual, a perception of the world. This specific perception causes a person to extrapolate previous experiences to develop stereotypes of certain people or situations. This suggests that a police officers previous examination of his environment along with the views of his peers shape his judgments of individuals. It has been statistically established that minorities are “stopped” by law enforcement officials more than is proportional to the ethnic breakdown of America’s total population. However, the number of minorities stopped due to suspicion is very close, in proportion to the number of minorities in prison as compared to the number of incarcerated Caucasians. This may seem to justify racial profiling; however this raises a large moral dilemma. Many will argue that it violates moral code and more objectively, the constitution of the United States to impose judgment on an individual because of the stereotypes surrounding a certain race.