In the opinion articles of newspapers today you will often find that racial profiling continues to be a prevalent and controversial form of discrimination in the Untied States. Throughout our history racial profiling has become increasingly obvious after many events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. People immediately assume that people of particular color and ethnicities are associated with past actions related to history that are normally negative acts against society. They form prejudices that make those people seem reasonable for investigation and legal punishment even though they have done nothing to deserve such treatment. Racial profiling has forced many people to live in fear all because of pre-conceived notions, and what people fail to realize is that this type of treatment can often lead to tension and inaccurate conclusions. This is very much related to the principle of correlation vs. causation that we've been studying throughout the year. Many people assume that because of certain individuals' ethnicities or origins that they are affiliated with previous actions done by people similar to them. There is absolutely no correlation between the two, however countries are now starting to adopt methods of search based on this principle. For example, in London police are beginning to profile and search individuals with the thought being the benefit from these searches is astronomical while affects on the individual are minimal. It will be interesting to see how the Justice Department handles these profiling acts.
It is difficult to change the thoughts and feelings of others, but when it comes to trying to reduce racial profiling we can begin by instilling the presumption of innocence into our daily thoughts. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty and by living by this motto the scrutiny that foreign individuals go through will be greatly diminished and we can avoid false conclusions.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4790707
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