Racial Profiling Today

I came across an article on the CNN website entitled “Helpless as my son, 13, was profiled, cuffed,” and I couldn’t help but read it. The article was written by an African American mother who watched two policemen wrongfully accuse and handcuff her teenage son. As Ava Greenwell, the mother, recounts her experience it is hard not to draw parallels between the article and the firsthand accounts written in Remembering Jim Crow.

Greenwell begins her story by describing the terror she felt when watching her son being handcuffed, writing “It’s every African- American parent’s nightmare.” When reading this line I thought to myself it would be any American parent’s nightmare, white or black, to see his or her child being handcuffed; yet, Greenwell’s exclusivity cannot go unnoticed or unexamined. Based on the African Americans’ experience within American history, it is understandable that there is a different type of feeling present when two white officers, without an explanation, handcuff an African American. It is a sad reality but it is a reality and this article displays not only the possibility but also the commonality surrounding racial profiling.

Greenwell’s son was arrested on the sole fact that he supposedly fit the description of a burglary suspect: “a black male wearing cargo shorts.” It was evident to Greenwell; as well as to me, that this so called “description” was not very descriptive at all. The police officers did not ask for any further information. They thought that skin color, gender, and a style of shorts were sufficient grounds to not only search for the criminal, but also arrest the “criminal.” Greenwell rightfully discredited the police officers’ ethics with questions such as “why didn’t the 911 dispatcher ask for a more detailed description of his skin color? His build? Whether he has facial hair?” And while all of Greenwell’s questions are necessary and relevant to a dispatch description, the one that could be most helpful and yet is the most disregarded is the description of skin color. “Black” and “white” are two words used to describe one’s ethnicity. Yet neither is descriptive at all—if anything the two words only establish a barrier between African Americans and Caucasians allowing a huge gap of racial interpretation to form. The police officers should have asked more about the suspect’s skin color because not all Caucasians look the same and neither do all African Americans—a stigma that is illogical and unjustified.

After the victim saw Greenwell’s son and denied that he was the suspect, he was swiftly let go. Greenwell describes the police officers quick retrieval as they “left almost as quickly as they had swarmed in.” The police officers hastily arrested the boy due to racial profiling and they hastily left the scene because they had been caught in the midst of racially profiling. If the police officers had been more thorough and unassuming during their quick and determined investigation they would not have humiliated an innocent boy or themselves, but in this instance this was not the case. Greenwell concludes the article by discussing the United States’ long history of racial profiling, describing it as “a common right of passage for young black males.” This assertion is both sad and true. It reminds me of the stories in Remembering Jim Crow, in that at the core this story set in 2012, it is no different from the stories told in the 1930s-60s. The racial problems from the past are still the problems today; they have just taken on a more subtle and "justifiable" form.

If you want to read more here is the article: http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/african-american