Hispanics


Hispanics are another group being profiled against in the US. As with blacks there are stereotypes attatched to hispanics that people tend to apply without thinking. Some such stereotypes are detailed in the article "The Color of Suspicion", a news article by Jeffrey Goldberg. He follows a typical day in the life of an Annapolis police officer and talks with the officer about his tendencies when looking for pepople of suspicion
The officer describes his job when on duty as finding people who smuggle illegal drugs, coming up with a reason to pull them over, and searching them. How he chooses his targets is, admittedly, based on race. "Racial profiling is a tool we use, and dont let anyone say otherwise," he says. Over the course of the day Goldberg watches a few similar incidents of the officer pulling over Hispanics to find what he's looking for. He is actually successfull in more than one instance. He finds two cars based on suspicious drivers who turn out to be smoking in the vehicle and takes care of them. The trick he says, is "in order to stop a suspected gunrunner or drug mule, troopers first have to find a reason in the state's traffic laws" As you see here, racial profiling isnt always used in a negative fashion. That is to say, you cannot equate the term racial profiling with the terms wrong or evil. It does however, show evidence of a witch hunt present in our country. The fact that the officer is going with the express purpose of identifying suspicious drivers based on race shows he is hunting specific groups of people. It also follows that there could've been many white drivers passing by that he wouldn't have noticed, simply because he wasn't looking for them and it is this that creates the issue. Although cutting out white drivers from the officer's mind saves him time and energy, it also presents him as a hunter of other people who aren't always doing wrong.

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