December 2000/
January 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Struggle Against Racial Profiling

Dustin Washington is director, Youth Leadership Development Program, Seattle, AFSC, and spokesperson for the People's Coalition for Justice.

Have you ever been driving along on a nice summer evening, obeying all possible traffic laws, and all of a sudden, you see the flashing lights of a patrol car in your mirror? A police officer comes up to your window and says you got pulled over because of a light bulb missing on your license plate. Throughout the whole interaction you have the intuitive feeling that you were really pulled over because of your race.

Precinct house, Boston © Linda Haas

I have and many other people of color in the US had this experience. It's called racial profiling, police targeting for traffic stops simply because of skin color. Racial profiling is not unique to the police--every institution in this country profiles by race, whether it is banking, housing, or education. However, the police have the power to harass, brutalize, incarcerate, or kill, which puts their form of profiling on a higher level. From New Jersey Turnpike to the streets of Los Angeles CA, the issue of profiling by the Police has received enormous attention from the media, the public, politicians and Police Departments. According to a December 1999 Gallup poll, 59% of all Americans agree that racial profiling is a widespread problem and 75% of Black men state they've been stopped by the Police because of their Race. Here in Seattle a report stated that while Blacks make up roughly 10% of the population they received 19% of all traffic tickets or were twice as likely to be stopped by the Police, compared to whites.

So why does profiling happen? Because we live in a society that was founded on racism. Racial profiling by authorities is nothing new. From slavery until now, there has been a concerted effort by the white power structure to harass and intimidate the Black population, with a racist ideology used to justify such behavior. While Civil Rights laws have made some progress in stemming overt racism, there has been no sincere effort to change the institutionalized and internalized racism buried in the hearts and minds of American whites. Malcolm X said "We need education, not just legislation." His words ring true. White people are raised in a culture that teaches them, through every institution (media, education, etc.) that people of color, specifically black men are lazy, violent, and to be feared. Thus, it should be of no surprise that racist actions and attitudes are manifested in white police officers through racial profiling or other acts of police misconduct.

In Seattle, the City Government's only proposal to date has been to initiate a 19-month study on profiling, even though statistics developed by the Seattle Times and the Seattle Police Department have clearly revealed disproportionality. We in the People's Coalition for Justice ( project of the AFSC) believe that this is unacceptable and are organizing for immediate policies in lieu of yet another study. We are calling for: mandatory reporting of the race and reason of Seattle Police Department's traffic stops; video cameras in patrol cars sent to areas with high rates of police brutality; mandatory yearly anti-racist training, and a comprehensive tracking system that would monitor officers' stops and discipline officers who have been proven to engage in racial profiling. We advocate for the implementation of an economic empowerment program that will address the inability of poor people to afford new brake lights or other minor car repairs that commonly lead to so many of these race-motivated pretext stops. We also support the idea that the US Justice Department should be authorized to take over police departments that refuse to initiate policies to end racial profiling in a timely manner. Racial profiling by the police is an institutional problem and will require sweeping systemic change to begin to address the problem. We are clear that as long as the US is a race-based society, we probably cannot end racism in police departments, but the above-mentioned policies can go a long way toward curbing the dehumanizing act of racial profiling.

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