Racial Profiling Term Paper

Cesilio Sanchez
Dr. Preston
Expository Composition
November 12, 2013

Racial Profiling

Racial Profiling has always been an issue of the world. Countries conquered smaller regions and associated the natives by the race they came from, normally because the smaller regions hadn’t established a unified country yet. This was the origin of our country, The Unites States of America, and it was Christopher Columbus that placed the name Indians to the Native Americans. Honest mistake it was, he had thought that he reached the Indian Ocean and did not know of the New World land. This is racial profile that was set on the Native Americans, that we know now was an honest mistake. But as times went on, the racial profiling on people soon became a way to separate groups into what we think fits for them. We use it to make assumptions about people and try to figure how they act, live and interact with other and that has led to major problems in the world. 

Dating back to the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Neo-Nazis, led a campaign that he believed would end the world from its problems. This was a campaign to end the existence of the Jewish people. Judaism isn’t exactly a race, it is a religion. Just because you believe in the same thing doesn’t mean you have the same characteristics and cultural background. Nobody ever knew where Hitler hatred towards the Jewish people came from, but there were theories. For example, one theory was that when he was young his mother had cancer and was treated by a Jewish doctor. When she died, some theorized that he was angry at the Jewish doctor and that is where he set his goal to end the Jewish people. Despite this being a theory, he still went on to stereotype the Jewish community and placed them in a group that he’d tried to end. When the rest of the world finally stopped this madness, he took the cowards way out and took his own life. That was the obsession of one man that worked his way up through his government and turned his hatred into action, action that cannot be undone. 
Our country as great as it is also is guilty of such a crime. When Christopher Columbus knew he had the discovered a new world, he set out to claim the natives land. He fought the natives and turned them into slaves for manual labor. This was the biggest and longest genocide in the history of the world. For five hundred years the Native Americans had to endure hate crimes and stereotypes. America knows this was the worst way to start a country and has hid it for most of its years. Not until after World War II and the Holocaust did the United Nations saw this as a problem. On December 9, 1948 the punishment for the crimes of genocide were adopted. The United Stated thinking it was enough gave reservations back to the Native Americas as a land offer for the territory they had lost as a result of the American migration. America had put a racial profile on the Native Americans as Indians and since has been known as that. They did not do anything to deserve this cruelty and because of racial profiling it caused them to be categorized in that group, something that they have no control over. 
Anybody can place a person in a group; this is what racial profiling is. You look at someone and look at their characteristics, their customs, and if you talk to them, their background and culture. Once that is done, you think to yourself, what group do they belong to? That is when you start the stereotype part of your thinking. Stereotypes are ideas that are assumed by you. Ideas that you believe everybody from that group are involved in. That is somehow locked in our brain as a sort of mechanism in order to be welcomed in that group. That isn’t always true though. The United States, probably the biggest country in the world with the highest diversity, is home to many types of people. They come here for the many great things we offer, including freedom. They come to express themselves as freely as they want. This gives off a lot of exposure to anybody not use to that. Once a family has spent generations in America, the younger generations split off and explore the other cultures. That changes a person, and that can slowly bring them out of the groups they grew up with. Sometimes not all the times they are people who branch out of their culture but there are also those who do not. Other people like ourselves don’t know which person we might be looking at, so our mechanism kicks in and we start assuming things that might not be true. If you’re right than that goes well, but when you’re not, that is where everyone sees you as a discriminator. 
In the United States, nobody can tell you what to think or you can’t tell someone what to think, they have the right to their own opinion. I don’t see this as constitutional right; I see this as a God given right. I think of it as free will, to be able to do whatever you want and think whatever you want. I don’t think it is something a government can control. Knowing this, I think this is what gives us the sense to think the way we do without any repercussions. If we can think anything we want and get away with it than that makes it possible to do racial profiling. You have to know yourself when profiling someone if it’s right or wrong, usually wrong. I don’t believe any judging is right even good ones, but you can’t help but to do it. It is locked in your head to place a brand on a person. Even though some people say that it’s wrong and that we shouldn’t do it, I don’t believe that one racial thought has not gone through their head. Nobody is perfect but it’s something we need to work towards in order to end all racial profiling. The people’s opinions will still be their right but we must work to end the racial opinions that we can’t seem to end.
Since everyone is born in the same world, it is only right that everyone is equal in the sense that we all come from the same place. We as humans are all part of the Human Race and any other world wouldn’t see us as what part of the earth we’re from but from what planet we come from. These shows how equal we are and how we as humans have the same value. In this article, the journalist talks about the victims of the 9/11 event. He says that the people that died that day received different compensations. He went on to explain that a high paid victim’s family received more from the government than the low paid victim. They categorized them by how much they made and by how much they contributed to society. People found this extremely disturbing because not even our government thinks of their citizens as equal as they should. Even though this had nothing to do with racial profiling it still separated people by a different category. Racial profiling does the same thing. For example, the two events from earlier about the Jewish Holocaust and the Native American Holocaust was an event where the supposable superior group placed a value on a group. That value was dramatically low according to them, maybe nothing and it was what caused these horrible events. Putting a value on someone can mean different things. In the article they were talking about how much money the family was supposed to get from their insurance. In the two holocausts it was talking as an idea of how much their death would be remembered. To some people their families are priceless and wouldn’t have a value for them. To others that same person would be worth nothing to them and would simply see how much they contributed toward society. We need to see our fellow men as a part of the same family, the same race, the human race, despite our different backgrounds.
I live in small community where we don’t have so much of ethnic diversity. In our school we most people don’t look at what race we come from but what are interest are. For example, there are athletes who enjoy sports, band student that enjoy music, gamers that enjoy online gaming and so on. Normally some students are associated with mixed groups and are usually knows as the friendliest person. If you don’t know anybody in that group then you would be the out-group, if you knew somebody, you could slowly become part of the group and be in the In-group. This is something that also has to be stopped. This goes back to who is worth what. If the In-group sees a person worth letting in they do but if they’re not they don’t even speak to that person. This is a problem because this puts people into groups according to whatever the “In-groups” thinks. Thinking about this idea of in-groups and out-groups, the United States Struggled through this during the Civil Rights Movements. All throughout American history, the African Americans have struggled to be treated equally and fought for years. In the 1960’s There was a movement that the African Americans organized in order to let their voice be heard to give them equal right like the constitution said it should. They wanted to be part of the bigger group, the American group, not the race group. A group where they wouldn’t be discriminated and be force to be placed in a group that everyone saw as slaves. Martin Luther King Jr. was a famous Civil rights movement leader in the 1960’s where he made a famous speech that open the minds of people and encourage them to change. It took them generations to finally change the world and end African American slavery. They became part of the In-group and finally became equal like everyone else. I believed that this was a big step forward in the right direction towards becoming a whole in the Human race. It is a step toward the perfectionist we look for. 
We communicate in many ways; there is verbal, nonverbal, and paraverbal. Verbal is the content we say. Nonverbal is all the body language we do while speaking, this is use to give our ideas more meaning. Paraverbal is the quality of how they speak. These are all way in which we communicate and it is used a lot in talking to people from other groups. When you talk to people from your group you act comfortable and act like yourself. When talking to someone from a different group you act and talk differently and pretend to be like yourself. That is where the stereotype comes in. When you communicate with someone that you don’t know, you assume things that you think they might like. This assumption is bad because it sometimes isn’t right. If you talk to someone and they don’t have the customs that you assume they have they can get offended. Not everyone today is associated with the same cultural background as their race. We are more open to new things and can change over time. Communicating with someone is important because it lets you know what kind of person you are. The way you communicate with that person is more important because it can give a vibe of offense if you communicate the wrong way. The way you talk to your family can be different than the way you talk to your friends. The way you talk to your friends can be different than how you talk to a stranger. People have to understand that we are all equal and we need to be treated the same. For example, if we talk to an African American and use the stereotype that we grew up knowing, they can take it as a joke; seriously or really take it as an offense. Using the same communication style to a Caucasian person might be off because they are not in the same race group. The way someone communicates with a person from another race can tell if that person has set a racial profile on a certain person or an entire group. Our generation has learned to use these stereotypes and the ways of communications to make videos and make fun of it on these videos. There is this program called Vine where you make six second videos about anything you want and share it with the world. I see these videos because they’re mostly true but make me laugh when I know these stereotypes videos are meant to be laugh at and show how much of it was a joke. It was a joke to ever use stereotype to judge a person by what they look like. I like how our generation has found a way to not use these words as hate speech but as a way of new communication and comedy. We have to stop worrying about what one word means because they’re just that, words. I want to see the world forget about all these word because they meant something big in the past. The past cannot be undone so why are we still trying to fix it. We need to learn from it, forget about it and move forward. We need to be able to communicate in a way where racial words mean nothing and we can use it as a joke where everyone can laugh at it.
When our country started it had many problems trying to make a stable government that everyone would be please with. When it finally found a way to make it work, it made a constitution, a document that gives our government and us as citizens its right. Rights that each of us as citizens have and the limitations it comes with. The first amendment is to protect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, as well as the right to assemble, right to protest, and petition the government. Freedom of speech as we all now allows us to say anything we want without any repercussions, or does it? The first amendment has limitations that are obvious but somehow we are blind to see them. One limitation is hate speech. Hate speech is outside the law; it is communication that vilifies a person or a group based on discrimination against that person or group. It is not protected by the first amendment. Anyone who says something that targets a person or group can be convicted of a hate crime. This clearly shows that we do not have full protection from the first amendment like we thought. Now to some people this was obviously true but didn’t think it was a limitation of the first amendment, including myself. These ties in to racial profiling because when someone puts a racial profile on a person or group, they can then take actions and let their thoughts be words and those words be actions. That is why hate crime is not protected by the first amendment; they try to stop the actions that come after the speech. Going back to Adolf Hitler, he was a great leader that made horrible choices. He was widely known for the power of his communication. He got support from the German people by speaking to them and telling them what they wanted to hear. He was a great speaker and leader but just stood for the wrong things. His hate crime was towards the Jewish population and he told the German community his ideas in such a way that everyone supported those ideas. How could an entire country go along with genocide and think it was a good idea. It was the power of Hitler’s words and the support he had. That is how powerful hate speech can be. If that limitation wasn’t set, any person can go on the streets and shout a horrible idea that was so well delivered, it could cause chaos. The second limitation is obscenity. Obscenity is things that don’t have a scientific, educational, or artistic value in or society. For example, nudity is not allowed in public places according to our government. To our government it is considered not a form of educational, scientific or artistic. To some people they might categorize it as a form of art, that our body, given to us by our creator is art. That would be a limitation to the first amendment, again obvious but hard to see. The last limitation would be anything that causes immediate harm to the nation or its people. If anything that would alarm national security because of a treat would defiantly be a limitation to the first amendment. The only example I could think of would be a situation where a meeting of terrorist plots was about to happen. I would agree that the government should do all it can to stop such a meeting in order to prevent any damage done to the country or its citizens. I would give full consent if it meant my family; friends and I were safe if the government would limit the use of the first amendment. Going back to the racial profiling, the limitations of the first amendment are there to help the bigger group from any danger if it causes immediate harm to the nation or its people. Hate speech cause racial profiling, this is something that the limitations of the first amendment would help with. Having limitations on the first amendment are there to help the greater good from any type of danger, big or small. We would all agree that these limitations are there to help me and you from any treat that can occur. I would feel safe knowing that hate crime or any other limitation can stop people from thinking or saying things that might be a treat to me or anybody else. 
This was topic about racial profiling, I might have gotten of topic for some of it but it was for the knowledge of that topic. Racial profiling is something we are trying to fix in our society. To get to perfectionism, where we live in an uncorrupt able world where we won’t be judge and no one is trying to hurt us, a place where we will one day go and see that it is possible. Maybe that place doesn’t exist and it won’t happen but we have to try. We cannot move backward and repeat the past. We must learn from the past, forget the past, and move forward. We have to forget the racial profiling that divides the human race. As we can see today we are slowly getting rid of this discriminatory way of life. We as a generation are the least racist people so far, but this could not be obtain without sacrifice. But that is all behind us and we cannot go backwards in time. Something that I believe will work is to open up more places in the world where people from different cultures can get together and see one another for the individual that they are and not from the group they’re associated with. 
My big question was if there is a purpose to everyone being born into the lives that they're in? Is there a reason why people that are born in certain parts of the world have to suffer more than others? The clear way I can relate this to racial profiling is that no one has a say into the race that they are born in. Nobody can control who their parents are and the cultural background they come from. I am religious and I have always wondered if God put certain people in certain places for a reason. One idea that I came up with was that maybe the people who were born into a miserable life were born there so the world would learn from the situation and help the greater good from preventing it to happen from other generations. Another theory was that maybe all this is a test. Maybe we have to be humble and do the right thing in any situation in order to get to heaven. I don’t know the answer and maybe I will know in the next life. I believe that we will one day end racial profiling and continue the healthy growth to perfectionism. We will as a single race, the human race, “be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together”. It can be done but we must unit as one and show the true meaning of being a race.