Daily Times

Members of a racial minority find it much more difficult to blend in with the larger society and gain acceptance from the majority. In the US retail stores, white customers have different experiences from black customers. They are less likely than blacks to have their cards refused, and less likely to be viewed with suspicion by security personnel. Witness does confer privilege. The appearance and get-up of an individual is in a way a witness that confers or does not confer privilege. If you command privilege you are likely to be treated differently more positively. Too often, authorities treat individuals differently based solely on their race or ethnicity. A man who looks like the reverend Martin Luther king Jr would be treated with more suspicion than the look like of the mass murderer Charles Manson.

Those who are profiled-African Americans, Latinos, and immigrants are already at an economic disadvantage. Profiling, or even the threat of profiling, further stigmatizes them, decreasing their social mobility. Defeating racism is the need of the twenty-first century. Slavery was constitutionally and legally abolished a long time ago. But attitudes of the people have not changed. Social change is essential. Killing of George Floyd Jr by a Minneapolis police officer was obviously a case of racial profiling and racial and ethnic inequality. It is a social policy issue.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Elmo Randolph, a dentist, was stopped by police dozens of times while traveling to work on the new Jersey Turnpike. Invariably State troops asked him whether he was carrying guns or drugs. “My parents always told me, be careful when you are driving on the turnpike,” Dr Randolph, a black man, testified before a state commission. “White people don’t have that conversation”. Dr Randolph was not the only motorist who was pulled over for what is now referred to sarcastically as a DWB offense that is, driving while Black. During the same period, African American constituted only 17 percent of motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike, but 80 percent of the motorists pulled over by police.

Statistics show that racial profiling actually misdirects police in their attempts to apprehend law breakers. In areas where minority group members are targeted disproportionately, Whites are more likely than Blacks to be found carrying drugs. Nevertheless, law enforcement officials prefer to concentrate on the inner city drug trade, creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Elmo Randolph, a dentist, was stopped by police dozens of times while traveling to work on the new Jersey Turnpike. Invariably State troops asked him whether he was carrying guns or drugs

The social dimensions of race and ethnicity are important factors in shaping people’s lives, both in the United States and in other countries.

Institutional discrimination results from the normal operations of a society.

Functionalists point out that discrimination is both functional and dysfunctional for a society. Conflict theorists explain racial subordination through exploitation theory.

Interactionism poses the contact hypothesis as a means of reducing prejudice and discrimination.

Four patterns describe typical intergroup relation: amalgamation, assimilation, segregation, and pluralism. Pluralism remains more of an ideal then a reality. When sociologists define a minority group, they are concerned primarily with the economic and political power, or powerlessness, of the group.

The terrorists’ attacks of September 11, 2001, have increased racial profiling by police and intelligence agents. Careful research shows that to a great degree, our society’s growing diversity is not reflected in our choice of friends, though a high proportion of both white and African American respondents claim to have close friends of another race.

If we need global peace and prosperity it is essential to devote all energy and efforts and resources to defeat Racism and to resolve all outstanding disputes and issues.

The writer is former director of the National Institute of Public Administration, a political analyst, a public policy expert, and a published author. His book “Post 9/11 Pakistan” was published in the United States