Racial Profiling: From Rhetoric to Reason - Softcover

Withrow, Brian L

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131273795 ISBN 13: 9780131273795

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2005

Synopsis

The first and only truly objective book to move the racial profiling controversy from its current rhetorical base into a reasoned argument. "Racial Profiling" focuses on the scientific investigation of racial profiling without alternative political or social agendas, devoting equal attention to the multiple perspectives of this controversial topic. This book's scholarly approach presents the topic in an objective way, facilitating learning and making readers more informed consumers of the research. Features the most comprehensive literature review of what we know and what we don't know about the extend of racial profiling-identifies the seven most important research questions within the controversy and discusses each one at length. For political leaders, police administrators, training academy instructors, scholars, and anyone in the criminal justice field.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There are probably no more than half a dozen good reasons to commit the time necessary to write a book. Certainly there are some financial incentives, and academic recognition is important to someone like me. But the most important reason to write a book such as this is having something important to say. Racial profiling is an emerging issue. It is by all accounts the most critical issue facing American policing today. It tears at the heart of our sense of fairness and social equity. It threatens to adversely affect the legitimacy of our entire legal system.

Unfortunately, most of what we know or think we know about racial profiling comes to us from rather suspicious sources. The controversy is highly influenced by individuals and groups with alternative political and social agendas. A finding of racial disparity in police stops may lead one researcher to conclude racial profiling is rampant in the community, while another researcher, looking at the same data, may conclude the opposite. Some disagreement among scholars is understandable. There are considerable differences in how scholars are trained to approach social science research. It is even likely that disagreement among scholars substantially advances science and is therefore good for the growth of knowledge. But much of the conflict in the current controversy has nothing to do with academic training, the peer review process, or the advancement of scientific knowledge. It is about advancing a particular political or social agenda under the umbrella of legitimate social science inquiry, and that is offensive to all of us who care deeply about the inherent rights of individuals and the importance of policing by consent.

The purpose of this book is to move the racial profiling controversy from its current rhetorical base into a reasoned argument. It is my objective to move racial profiling inquiry away from exaggerated and overreaching conclusions and into the realm of bona fide scientific investigation. In doing so, I have purposely limited the use of anecdotal stories from victims of racial profiling. While these stories provide a human richness to the issue and have likely advanced the media’s attention on the controversy, they do little to improve our understanding of why minorities are overrepresented in police stops. The uniqueness of this book, compared to others available today, lies in its lack of a priori assumptions about the nature of American policing and police officers. The book neither attempts to indict the police nor support them. Instead, the focus of this book is on the scientific investigation of racial profiling. It has been my desire to offer an objective view of the evidence, so far, as well as a thorough treatise of what we do not know. It is my sincere hope that political leaders, police administrators, training academy instructors, scholars, and, of course, students will find the information in these pages useful as they grapple with the difficult political, administrative, and methodological issues associated with the racial profiling controversy.

Any author who writes on a topic like racial profiling assumes some risk of offending readers over his use of terms. Throughout the text I use the term Black to describe African American, Hispanic to describe Latino or Mexican American, White to describe Caucasian, Asian, and Native American. The use of the term Black is likely controversial. It is intended to describe all individuals with black skin, regardless of their national origin or ethnicity. The term, albeit imprecise as an indicator of race, is consistent with my understanding of the racial profiling controversy in that it is the perception of race, rather than an individual’s actual race, that allegedly influences a police officer’s decision to stop. The term Hispanic is used to describe an individual’s ethnicity. While some researchers consider Hispanic a race, it is more commonly considered an ethnicity. There is substantial variation in skin color throughout the Hispanic ethnicity. The terms minority and minorities are used throughout the text to describe groups of individuals (usually defined by race or ethnicity) who represent a numeric minority within a given population.

Throughout the text I refer to racial profiling as a “controversy.” This in no way should be considered evidence that the author discounts the work of other researchers. Instead, in using this term I intend to express that racial profiling, as an issue or research agenda, is still in its infancy. A controversy in this sense is intended to mean a discussion characterized by the expression of alternative views. While some consistency of findings is evident in the literature, there is still considerable disagreement on the meaning of the term racial profiling, how to measure who gets and doesn’t get stopped, and the appropriate manner in which to interpret the analytical findings of a study. It is admittedly quite likely that even when these issues are addressed in the future, racial profiling will continue to be a controversial topic.

The text consists of eight chapters. Chapter One, An Emergence, discusses how six seemingly unrelated issues and practices coalesced over the past decade into what is commonly referred to as the racial profiling controversy. Chapter Two, What We Know and Don’t Know, reports on the findings of a representative sample of racial profiling studies. Chapter Three, Critical Methodological Issues, outlines the important methodological issues that have so far hampered our understanding of racial profiling. Chapter Four, Explaining the Disparity, identifies and critically evaluates various theoretical explanations for the overrepresentation of minorities among individuals stopped by the police. Chapter Five, The Political and Legal Response, discusses how political leaders should manage the racial profiling controversy to their advantage in their communities. This chapter also outlines and evaluates the potential legal remedies for addressing the practice of racial profiling. Chapter Six, Conducting Racial Profiling Studies (Best Practices), outlines and discusses the important steps for successfully conducting a racial profiling study. Chapter Seven, Solutions, offers ten potential solutions to the racial profiling controversy. Chapter Eight, What’s Next?, attempts to predict the future of the racial profiling controversy. In addition, this chapter discusses the relevance of the racial profiling controversy to our national war against terrorism.

President Lyndon B. Johnson had a habit of starting contentious meetings with the phrase “Come, let us reason together.” I hope to encourage participants in this controversy to do the same. The racial profiling controversy is not new to America. Indeed, racial issues have been at the forefront of American society since the early days of the republic. They are endemic, intractable, and complicated, but not insurmountable. The way out of the abyss of racial profiling is through reason, not rhetoric.

Brian L.Withrow, Ph.D.

Bel Aire, Kansas

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0131273795
• ISBN 13: 9780131273795
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270