Racial Profiling
Racial
Profiling. Gerund form of the verb “to racially profile”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, racial profiling is defined as any discriminatory action on the art of law enforcement officials that targets individuals on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or nation of origin. Outside the realm of law enforcement, the definition of racial profiling has been expanded in colloquial speech to refer to any body of assumptions made about an individual on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or nation of origin. This broader definition of the term encompasses assumptions made by any individual; the act is not exclusive to the realm of law enforcement.
A recent and extreme example of racial profiling is the case of the murder of Treyvon Martin last spring, in which a member of a neighborhood watch team shot and killed an African American teenager, who was walking down the street with a hooded sweatshirt covering his head. The shooter, George Zimmerman, perceived the boy as a threat, and many believe he made this perception on the basis of Treyvon’s race, profiling black teenagers as criminals.
Other examples of profiling include making the assumption that all Asian students are studious, or that all Mexicans like burritos. In other cases, no assumption is blatantly stated, but is instead reflected in an individual’s actions; for example, a white woman going out of her way to avoid sitting by a non-white man on a bus.
In performance, an example of racial profiling can be found in Susana Cook’s The unPatriotic Act: Homeland Insecurities, where she dances the cumbia because other people expect it of her as an Argentinean woman, despite the fact that she never really danced the cumbia while living there.
See also: Pigeonholing, Stereotypes
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