Essay on Black Or White

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Black or White

Allison Davi

Picture this hypothetical situation: A black man and a white man both driving during the day time. The white man is driving directly in front of the black man at 72 mph, clearly speeding, while the black man is driving at 46 mph, both in a 45 mph speed limit zone. Sirens begin to blare as the red and blue lights emerge from the side of the road. The black man, relieved that someone is going to finally stop this maniac driver in front of him, pulls over the side of the road, to allow the police officer to pass him. To his surprise, the light skinned police officer stops behind his car, as the white man swerves off into the distance. The police officer slowly strides up to the window of the black man s car and shines a flashlight right in his eye. Going 46 in a 45 clearly speeding, he says, What if there were children around?

But but that man in front of me did you The black man is immediately cut off by the police officer.

Are you arguing with me?

No, sir. I was just pointing out that that man in front of me was going way faster

Are you saying that I am wrong?

I am just saying that

That s it. Enough of you. Get out of the car. We re taking you in. You blacks are all the same.

Now that is incredibly unfair. It would be nice to say that this hypothetical situation is completely hypothetical, but I then I would be lying. This is labeled as racial profiling which is most commonly known as the discriminatory practice by police of associating one race with certain stereotypes unfairly. Racial profiling occurs repeatedly among police, schools, and media and varies with each situation. In police racial profiling, individual officers act on racial stereotypes against racial minorities, most prominently African Americans. For example, blacks, are commonly depicted as the black drug abuser, the black drug dealer, the black criminal, the black welfare cheat, obviously all associated with disobedience of the law. The debate comes into play, when people say that most drug dealers happen to be black, or most criminals happen to be black, and therefore there is no racial profiling involved.

The truth is, is although blacks are portrayed to be the usual culprit, statistically the percent of drug addicts and criminals and welfare cheats are not minority groups. Studies find that more than half of the heroin addicts admitted were white as well as 60 percent of monthly cocaine users. Not to mention that 77 percent of regular marijuana users are white as well. Then, one might ask, why do we always associate crime and bad qualities with African Americans? The biggest perpetrator of racial profiling is in fact not police officers, but actually the media. The coverage of crime in the media portrays crime as being violent, and criminals as nonwhite. Television viewers are so accustomed to seeing African-American crime suspects on the news, that even when the race is not mentioned, viewers automatically assume the criminal is black. Not only that, but Michael Kurtz acknowledged the public policy implications of the study when he stated that "support for punitive law-enforcement policies was highest when the stories featured black suspects or provided no information about race and was lowest when the suspects were white." Kurtz also found that although African-Americans make up only 29 percent of the poor and homeless in America, they represent 62 percent of the image of the homeless and poor in magazines, newspaper, and television.

To me this evidence is extremely disgusting and irritating, yet not at all surprising. I think that even as children, we are raised to associate certain qualities with certain groups of people. It is a fact that the news media portrays African-Americans and Latinos more negatively because they are minorities. The idea that media purposely portrays groups of people unfairly really bothers me. Although America is supposed to be a racially equal country, we have completely misguided and false ideas about different races because we, as a country, are puppets, as we believe whatever the media tells us to believe and we react however the media tells us to react.

I don t know which is more bothersome: ...