News & Commentary

Racial bias in the criminal justice system and educational inequalities remain as obstacles to a just society. Advancing the cause of civil rights for communities of color continues to be a core part of our efforts.

The ACLU fights discriminatory practices in many arenas - challenging racial profiling practices on San Diego's and Imperial's highways and roads, ensuring that any police shootings involving racial minorities are thoroughly and independently investigated to make an unbiased determiniation of criminal liability, fighting for the preservation of affirmative action policies in public education, advocating for the rights of exploited immigrant workers, and much more.

Racial Profiling is any police or private security practice in which a person is treated as a suspect because of his or her race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. This occurs when police investigate, stop, frisk, search or use force against a person based on such characteristics instead of evidence of a person's criminal behavior. It often involves the stopping and searching of people of color for traffic violations, known as "DWB" or "driving while black or brown." Although normally associated with African Americans and Latinos, racial profiling and "DWB" have also become shorthand phrases for police stops of Asians, Native Americans, and, increasingly after 9/11, Arabs, Muslims and South Asians.

Racial profiling can also involve pedestrian stops, "gang" databases, bicycle stops, use of police attack dogs, suspicion at stores and malls, immigration worksite raids, and in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, harassment on the way to polls, or, "voting while black or brown." Customs and other airport officials also engage in racial profiling of passengers. (a href="http://www.aclu.org/racialjustice/racialprofiling/21741res20051123.html">Read more about different kinds of racial profiling.)

Racial profiling is a new term for an old practice known by other names: institutional racism and discrimination and owes its existence to prejudice that has existed in this country since slavery.

Tens of thousands of innocent drivers, pedestrians, and shoppers across the country are victims of racial profiling. And these discriminatory police stops and searches have reached epidemic proportions in recent years - fueled by the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" that have given police a pretext to target people they think fit a "drug courier," "gang member," or "terrorist" profile. In fact, racial profiling is the first step in a long road that leads to the heavily disproportionate incarceration of people of color, especially young men, for drug-related crimes, and of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for suspicion of terrorism. This despite the fact that people of color are no more likely than whites to use or sell drugs, and Arabs Muslims and South Asians are no more likely than whites to be terrorists.

We must end the practice of racial profiling.