[Nettime-bold] Racial profiling

[Greg Elmer <elmergr@bc.edu>]

Policing Space and Race: Prejudice, Policies, and Racial Profiling

Greg Elmer, 
Boston College


	Seemingly overnight, the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States have caused Americans to question their steadfast belief in broad civil liberties. The rethinking of racial profiling, in particular, has occurred in light of allegations that the September 11th highjackers lived counter intuitive lives while in the U.S. and also significantly deviated from the single and economically marginalized profile of the (Israeli constructed) Palestinian suicide bomber. Subsequently, as fears of the Other in the U.S. grow, the near universal opposition to racial profiling across the country continues to erode. However, despite re-emerging public support for racial profiling, the term itself continues to elude simple explanation or definition. Initially, the term was circulated in response to a slew of complaints from African American and Latino communities who found themselves disproportionately stopped on U.S. highway 95, the major north south Interstate in the eastern U.S!
.. In the 1980s the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation had singled out the interstate as a key north-south drug trafficking route. Early definitions thus generally focused on the act of  "Épolice stopping black and Latino motorists or pedestrians solely because of their race." (Hurley 2001) Such definitions therefore called into question the practice of literally "policing" the spatial mobility of AmericaÕs racial minorities. 
	In the past few years though instances of racial profiling have seemingly appeared in all aspects of society, not solely on one or two key Interstate highways. Racial profiling has come to define, in its broadest articulation, an act of racism or prejudice. Accordingly, the most vocal critics of racial profiling, American civil rights leaders Al Sharpton, Coretta Scott King, and Jesse Jackson have dubbed racial profiling the civil rights issue of the 21st century. However, a tertiary reading of many of SharptonÕs comments on recent racial profiling calls into question the distinction between individual acts of racial prejudice, broader law enforcement use of racially coded criminal "profiles", and technologically institutionalized forms of racial discrimination. For instance, in responding to the recent violent assault of Boston Celtic star Paul Pierce, Al Sharpton consistently alternated between the terms "racial profiling" and "stereotyping", providing no clear distinction !
between the two. (Ranalli 2000) Later Sharpton and others sought to define the issue further by asking the Clinton administration to withhold federal funds to law enforcement agencies that "show a pattern of racial profiling". (Santana, 2000) In other words, both Sharpton, and later law enforcement agencies themselves, came to define racial profiling as a pattern of behaviour by law enforcement Ð evidence that suggested a disproportionate number of arrests and stop and seizures against members of minority communities. 
	What IÕd like to suggest however, is that racial profiling is much more than stereotyping, much more than a simple "mind set", or evidence of past behaviour. One could argue that if no clear distinction is made between prejudice and profiling, the act of discrimination can be much more easily dismissed as an individuated case of racism, as was evidenced in Harvard law professor Margo SchlangerÕs comment that: "The challenge of the racial profiling cases is that we start with statistics to get inside the heads of police officers." (Pritchard 2001) WhatÕs ultimately missing, of course, from such perspectives is a fundamental understanding of both the process of profiling and ultimately, the deployment of a "profile" itself. If racial profiling is merely conceived in individual terms, then the criminal profile would simply be a subconscious picture of a probable criminal. While some individual law enforcement officers hold such racist views, as the stereotype definition of profi!
ling would highlight, there is also ample evidence to suggest that such views have been purposefully cultivated, indeed institutionalized through police training and tactics. Obscured by the mound of news reporting on individual cases of racial profiling, the state of New Jersey released documents that discussed the legalities of the "drug courier profile". Moreover, the profile was discussed in institutional terms as a blueprint of sorts for police officers Ð one which singled out minority groups as probable criminals. In the mid-1980s the state of Florida also circulated guidelines to its police outlining the "Common Characteristics of Drug Couriers", including a discussion of "ethnic groups associated with the drug trade" (Harris, p. 5). 
	As politicians across the U.S. sought to disassociate themselves from such institutionalized forms of racial discrimination Ð including both candidates in the recent presidential election Ð various law enforcement agencies have moved to delete overt racial elements of profiling. Resulting techniques and technologies of profiling, have begun to rely heavily upon spatial and behavioural variables, particularly those associated with personal travel, mobility, and navigation.  
In response to heightened security even before the September 11 terrorist attacks a select few American airports began instituting the Computer-Assisted
Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS). While the exact workings of the system are a closely held secret, various reports have suggested that CAPPS
constructs a terrorist profile by drawing upon passenger records, not race, ethnicity, or nationality per se. Passengers who "fit the profile" have their luggage tagged and extensively searched. Needless to say, while race is seemingly taken out of the equation, the profiling of travel patterns would obviously focus law enforcement attention on specific international routes and their corresponding national citizens. Thus from a spatial perspective, CAPPS-profiling is but an extension of the profiling of minorities in overwhelmingly affluent and white neighborhoods or on U.S. Interstate 95. Ultimately, though what sets CAPPS apart from law enforcement profiling/training, and what further sets such profiling policies apart from the broader social definition of racial stereotyping (or individual acts of racism), is the increasingly institutionalized, and subsequently intransigent, discriminatory power of social classifications, be they under the headings of travel, behaviour, or !
race.















Bibliography


Elmer, Greg. (1997). "Spaces of Surveillance: Indexicality and Solicitation on the
Internet", Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Vol. 14, #2, pp. 182-191.
 
Harris, David. A. (1999). "Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our
Highways", www.aclu.org/profiling/report. 

Hurley, Mary. (2001). "Cambridge Airs Issue of Racial Profiling", The Boston
Globe, October 22. p. C1

Pritchard, Justin. (2001). "Racial Profiling a Conundrum for Police", LA Times, 
p. 22, Jan. 21. 

Ranalli, Ralph. (2000). "Sharpton See Stereotyping in Pierce Stabbing Probe", 
The Boston Globe, October 25. p. B1.

Santana, Arthur. (2000). "Activists Seek Penalties to Halt Racial Profiling",
Washington Post , August 26, p. B01.
----------------------
Greg Elmer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
Boston College
215 Lyons Hall
Chestnut Hill, MA
USA   02467
617.552.1928 tel.
617.552.2286 fax
-----------------------


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold