Racial profiling is an extremely complex and broad issue. Although this reader does a good job giving you two sides of the argument, a mere 20 pages is not enough information to have read to accurately come to a conclusion on whether there is truly a racial profiling issue in this country. I have heard both sides, besides for what is presented in this chapter, and I can’t definitevly say whether there is a hundred percent a real issue within out police departments, country-wide, with racial profiling.

However, I think that regardless of whether there actually is this phenomenon of racial profiling, there are problems that exist within this country and it’s police officers. The fact that there are (as of 2015) 73% of Blacks in this country that think they are treated less fairly is unacceptable. Whether it is justified or not, or true or not, it’s a problem. You can not have a significant part of your population feeling like they are treated differently than everyone else. That’s what this country has been fighting against for decades. In addition to that, the level of distrust in our police officers has risen to a level that is also way too high. The people that are supposed to be the ones you call at a time of need, when you are looking for help, should not be people that an entire population of people have no trust in and think that calling for their help will end up harming them even more. Again, it makes no difference whether there is racial profiling taking place or not. In order to get to this point, where a big chunk of the American population fear the police instead of look up to the police, then something went wrong, whatever that might be.

It’s easy to look at the amount of killings that has taken place recently and just throw your arms in the air and yell that it’s due solely to racial profiling. I think that is a terrible way to go about it. First off, like i said above, there is a lot of information and statistics behind this, that you can’t take a few samples and decide that that is the general rule. Every time a human beings life is taken, there is, usually, a lot more to the story of how that tragedy happened than what we know. Despite what people might want to claim, most officers are not just thirsting to kill people, and specifically black people. Killing someone is not something most people ever want to do in their life. So before pinning someone as a racist who just wants to kill black people, or any other claim along those lines, stop and think for a second if you really think that’s true.

Given that, there are some disturbing killings that have taken place. Even if you claim that some of these were warranted, which not all were, the way they are handled is terrible. For a 17 year old kid, or anyone for that matter, to be shot 16 times by the police after being called for breaking into cars is absolutely absurd. There is zero excuse for that and things like that just feed the fire of distrust and hate brewing amongst the american public.

So, like i said, I don’t have enough information and haven’t done enough research to know whether this issue is a real issue or not. But that doesn’t take away from all the other issues that stem from this and that relate to this. There are many, they are all serious and they must all be dealt with.