Racial Profiling continues to be one of the most pressing issues that we have yet to solve as a nation and I feel that one of the places where the problem is most prevalent is right here, in New York City. It was clear that the so-called Stop and Frisk policies were targeting specific demographic groups, namely people who were African American or Latino. If you fall into one of these groups, you fall under suspicion in the eyes of police officers not because you have committed a crime or engaged in illegal activities but because of factors like the color of your skin.

There has been a ton of research conducted and the data is clear. For instance, in a study presented before Judge Shira Scheindlin, it showed that “53 percent of those stopped were African-Americans and 32 percent Hispanics” with the figure for African Americans being more than double that of the actual percentage of African Americans in the city, 26 percent. That is something unacceptable, and while I feel that the order to implement extensive changes to Stop and Frisk was a step in the right direction, there is still much left to be done.

One of the problems standing in the way is this notion that not many believe that African Americans are treated less fairly than Whites by the police force. For example, in a poll by the Gallup organization, only 34% of whites thought that Blacks were treated unfairly by the police in comparison to whites, while 73% of Blacks said that was indeed the case. This makes me ask myself, do people genuinely believe that Blacks are treated fairly by the police in comparison to whites, or is this the reality that they want to believe is true?