Racial Profiling
Racial Profiling is a problem that plagues the United States in many facets of life including the schools, police, corrections facilities and many other areas of life and culture. It is a system of judgment that is difficult to break especially because of the skin color barrier.
Police are quick to be accused of racial profiling. Law enforcement officers have comes through an education system that targeted the bad black boys with increased punishments, teachers quick to single out them for the problem kids, and a culture of prejudice. This is called a system of implicit bias . It is not hard to understand where the bias stems from but it is much more difficult to find a method to prevent it. This forms an example of Metaethis ethics as the where our principles and biases come from.
If one were to examine racial profiling in terms of morality, our morality is our social conscious. The practice of selectively targeting a certain group because of color or other ethnic attributes is wrong. Since the United States is a country based and grown by immigrants profiling a race or ethnic group as un American is a moral flaw in our culture .
All of us judge people by different impressions. Researchers look for ways in which we judge others on different levels and the most prominent is skin color. People tend to stick with similar people. The white patrol officer will instinctively stop two black men in a vehicle before he stops two white men for a traffic stop. New research is looking for additional methods to teach a response technique as the "compensation effect". The compensation effect happens when we compare people rather than evaluating each one separately .
The answer to why it is so difficult to judge people for who they are and not by the color of their skin or other ethnic features is that beliefs are formed in the subconscious mind. They are formed with the repetition of the mind seeing or having the same experiences. The forces in our lives form these beliefs. Media, peers and many other influences send constant signals to our brains to form these biases. Much like the police who form attitudes in school all of us are bombarded wash day by these racial perceptions .
Ethics or a Code of Ethics is a part of the fundamental principles in almost every professional. The function of the code is to make sure that all are treated fairly and equally. The Code of Ethics for the police is probably one of the most stringent. Police find themselves in harm's way so often and by individual who are experts at employing every form of trickery deceit, and deception imaginable. In light of this the police must look to the higher standards as their Code of Ethics states they are to serve mankind.
As a framework to making moral and ethical decisions one only needs to look to their faith. Using the tenants of faith, all people are created equal and are deserving of equal treatment until they do something that proves them unworthy. For example, if a white person kills another that person does not deserve the moral judgment to live in society. They must be separated until a time that they can be trusted to act like a deserving member of society. In all other circumstances, the ability to treat others fairly, the golden rule provides an ethical and moral standard for all to live by and that is to treat others as you would like to be treated.
Normative ethics investigate a set of questions that arise when considering how to act, or speak morally . Consequentialism is the theory that reacts to the punishment of the murder in that people are held responsible for their actions. The consequences are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of the criminal act. Deontology is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to the rules . An example of this is the cultures that take care of the elderly as a responsibility. And lastly, the virtue ethics emphasizes the critical aspect of ethics and that is that thinking rather than rules are part of a person's character. The thinking of doing the right thing allows the person to do the right thing.
References
Anagnostou, Y. (2011, August 4). Racial Profiling is Morally Wrong and Bad for America. Retrieved from Immigrations, Ethnicity and Racial Blogspot: [online] http://immigrations-ethnicities-racial.blogspot.com/2010/08/racial-profiling-is-morally-wrong-and.html. Accessed Feb 2016
Gove, T. (2011). Implicit Bias and Law Engforcement. Police Chief magazine, [online] http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=2499&issue_id=102011Accessed FEb 2016.
Krakovsky, M. (2010). Mixed Impressions. Scientific American, [online]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mixed-impressions/. Accessed Feb 2016.
Radwan, M. F. (2015). Why do we judge others on appearance. Know Thyself, [online] http://www.2knowmyself.com/why_do_people_judge_others_on_appearance. Accessed FEb 2016.
