Essay On Racial Profiling

Words: 2135
Pages: 9

An Upshot of Racial Profiling: The Ramifications of 9/11

On September 11, 2001, four U.S. airline planes were hijacked in the United States and used in suicidal terrorist attacks in order to strike fear in the American population. The coordinated attacks killed 3,000 people at New York City’s Twin Towers as well as the Washington metropolitan area. The hijackers were soon identified as members of the Islamic Terrorist group Al-Qaeda. Once the government released the identities of the hijackers, people of Middle Eastern descent started to become targets of racial profiling. At a leadership conference in March of 2011, the following statement was released, “In response to the attacks, the federal government immediately engaged in a sweeping
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The results show that Pennsylvanians thought profiling was prevalent at airports but did not agree with the methods being enforced to insure the safety of the passengers. Their research concluded that 66% of Americans did not agree with the current racial profiling methods. According to Shaun L. Gabbidon, “The national poll included an oversample of Blacks and Hispanics that allowed for analyses across race/ethnicity. The poll revealed that 60% of the respondents felt that profiling was widespread at airports and only 25% of the respondents supported the practice. More detailed analyses found that African Americans were more likely than Whites to believe that profiling at airports was widespread, whereas the perceptions of Whites and Hispanics did not significantly differ” (Gabbidon 257). With the research, they were able to develop three new measures of the public’s opinion on racial profiling. The three measures were the role of perceived discrimination, perceived effectiveness and ethical value in “influencing public opinion on racial profiling.” Pennsylvanians who thought that racial profiling was effective had a tendency to disagree with the three