Classroom Activities
Lesson One
The curriculum unit on racial profiling will consist of three lesson plans, with each
one lasting three to five days depending on student progress.
Anticipatory Set
The introduction to the unit will begin with a choreographed enactment of a typical racial profile incident by a white Pittsburgh Public School police officer and me (an African American teacher) in my classroom.
I will have a white police officer come to the classroom and play out a scene as if he was investigating an incident with a parent's complaint against me.
For example, he may come in and ask if Mr. Holmes is in here {1}.
I introduce myself as Dr. Holmes and tell him when I will be available for his concerns and to leave his information in the office. The officer states, "Mr. Holmes, I do not have the time to do this." {2}
I tell him that is the only time I will be available due to my teaching responsibilities. I continue to teach my class and the officer stands at the door. {3}
I continue to teach and he says, "Hey, I want to ask you one more thing."{4}
I go over to the door and he asks for directions to another room. I begin to tell him and he says, "Do you think those kids are learning anything?"{5}
This is a simple scenario to give you an idea about this lesson. The numbers indicate profiling through belittlement {1}, disrespect or lack of acknowledgement of what I had to say as a professional with a doctorate {2}, and disregard for my duties {3, 4}and for my students {5}.
I will open this up for a class discussion, soliciting comments from the students about how they felt during the scenario. I will ask how the students would have felt if they were in my position and ask them to give examples of how they would have responded. Then we will discuss what would be a positive way in handling this, looking at the way I handled this as a model.
Lesson Objective: To define and document the history of racial profiling in the United States.
Desired Outcome: Each student will gain an understanding of what racial profiling is and each will be able to cite examples of historical incidents of its occurrence.
Methodology
The teacher will define racial profiling and give a brief description of its
occurrence in chronological order. A classroom discussion will follow each description, with students giving examples of their knowledge or experiences.
Chronological History of Racial Profiling.
This section of the unit will document some of the major acts of racial profiling against specific ethic groups throughout the history of the United States. Racial profiling along with racial discrimination has a storied and long history in the United States. It dates back to the discovery of America involving the genocide of Native Americans, the people that have probably endured more inhumane acts of cruelty than any ethnic group in the United States. They were killed and literally robbed of their land and imprisoned on Indian Reservations. Many to this day have engaged in legal battles to regain possession of their stolen land. Though all Native Americans are now U.S. citizens, in practice many tribal members still feel imprisoned on Indian Reservations.
The only other group that can claim equal or harsher treatment than Native
Americans is the African Americans. They are the only group that was captured and imported here for the explicit purpose of forced free labor. "During slavery, a slave could not leave a plantation without a pass, and whites had the authority, even the obligation to stop blacks and apprehend any who were unable to give a satisfactory account of himself." Under the code, whites could use skin color to detain and question without probable cause or evidence of a crime (Pampel, 2004, 10). Law enforcement officers have engaged in this practice since early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to "take up" all black persons seen "gadding abroad" without their master's permission (Meeks, 2000, 5).
The internment of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942, supposedly done in the interest of preserving the safety and security of the nation, was in direct conflict with American democratic ideals of racial equality (Siggins, 2005, 2). This proved to be one of the great injustices of World War II. The United States incarcerated over 100,000 legal Japanese and Japanese American citizens, not because of individualized determinations that they posed a threat to nation security or the war effort, but solely for their Japanese ancestry (Cole and Dempsey, 2002, 150).
The internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 was an egregious example of what can happen when skin color and national origin are substituted for evidence and become, by themselves, a basis for suspicion and punishment. During the time of the internment, Jim Crow Laws and formal racial segregation existed in the American South and were so reified that virtually no one could imagine them ending. A nation that had long ago learned to tolerate and accept Jim Crow Laws that victimized African Americans was well prepared to accept internment that victimized Japanese Americans (Meeks, 2000, xi-xii).
No other person has done more to champion the cause of the civil rights movement than Nobel Peace Prize honoree, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was largely because of him that African Americans enjoy much of the freedom derived from the civil rights protests of the late 50's and early 60's. The riots in major cities like Harlem, Watts and Detroit stemmed from problems of poverty, social isolation, economic stress and cultural differences that persisted despite the ending of the Jim Crow laws. Police became the first line of defense in dealing with the resentment and violence that resulted from these problems. Continued inequality and de facto segregation today make racial conflict a crucial component of concerns over racial profiling (Pampel, 2004, 11).
Whether or not you believe that racial profiling actually exists, the practice has been proven over and over again. The attorney general's office of New Jersey, the state whose practices sparked national attention on the subject, coining the term "driving while black," acknowledged that racial profiling did exist among its highway state troopers (Meeks, 2000, 5). The latest edition of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary includes an entry for the term. It defines racial profiling as "the mass police policy of stopping and searching vehicles driven by people of particular races" (Meeks, 2000, 5). In Bob Dylan's song "Hurricane", boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is pulled over in Paterson N.J., because he is black, and the police later frame him for an unsolved murder. The act of stopping a minority motorist who is driving luxury car on the assumption that he is a criminal is another violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution — "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." Law enforcement officers use a profile known as CARD, an acronym for class, age, race, and dress (Meeks, 2000, 9). Law enforcement officials use the particular dress habits of young urban African Americans as identifying symbols to stop and follow individuals as suspected criminals. Unfortunately, these markers describe a hundred thousand young people on any given day in any given city. And as more and more young white people adapt the dress and style of today's inner city black kids, they, too, become a small minority who are sometimes victims of racial profiling. (Meeks, 2000, 9).
As the result of a large number of complaints in several states that promoted racial profiling, allegedly to aid in the war on drugs, including New Mexico, Maryland and New Jersey, the New Jersey Attorney General's office initiated an investigation into the allegation that its state troopers engaged in the practice (Meeks, 2000, 29). The Attorney General and the Governor of New Jersey condemned the practice of racial profiling and publicly promised that any officer that violated the civil rights of minority motorist would be indicted. These developments set a national precedent (Meeks, 2000, 32).
Along this time, the emergence of the crack cocaine epidemic resulted in the unfair sentencing of minorities receiving severe penalties for selling crack cocaine. For example, possession of only five grams of crack, compared to 500 grams of powdered cocaine, triggered the same mandatory minimum sentence of five years (Pampel, 2004, 13). This law was directed toward certain ethnic groups, mainly Hispanics and African Americans. Government authorities believed these groups to be extensively involved in the drug trade. Critics proclaimed that the war on drug promoted racial profiling and violated the civil rights of these ethnic groups.
The strikes on the two World trade Center buildings and the Pentagon after the hijacking of four planes by Muslim Arab men soon resulted in the passing of the Patriot Act (officially the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act). It gives sweeping anti-privacy powers to domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies and eliminates checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused. The PATRIOT Act and follow-up legislation now in development threaten the basic rights of millions of American ("The USA PATRIOT ACT," EFF website).
Numerous forms of law enforcement have been put in place to aid American government officials and police to single out Arab American people in hopes of detecting a terrorist before he or she can commit a terrorist attack ("Racial Profiling" website). Because the USA Patriot Act "essentially legalizes spying to combat terrorism," a new chapter of racial oppression in the history of the U.S.A. has started. The racial profiling against people of Arabic descent in America has unleashed and assisted in the spreading of a purely race-based fear of and hatred towards Arab Americans (Haddad, 2002).By couching group-based profiling as necessary to homeland security, the government has traded the principles of universal equality and individual dignity for the presumption of safety (Lee, 2004, 1).
Past experience indicates that in general, racial profiling is not only humiliating and contrary to core American values; it is also ineffective as a law enforcement tactic. Too many people are stopped who have nothing to do with any sort of crime, while many who are involved in crime are overlooked by overworked police and security forces. And the consequences of racial profiling are severe. Profiling harms innocent people, skews the U.S. prison population toward non-whites, alienates minority communities, and contributes to a crisis of confidence in the criminal justice system. Just as African American, Hispanics and other minorities have been targeted by police officers investigating street crimes and immigration violations, federal agents have targeted Arabs, Muslins and in some cases those who only appear to be Arab or Muslim as part of their anti-terrorism campaign, despite the absence of particularized suspicion (Civil Rights.org. website).
Lesson 2
One of the most debated topics in the world today is that of racial profiling, especially since the events of September11, 2001. In the name of national security, world-wide racial profiling has emerged as the debate of the millennium. It has taken on a life of its own that has surpassed what seems like the ancient history of stopping minority motorists, illegal searches, and other earlier forms of profiling.
The war on terrorism has created a monster that threatens everyone. Can any country lawfully justify the practice of racial profiling without incriminating itself for crimes against humanity? As suggested above, one of the main questions that still needs to be addressed in the debate over racial profiling is, "how effective is racial profiling at actually detecting criminal activity?" Other key questions: "Is it legal to single out a person solely because of his race? What effect does racial profiling of one group have, if any, on other races? Is the cost of racial profiling worth it all? Does it violate the Constitution, especially the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments?" These are just a few of the many questions that should be addressed in the great debate on racial profiling in the war on terrorism.
Students will debate the legality of racial profiling in the following manner. Students will select to debate either in defense of or in opposition to racial profiling. They will spend a week in the library gathering information from books and articles on the Internet to support their viewpoints. Each student will have five minutes to present his or her statements in support of or against the practices of racial profiling during class. Students can familiarize themselves with the debates on racial profiling by researching the opinions of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and the reported disadvantages and advantages of racial profiling.
Research on Internet
Popular and general search engines such as Google (http://www.goole.com),
Yahoo! (https: www.yahoo.com), AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com)
Excite (http://ww.xcite.com), Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com) Lycos (hppt://w.lycos.com), and many others can identify web sites that contain information on racial profiling (Pampel, 2004, 139).
Court Cases
There are a number of court decisions that address the issue of racial profiling. Information on the suits, jury decisions, awards, appeals and final judgments can be found through searches of newspapers (e.g., the New York Times), Web sites (The Date Collection Resource Center at Northeastern University, the American Civil Liberties Union) and general search engines (Goggle, Yahoo!) (Pampel, 2004,141).
Lesson 3
Students will write a research paper supporting their viewpoint from the debates over racial profiling, in favor or against the practice. They will use the information
gathered in their research as a point of reference. Students will have use of the computer laboratory for one week to complete this assignment. I will monitor and assist as needed.
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