Research Paper on:
Issues Pertaining to Racial Profiling

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
targeted or "profiled" for suspicion if not overt investigation. Few Americans would argue that this is a practice that has only been in place since September of 2001. In reality,  people who do not fit the stereotyped or assumed "norm" for a particular area, kind of car, or travel plans have been stopped, questioned, pulled over, or pulled out of  line throughout the history of the United States. Whether it is a case of state troopers routinely stopping African American drivers or the outrages committed against Japanese Americans more than  half a century ago, racial profiling does exist and continues to be a threat to the most basic of civil liberties even in a nation that supposedly prides itself on  its ethnic mix and diverse cultures. Defining Racial Profiling In the most simplistic of explanations, racial profiling is the practice of questioning whether or not somebody "fits" into a particular  place or situation as defined by certain authorities or law enforcement agencies. As Kenney (2002) explains it in the context of police officers stopping somebody: "Racial profiling is not  a suspect-specific stop that incorporates the race of the suspect. It is a stop based on race alone" (pp. 23). For example, a highway patrol officer may not be  on the lookout for a red Jaguar sedan but the simple fact that a young man of apparent Hispanic heritage is seen driving such a car in a predominantly Caucasian  neighborhood. In such a scenario, Hispanic (or Asian or African American) male, expensive car, and the "wrong" location all serves as an indicator for an individual officer or a policy,  official or otherwise, issued by a particular law enforcement organization. For example, the highly-publicized occurrence of racial profiling that was found on the New Jersey Turnpike was one in which