Research Paper on:
U.S. Racial Profiling

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
civil rights and it is not effective anyway. First, it is important to define the two major terms: * Racial profiling: This practice refers to targeting of specific ethnic  or racial groups by police officials (Diverse Strategies Inc., 2002). Specifically, it refers to the practice of police officers stopping black persons suspecting them of being involved in illegal activities  (Diverse Strategies Inc., 2002). In other words, racial profiling means that law enforcement officials suspect racial minorities of committing more crimes than white people. * Civil Rights: "A civil right  is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury" (Legal Information Institute, 2002). The most common examples of civil rights  include those contained in the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech, press, assembly and so on (Legal Information Institute, 2002). Other civil rights guaranteed by law, court decisions,  or the Constitution of the United States involve the right to equality and to not be discriminated against for any reason, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, age, handicap  and so on (Legal Information Institute, 2002). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the most far-reaching legislation passed in the country (Legal Information Institute, 2002). A Supreme Court decision  in 1996 made racial profiling illegal, however, the decision allows police officials to stop and search motor vehicles if they have reason to believe that driver is involved in transporting  weapons or illegal drugs (Diverse Strategies Inc., 2002). The more stops and searches the police do, the more arrests are made for these crimes (Diverse Strategies Inc., 2002). The complaint  is that police tend to stop more blacks than whites and thus, more blacks are prosecuted and convicted (Diverse Strategies Inc., 2002). The fact that police stop blacks far more