I have a question about racial profiling.

[CheapShotArtist]

So sometimes I hear about racial profiling on the news. Whenever they discuss NYC's "Stop and Frisk", they claim that Blacks and Hispanics are being racially profiled. My question here is how EXACTLY is it possible to racially profile a person of Hispanic descent? I'm not Hispanic, but it still sort of drives me crazy how the media treats race and ethnicity as mutually exclusive. A person can easily identify whether someone else is African-American or not, but it is a different story in regards to figuring out whether someone is Hispanic. What I mean is that they can come in any color. Some are as light as Shakira, while others are darker than Pres. Obama. Not every Hispanic person has the "Mestizo" look. It is possible to be White or Black, yet come from a Spanish background. There is a reason why "Hispanic" is in a separate question from the race question on the U.S. Census.

It probably sounds foolish of me to be ranting about something like this, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks in advance for reading.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Have you been to the Bronx lately?

Not being snarky - dead serious.

[CheapShotArtist]

12. Nope,

but I have heard about this on the news.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. I'm from the West Coast too.

nt

[bettyellen]

3. of course they will leave the lighter skinned hispanics alone. they are basically looking for young

men whose roots of to Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, etc (not sure who else they are going after in NYC, these days) and not Uruguay or Argentina. And at the other end of the spectrum, they don't know if some someone darker would be classified as AA or Hispanic, and they just don't care- because they are going after both.
Sucks, doesn't it?

[JustAnotherGen]

5. My friend Abe

Is from Spain and lives in the Bronx.

We have Hispanics and Latinos from ALL over the world in the North East . . . I work with El Salvadorans, Costa Ricans, brazilians, Mexicans, etc etc

It's where they live.

If all of the Hispanic/Latinos live in a certain section of Brooklyn or the Bronx - they are getting rolled in their neighborhood by the Flick.

It's not all mixed in and swirled when people go home at night.

[bettyellen]

7. I know- I grew up there and still spend a lot of time. There are so many little groups I have no

idea who the police are targeting now. I remember in the 80's it was Dominicans because there was a lot of very violent drug trade going on and there were new Dominican gangs implicated and attacks on cops, so they went after Dominicans pretty bad. In the sixties, the vast majority of Latinos there were from Puerto Rico- no one even used the phrase Hispanics. Now it is very diverse.
I get profiled and pulled over for being white there. They assume I'm there to buy drugs. Not that it compares, at all - but the drug / gang thing is what they are trying to deal with- instead of the violence.

[JustAnotherGen]

10. My husband's

Family came over from Italy when he was four and went back when he was 12. They lived in the Bronx and loved it. My husband still has friends there so we go in a few times a year. It was diverse in 1969. Now it's diverse - but less diverse if that Ames sense. IE not as many Italians and blacks as there were 40 years ago.

[CheapShotArtist]

13. Thanks for clarifying that.

[Chan790]

4. Accuracy would not be concise or pithy.

Stop-and-frisk is racist because it targets people who are black and those who look Mexican, Salvadorian, Brazilian, Peruvian, Bolivian, Puerto Rican, Dominicano, Haitian, Cuban or other dark-skinned people of the Carribean and Latin America. "Latino" may not be accurate enough to be precise but we're smart enough to know that they mean brown and black people. Not coincidentally, Caucasian people of Hispanic descent tend to be the wealthy Hispanics.

[JustAnotherGen]

6. +1

Like those from Spain and some from Brazil and Argentina.

[HipChick]

8. This pre-supposes all blacks are African-American

They are not either...so it kinda blows your theory

[Honeycombe8]

9. The complaints have expanded to include hispanic bias, now? It was just Af. American bias.

I guess that wasn't getting enough attention.

I don't buy it because I haven't seen any convincing evidence that that is occurring.

It's obvious that the police will be stopping & frisking more those who live in high crime areas. The higher crime areas in NYC are minority areas. Therefore, they should be stopping more of the races and ethnicities who live in those high crime areas. If they didn't, the claim would be bias that they are refusing to adequately pursue crime in minority neighborhoods.

What would convince me is the police are stopping and frisking a high % of minorities in WHITE high crime areas. But I haven't seen that that is the case.

It is not a fact that it is discrimination solely because a larger percentage of a particular minority is stopped for something.

Example: The NYC police are NOT stopping and frisking a percentage of black elderly women. Are they favoring black elderly women? Or is it that black elderly women don't act suspicious, roam the streets late at night in high crime areas, and do other things that would result in a stop and frisk?

[JustAnotherGen]

11. Driving

Shoppng
Voting
Breathing

While black in America is an absolute.

Ask a black woman.

I believe it because my 69 year old father was pulled over in Scottsville NY in his Cadillac - three houses down from where he had lived for 35 years four months before he died.

He was roaming the streets at night and his suspicious behavior was going out to get some ice cream . . . While black.


Look - America sucks. We aren't going to change. I've been alive for forty years and I have zero faith the next forty will be any better.

So when I cross the street because a white guy has a shaved head and is wearing black shit kickers and has a lot of tattoos - I don't want any sass or lip about it. Historically those "ones" are up to no good. If you are a black person they are. . .

[Gormy Cuss]

14. They're not stopping elderly white women either.

Here's the problem with writing it off as just doing their job in high crime areas. There are a lot of law abiding people whose only crime is living in a shitty neighborhood because they can't afford to live somewhere else. That they share some characteristics with some criminals isn't sufficient reason to harass them in their own damn community.

[Honeycombe8]

18. I didn't write anything off. I pointed out that there's no evidence of it.

It might be true, but it might not be. A cop stopping a certain category of persons does not necessarily equal discrimination against that category, whatever the category is. More informatin is needed. On the face of things, that does not make something discriminatory.

If more black people get malaria, does that mean black people are more susceptible to malaria? Or does it mean that more black people live in areas like Africa, where malaria is prevalent? See what I mean?

[Comrade Grumpy]

15. You haven't been paying attention then.

There is an ongoing civil trial in federal court in New York right now on stop-and-frisk. The coverage of that has been full of details that would educate you.

The ACLU has also produced a report on the racist realities of stop-and-frisk in NYC. You might want to check that out.

[DevonRex]

16. Hate crimes against Hispanics 56.9% of the total committed in 2011.

It seems that people who hate have no problem identifying someone to attack for being Hispanic. Gee, could it be because they're speaking Spanish? Listening to Mexican music in their car? Or are they at a Cinco de Mayo parade? Waving a Mexican flag? Protesting immigration policy?

There are lots of stupid ways bullies stereotype others.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-Americans
In 2006, Time magazine reported that the number of hate groups in the United States increased by 33% since 2000, with illegal immigration being used as a foundation for recruitment.[43] According to the 2011 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Hate Crimes Statistics Report, 56.9% of the 939 victims of crimes motivated by a bias toward the victims’ ethnicity or national origin were directed at Hispanics.[44] In California, the state with the largest Mexican American population, the number of hate crimes committed against Latinos has almost doubled from 2003 to 2007.[45][46] In 2011, hate crimes against Hispanics declined 31% in the United States and 43% in California.[47]

[CheapShotArtist]

17. .