The history of law enforcement and racial profiling in the United States dates back to the era of slavery. “Paddy rollers” and “patrollers,” as they were also called, were organized groups of white men whose job it was to uphold the slave laws and keep an eye on Black populations that were held in slavery. Slaves were kept in line by these patrols, which were frequently aggressive and cruel. With one example being from the article The History of American Police Brutality it states,” In the U.S., the evolution of police followed England. Early colony patrolling functioned in two formal and communal styles, known as the “Watch” system, or private-for-profit policing, named “The Big Stick.” The watch system involved area volunteers whose primary engagement was to report a crisis. Boston established a night watch in 1636, New York in 1658, and Philadelphia in 1700.” The United States institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow era, which spanned the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Police were in charge of upholding the racial order through intimidation and violence, and they were frequently involved in the enforcement of these discriminatory laws. Recognizing that police brutality is not a recent occurrence but rather an expression of deeply rooted racial and socioeconomic dynamics in the United States requires an understanding of this historical context. It emphasizes the significance of continuous initiatives to deal with these systemic problems and advance more equitable and just methods of law enforcement.
Looking into the modern context of this issue, the U.S. has passed the years, more or less, of Jim Crow and such a widespread presence of the racism seen in those years. However this is not to say that such racism does not exist in today’s society, as such racism has begun to take different forms. Before discussing the most prominent source of racial profiling, police brutality, it’s important to understand such rationale at a smaller scale. Studies have been done to observe the behaviors of police and communities regarding a black population. In these situations it was found that, “Black suspects in White neighborhoods were handled less coercively by police compared to Black suspects in Black neighborhoods. In sum, D. A. Smith concluded that police responded differently depending on the type of neighborhood in which encounters occurred such that police responded to both “places and people”” (Thousand Oaks, 2004). But again this always seems to circle back to, in the modern era, police brutality being a major source of racial profiling. But this is because of a carried history of oppression that has forced many black communities into such situations. Poverty, for example, is an issue that seems to heighten profiling because of single family households, low income, and increased crime rates. “Another possibility is that socially disorganized communities (e.g., residential instability, poverty, and family disruption) have higher rates of crime and violence, which in turn mediates contact with the police and could influence racial profiling” (Thousand Oaks, 2004). This has a past history from racially segregated neighborhoods, “spatial concentration of Blacks in poverty-stricken neighborhoods is caused by practices of residential segregation in housing markets. The importance of this work is that it outlines the main effect of race in the concentration of urban poverty. Recently researchers have also linked urban disadvantage-poverty concentration, racial residential segregation, and joblessness-to crime rates, particularly among Blacks” (Thousand Oaks, 2004). These historical problems have bled into the modern era and have perpetuated problems that have existed since the emancipation of slavery. These communities were broken and segregated by a much larger system that forced black communities into poverty. Therefore, such poverty creates increased crime rates, which then creates a false narrative about African Americans and African American communities, which finally imposes racial profiling among police and society.
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