The Degradation of Our Society Through Racial Profiling

There was a day and age when a human being was judged and critiqued based solely on their heritage, their orientation and their race. These individuals were not given the courtesy of a structured and balanced judging platform, which was designated to more socially acceptable races. They were not examined by their mental capacity of knowledge, nor how eloquently they could speak. They were only viewed as their race was acknowledged – their worth as a human being was only measured by the amount of pigmentation found in their skin.

For the majority of my life I resided in a section of this country which is known for its pre-determined thought process of various nationalities and races. It is within this location of strife and indifference that I found myself observing one of humanities worse cancers – racial profiling and discrimination. Although throughout the past four generations the plot of land, which I called home, grew in strides towards acceptance and equality. It is an intricate and difficult journey to turn from the foundations of which an entire civilization was built on.

As a child, there would come a time once a year in which my family would pack our prized possessions and load them into our mini-van. This was our modern pilgrimage, and our Mecca was my fathers’ parent’s house. As we would drive the five-hour jaunt towards what was once known as “Bombingham” (instead of Birmingham), my mind would begin to make its way back several decades. The pages of my history book would flow through my mind as a torrential downpour of discrimination and heartache. As my eyes gazed out of the window, I would begin to get lost in the passing trees. The colors of green and brown slowly began to meld together into a horrendously harmonious symphony of memories gone by. The echoes of the past four generations, which were instilled inside of my bones, begin to surface. Their very presence was far from a pleasant encounter – it was as if a festering cesspool of innocent blood would begin to pool inside of my mind.

It is an impossible ambition to escape ones heritage, no matter how disgusting and dishonoring it may be. The only way to escape from the grasp of our past is to confront the ghastly truth, raw in form, and refute its power over ones mind and soul. It is within this mindset that my hometown has found itself in for the past several decades. In 1992 the city of Birmingham, Alabama erected the Civil Rights Institute. This is a place where the horrendous atrocities that our grandfathers committed are remembered and condemned. As a child of the racial revolution, it is a right of passage that I was to walk through the stained doors of this institution of refinement. And like the refiners fire, the impurities of my heritage are brought to the surface for cleaning.

Walking through the jaded hallways of this Institution, the exhibitions of photographs, videos, and personal journals silently screamed of the injustice that our country was allowing. As I literally walked through the past, my heart began to grow heavier by every wretched passing second. Upon the completion of my “right of passage,” my physical body began to dwindle due to my emotional distress. Questions and concerns began to implode inside of my mind as the pulse of humanity groaned under the strain of our past.

As I sat in my car, speechless from the day’s event, my mind began to wonder. Our society has thrived in racial profiling since its establishment centuries ago. The foundations of America were built upon the disclaimer of diversity. Since this is how we began, shall we bathe in the stench of racial profiling perpetually? And as a society, if we attempt to remove the racial cornerstone of our civilization, would our civilization crumble in disarray?

One must gaze into why our culture has held onto racial profiling for so many years. We have found a sense of security within the “ancient” guidelines of our forefathers. As a civilization our thought patterns have consisted of three very basic pursuits and rules: (1) The Pursuit of Financial Abundance; (2) The Pursuit of Higher Social Standings; and finally (3) The Rule of Diversity. It is within the latter point that we have encircled ourselves in. Diversity has not only been applied to races, it is also applicable within our school systems. Students of various educational organizations find themselves within a diverse playground – every student fits within a common pool for him or herself. One will never find a large group of unorganized individuals which view their peers as equals. There are, and have always been, levels of equality. These various planes of prominence will never be demolished. Their presence has been instilled within the very psyche of human beings, causing an irreversible thought process of segregation – in one form or another.

Recently, however, an old and fuliginous plane of racial profiling has been fervently excavated from the vaults of our past. In our post 9/11 society, racial profiling has become more than just a personal preference. It is now being used as a form of national security. Men and women of Middle Eastern decent are now being targeted for further investigation in every facet of our society. This is made true by the change in atmosphere by the very presence of a Middle Eastern individual. If one was to try to refute my statement, sit in an airplane with the above individual – the atmospheric change of the airplane will become very evident. The notion that racial profiling makes our world a more secure place, is one of ignorance and according to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website, “âÂ?¦[R]acial profiling is the first step in a long road that leads to the heavily disproportionate incarceration of people of color, especially young men, for drug-related crimes, and of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for suspicion of terrorism. This despite the fact that people of color are no more likely than whites to use or sell drugs, and Arabs Muslims and South Asians are no more likely than whites to be terroristsâÂ?¦”

As a society, we must look past the color of an individuals skin. As the latter statement suggests, it is literally impossible to foretell an individuals true mental reasoning solely on their race or religious background. If our civilization truly wishes to proceed forward in a positive thought progression, we must abolish the mindset of racial, ethnic, and religious profiling. We as humans are the most complex organisms in our universe, and with this in mind, does one actually believe one can calculate the soul of another based on the pigmentation of his or her skin?