The Color and Content of Their Fears: A Short Analysis of Racial Profiling

In White Privilege and Black Rights, Naomi Zack looks at comparative injustice in the US by analyzing the ways in which whites and blacks are treated by the criminal justice system. “Comparative injustice to American blacks has a very long history that includes the broadly recognized injustice of slavery and the oblivion of many American whites to the conditions under which American blacks now live” (64). In other words, blacks have historically been treated worse than whites, they have had less of a fair chance than whites, and whites have been privileged to be ignorant of the conditions experienced by blacks. The images that serve as examples and proof of comparative injustice for Zack are the police homicides of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and many others. Zack notes that between 2005 and 2011, a white police officer killed a black person twice a week. Racial profiling preceded 43 percent of 2012 killings of blacks by white police officers. The police do not treat all American citizens in this way. Instead, this is the way the police treat blacks. If applicative justice aims to bring the legal treatment of blacks on par with the legal treatment of whites, we have lots of work to do.