The Gates Arrest, Racial Profiling and Latinos

Last week, I did a Guest Commentary for the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). Here it is:

Racial profiling of African Americans by police-known colloquially as Driving While Black – long has been a serious social problem plaguing law enforcement in cities across the United States. Some have claimed that profiling was at the core of the arrest of Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates by the Cambridge Police Department. Some at first glance might think that the Gates case – just another African American man shaken down by the police – has nothing to do with Latinos in the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Like African Americans, Latinos face the analogous problem of being stopped for Driving While Brown, as well as being the target of gang and drug profiles. Indeed, the problem is even more significant for Latinos, who also frequently suffer the sting of the use of race – and racial and cultural markers — in the enforcement of the immigration laws.

In 1975, the Supreme Court in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce held that, although “Mexican appearance” could not be the exclusive basis for an immigration stop, it still can be one factor justifying an inquiry into a person’s immigration status. In so ruling, the Court effectively sanctioned racial profiling in immigration enforcement. Today, physical appearance is often combined with the use of Spanish, working class clothing, and hair style as part of an “undocumented immigrant” profile used by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Nor is the problem of profiling limited to African Americans and Latinos. After the events of September 11, 2001, a “terrorist” profile animated an entire array of law enforcement measures aggressive pursued by the Bush administration, including special registration, selective deportations, detention, and interrogations, directed at Arabs and Muslims.

The Gates case reveals what all minority groups should know and fear — that reliance on statistical probabilities rather than individualized suspicion (as required by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) is a mistake. All minorities should be troubled by what the treatment of Henry Gates means about the continuing treatment of minorities by police in the United States.

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For Ruben Navarrette Jr’s recent column on the racial profiling of Latina/os, click here.

KJ