Racial Profiling under Attack

Abstract

The events of September 11, 2001, have sparked a fierce debate over racial profiling.Many who readily condemned the practice a year ago have had second thoughts.In the wake of September 11, the Department ofJustice initiated a program of interviewing thousands of men who arrived in this country in the past two years from countries with an al Qaeda presence-a program that some attack as racial profiling, and others defend as proper law enforcement.In this Essay, Professors Gross and Livingston use that program as the focus of a discussion of the meaning of racial profiling, its use in a variety of contexts, and its relationship to other police practices that take race or ethnicity into account.