racial profiling

Racial profiling is the discriminatory mistreatment of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities by police officers and other law enforcement or security personnel. It may consist of or result in the surveillance, searching, interrogation, detention, or arrest of a relatively large proportion of minorities—larger than that of the majority—in a given state or country. It may also involve harassment, aggression, and brutality on the part of police. At a minimum it involves police distrust of minorities.

Although it is no excuse for lack of fairness, police attitudes toward minorities reflect the values of the larger community. When the community is hostile toward or distrustful of a particular minority group, police may feel that discriminatory behavior toward that group is justified. Police may even aggravate an existing prejudice, though they seldom generate prejudice on their own.

Common forms of racial profiling

A frequently cited example of racial profiling in many white-majority countries, including the United States, is the tendency of police to pull over cars driven by Black or Latin American people more often than those driven by white people, primarily because of the driver’s race rather than actual traffic violations (commonly referred to as “driving while Black or brown”). Traffic pullovers are also more frequent for Asians and members of Indigenous communities. The same prejudice is reflected in the searching of nonwhite pedestrians, often suspected of possessing illegal drugs.

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Another form of profiling, though less common than active mistreatment but still harmful, occurs when police intentionally deprive minorities of protection and other services to which they are entitled. More specifically, police may refrain from addressing criminal behavior (e.g., domestic violence) within a particular minority group because they believe that members of that group typically engage in such behavior.

Factors affecting the intensity of racial profiling

The forcefulness of police prejudice against minority groups depends on historical and social circumstances. The longer a minority has been seen as inferior or alien, the more likely it is to be discriminated against. Such groups may include perennial nomads (such as the Roma in Europe), Indigenous peoples in former European colonies, or smaller tribes in societies where tribal membership is socially significant. A war or a warlike situation can provoke hostility toward certain immigrant groups or other minorities perceived as the “enemy”: Japanese Americans were treated in this way during World War II, as were many Muslims in Western countries after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001.

Recruitment policies that determine the racial and ethnic makeup of a police force can also significantly affect the relationships between the police and minorities. Although it is no guarantee of harmony, it is desirable that the racial and ethnic composition of the force reflect that of the larger community. However, that goal is often difficult to achieve. For instance, in large American cities such as Chicago, significant segments of the Hispanic minority speak only Spanish, which precludes their being recruited by the police.

The worst-case scenario occurs when the whole police organization is made up of members of a community that is in open conflict with another group. That was the case in the United States during the legal segregation of African Americans in the South—some police officers were members of violent white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. It was also the case in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland, where, despite a provision requiring that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) recruit one-third of its members from among Ulster Catholics, the proportion of Catholics in the force was much smaller than that. The RUC was severely criticized for its brutality in policing the Catholic civil rights marches in 1968–69. The bias in police recruitment was even worse in South Africa under apartheid, when the police forces were all-white organizations that frequently abused their power in dealings with Black South Africans.

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Racial profiling and protests in the United States

In the United States the fatal shooting in 2012 of an unarmed African American teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a man of German and Peruvian descent who was in a neighborhood watch group led to the creation of a new social movement, Black Lives Matter, that aimed to raise awareness of the connection between police brutality and racism and called for greater police accountability and other reforms. The movement thereafter played a prominent role in protests across the United States and in other countries, particularly in the wake of the murders of Eric Garner in 2014 and George Floyd in 2020. Both victims were illegally choked to death by white police officers. A bystander’s videotape of Floyd’s murder provoked worldwide protests in 2020, including massive street demonstrations in the United States that, at the time, made Black Lives Matter the largest protest movement in U.S. history.

Although Black Lives Matter greatly increased public awareness of racial profiling, support for the movement in the United States differs significantly between Republicans and Democrats and between whites and racial minorities. A survey conducted in 2023 found that 82 percent of Republicans and their sympathizers opposed Black Lives Matter, whereas 84 percent of Democrats and their sympathizers supported it. Among white respondents, 42 percent were found to strongly or at least somewhat support the movement, compared with 81 percent of African Americans and 61 percent of Hispanic people. The lack of support among Republicans may be attributed in part to Pres. Donald Trump’s condemnation of the movement, including during his reelection campaign of 2020, in which he denied the existence of racial discrimination, much less racial profiling, and characterized Black Lives Matter protesters as rioters, looters, “Marxists,” and “anarchists.”

Starting in 2025, Trump’s second administration greatly expanded and intensified the operations of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in an attempt to fulfill Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to deport all “illegal aliens,” or immigrants who are not legally in the United States. ICE officers aggressively raided immigrant communities and employers throughout the country, arresting many and sending them to military-controlled detention camps. Violent ICE operations became typical and included the killing of immigrants and even nonimmigrant (and non-Hispanic) protesters.

In July 2025 a federal district court in California issued a temporary restraining order on ICE activities, on the grounds that such operations were likely in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures”—because ICE targets were usually selected solely on the basis of their skin color, accents, language, or workplaces—and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process of law,” including the accused person’s right to legal representation. After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed most of the restraining order, Trump asked the Supreme Court to stay the order itself, which it did in a shadow docket ruling in September 2025. ICE thereby continued its racial profiling operations.