Racial Profiling

<p>Many racial minority communities claim profiling occurs frequently in their neighborhoods. Police authorities for the most part deny that they engage in racially biased police tactics. A handful of books have been published on the topic but they tend to offer only anecdotal reports offering little reliable insight. Few use a qualitative methodological lens to provide the context of how minority citizens experience racial profiling. <p/><strong>Racial Profiling: They Stopped Me Because I'm ------! </strong>places minority citizens who believe they have been racially profiled by police authorities at the center of the data. Using primary empirical studies and extensive in-depth interviews the book draws on nearly two years of field research into how minorities experience racial profiling by police authorities. <p/>The author interviewed more than 100 racial and ethnic minority citizens. Citing 87 of these cases the book examines each individual case and employs a rigorous qualitative phenomenological method to develop dominant themes and determine their associated meaning. Through an exploration of these themes we can learn: </p><p></p><ul> <p/><li>What racial profiling is its historical context and how formal legal codes and public policy generally define it</li> <p/><li>The best methods of data collection and the advantages of collecting racial profiling data </li> <p/><li>How certain challenges can prevent data collection from properly identifying racial profiling or bias-based policing practices</li> <p/><li>Data analysis and methods of determining the validity of the data </li> <p/><li>The impact of pretextual stops and the effect of <em>Whren v. United States</em> </li> </ul><p></p><p>A compelling account of how minority citizens experience racial profiling and how they ascribe and give meaning to these experiences the book provides a candid discussion of what the findings of the research mean for the police racial minority citizens and future racial profiling research.</p><p>Michael L. Birzer was recently interviewed on public radio about his book <em>Racial Profiling: They Stopped Me Because I'm ------!</em></p>