Racial Profiling: It’s AZ Invasive AZ a Disease

 

I’m worried.  I’m worried about the health of our nation.  I’m not referring to blood pressure, the lack of exercise, or the increasing obesity rate.  I’m referring to a cancer that is metastasizing across the west.  Arizona’s new “immigration” law is a moral malignancy that is multiplying at an alarming rate. It is carried along the veins of racial discord that threaten the principled well-being of our society.

If implemented this summer, the new Arizona law would force police officers to ask for and require proof of documentation for anyone under “reasonable suspicion” of undocumented status.  Now, reasonable suspicion of a crime and the request for identification has been within the authority of the police for quite some time as it was establish by the Supreme Court.  The problem with the Arizona law is that it goes just that much over the border of what is reasonable.  The law makes no effort to define what is rational suspicion in determining undocumented status, and therefore, questioning can be provoked by simple language or appearance.  That, is the malady of racial profiling.

This socially transmitted disease is now spreading across state lines.  Texas and Utah have exhibited symptoms as their state governments ponder similar legislation.  Colorado’s front-running GOP candidate for governor, former US Representative, Scott McInnis publicly endorsed Arizona’s discriminatory law saying he would implement something very similar if elected in November.  Now, the former Rep. is quick to dismiss the aspect of racial profiling, but Coloradans and the Rachel Maddow show know differently:

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The authoritative request of papers and documentation is not new to our country’s history.  From the years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the internment of Japanese-American citizens, to an initial blind eye to the Holocaust, America has seen times representative of a black plague of conscience.  I fear that unless some medicinal measure of comprehensive reform is prescribed, our much heralded moral authority will take a turn for the worst.  Due to the manifestation of a dominant genetic chemistry, I am an American of darker complexion, eyes, and hair.  I am currently enrolled in a Spanish class, and I practice my verb forms as often as I can.  Could I be profiled?  To believe that I could be asked to prove my citizenship as a result of my heredity and my desire to be culturally informed and bi-lingual is in a word…sick.