Racial Profiling: Research, Racism, and Resistance(Issues in Crime and Justice)

Karen S. Glover investigates the social science practices of racial profiling inquiry, examining their key influence in shaping public understandings of race, law, and law enforcement. Commonly manifesting in the traffic stop, the association with racial minority status and criminality challenges the fundamental principle of equal justice under the law as described in the U.S. Constitution. Communities of color have long voiced resistance to racialized law and law enforcement, yet the body of knowledge about racial profiling rarely engages these voices. Applying a critical race framework, Glover provides in-depth interview data and analysis that demonstrate the broad social and legal realms of citizenship that are inherent to the racial profiling phenomenon. To demonstrate the often subtle workings of race and the law in the post-Civil Rights era, the book includes examination of the 1996 U.S. Supreme Court's Whren decision-a judicial pronouncement that allows pretextual action by law enforcement and thus widens law enforcement powers in decisions concerning when and against whom law is applied.

Table of Contents:
1 Table of Contents 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Introduction: To a Critical Race Criminology Chapter 4 1. History, Entre, and the Rise of Racial Profiling Research Chapter 5 2. Defending the Constitution? Chapter 6 3. The Racial Project of Mainstream Criminology's Approach to Understanding Racial Profiling Chapter 7 4. Critical Race Methodology and Race Theory Chapter 8 5. Concepts in Citizenship Chapter 9 6. An Ethnographic Reading of Racial Profiling Chapter 10 7. Vicarious Experience, Panopticonism, and Oral History Chapter 11 Conclusion 12 Appendix A: Methods 13 Appendix B: Interview Schedule 14 Bibliography

About the Author :
Karen S. Glover is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Justice Studies Program, at California State University San Marcos.

Review :
The unchecked and routinized practice of racial profiling exemplifies, justifies and defines the justice system for too many young men of color. Glover's book offers a much needed theoretical analysis of racial profiling—a routine practice that has for too long been considered beyond the reach of the researcher's measuring stick. The hidden jewels of her analysis are the painfully honest racial narratives she evokes—stories of race, justice and citizenship. Racial Profiling is a creative and engaging work that meticulously and convincingly challenges both the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the established racial profiling literature. It has caused me and will cause others to engage what she refers to as critical race criminology. In doing so, scholars will hopefully move away from the redundant quantitative focus on the question as to whether racial/ethnic profiling exists, but center more on the actual lived experiences of past and present victims of the practice. The qualitative interviews that address this issue in Karen S. Glover’s important work represents an illustration of what one hopes will spur a long overdue paradigm shift in racial profiling scholarship. Brilliantly breaking with traditional racial-profiling research, Karen Glover draws on innovative interviews and critical theory to explain how police discrimination at traffic stops reveals the systemic racism dating back to slave codes. This book not only aids us in understanding profiling from the view of Americans of color, but also vigorously indicts U.S. criminology for its police-establishment bias. Glover's research illustrates the deep foundations of racial oppression in the post-civil-rights era.... She encourages the discipline to turn a lens on itself and acknowledge its own function in the reproduction of inequality. Highly recommended. In this book, Karen Glover deconstructs the 'racial project' of criminological work on racial profiling. Glover painstakingly dissects the epistemological, methodological, theoretical, and substantive limitations of mainstream work on this subject and, in doing so, erects a new vision for the field of criminology. Glover provides an "alternative portrait" of the phenomenon that both challenges existing researching on the topic and encourages the adoption of new perspectives on the issue....The primary goal of the book goes beyond traditional perspectives and mainstream police scholarship and there is no doubt that Glover's work would appeal to those familiar with critical theoretical orientations and critical race methodology....The actual experiences of those who have been profiled should provide a breath of fresh air to scholars tired of debates on appropriate base rates and quantitative outcome tests of search and seizure practices. Glover largely succeeds in her goal to "privilege the voices of historically silenced" victims of profiling. Karen Glover's work represents an impassioned invitation to readers in mainstream sociology and criminology to become more critically reflective about the very structures of power, especially with respect to racial hierarchies and race relations that have informed the formulation of mainstream research in these areas.... She contributes to a well-established tradition of research on racial profiling.... Glover's work may be seen as a foundation for an instructive tradition in any field.... Glover was privileging the voices of historically silenced people of color indeed. This book should find wide readership amongst scholars in a variety of social science disciplines, while it should also be important to policy makers.