Location

Panel Three

Event Website

http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/centers/csrrr

Start Date

20-3-2013 10:45 AM

Description

Neighborhood Watch coordinator George Zimmerman’s February 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year old African American in a gated community in Sanford, Florida has raised serious questions concerning racial profiling. Although a violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ample evidence attests to racial profiling’s pervasiveness as a law enforcement tactic in contexts of street-level crime, counterterrorism, and immigration control. Since September 11, 2001, the longstanding problem of racial profiling has both deepened and expanded in terms of the populations targeted. Incentives to profile have been built into laws and policies that sacrifice civil liberties and rights for the purported sake of homeland security. Escalating anxieties over security in transnational, national and local contexts have produced a volatile climate in which individuals perceived to fit stereotypes of Islamist terrorists, illegal immigrants, and ghetto thugs are subjected to indiscriminate profiling, which is a form of racial discrimination. This paper examines the Trayvon Martin tragedy from the vantage point of the international human rights community. The paper’s point of departure is the 2009 report that the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance submitted to the Human Rights Council on his data-gathering mission to the United States.

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Mar 20th, 10:45 AM

Racial Profiling, Security, and Human Rights

Panel Three

Neighborhood Watch coordinator George Zimmerman’s February 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year old African American in a gated community in Sanford, Florida has raised serious questions concerning racial profiling. Although a violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ample evidence attests to racial profiling’s pervasiveness as a law enforcement tactic in contexts of street-level crime, counterterrorism, and immigration control. Since September 11, 2001, the longstanding problem of racial profiling has both deepened and expanded in terms of the populations targeted. Incentives to profile have been built into laws and policies that sacrifice civil liberties and rights for the purported sake of homeland security. Escalating anxieties over security in transnational, national and local contexts have produced a volatile climate in which individuals perceived to fit stereotypes of Islamist terrorists, illegal immigrants, and ghetto thugs are subjected to indiscriminate profiling, which is a form of racial discrimination. This paper examines the Trayvon Martin tragedy from the vantage point of the international human rights community. The paper’s point of departure is the 2009 report that the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance submitted to the Human Rights Council on his data-gathering mission to the United States.

https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/csrrr_events/10thspringlecture/panels/1