Panel: Racial profiling shows social unrest

By Maria Sprow

Daily Staff Reporter

While on a business trip investigating civil rights violations, Michael Rodriguez was confronted by three plain-clothed Des Moines police officers in an airport. They asked him to show identification, asked if he was carrying any large amounts of money and searched his luggage.

Rodriguez cited this as one example of racial profiling. He was one of three speakers who talked at a program titled "Civil Rights Struggle in the New Millennium: Issues, Obstacles and Strategies for Moving Forward," yesterday in the Law School's Hutchins Hall.

Racial profiling, or suspecting a person of a crime merely because of their ethnicity or race, "must be eliminated" in order for communities to "respect and trust law enforcement," said Rodriguez, an attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Chicago.

"We entrust law enforcers to enforce our laws. They should not be allowed to break our laws in order to enforce them," he said.

Rodriguez stressed the need for traffic-stop studies, which would require officers to report data, including race, from every stop they make.

Currently San Diego does traffic-stop studies. Blacks comprise 8 percent of the city's population but account for 20 percent of searched suspects, Rodriguez said.

The symposium also focused on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the affirmative action trial involving the University's Law School.

U.S. Southern Ohio District Judge Algenon Marbley spoke on the act because of alleged voter intimidation against minorities in November's presidential election.

"The data shows there was some erosion of public confidence" in the justice system, Marbley said.

U.S. Eastern Michigan District Judge Denise Hood lectured on affirmative action and education, focusing on predicting what will happen in the cases against the University.

She predicted the Supreme Court will choose to see the University's cases, unlike Hopwood vs. the State of Texas.

Of interest to the court will be whether the University's "admissions policy was narrowly tailored to achieve the goal which the University wanted to have of a diverse student body," she said. "The (Supreme) Court will decide if there is a compelling state interest in having a diverse student body."

Hood added that there has been proof that students learn better in diverse communities, are more likely to "think actively" and learn to "deal with conflicts among people who have different ideas."

No matter what happens in the trials, affirmative action and segregation will continue to be a point of contention in the civil rights movement, she said.

"The court can't remedy what goes on," Hood said.