A Brief Profile of Racial Profiling: Arizona's Immigrant Law is a lot Like Cincinnati law That Cause Race Riots in 2001

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, AndyDisco on Twitter

Is Arizona the new Cincinnati? I think so.

I don't consider myself a political writer but after reading about Arizona's new immigrant legislation it reminded me of the legislation that caused Cincinnati's race riots. Hoping to find an article equating the two, I was disappointed to see that none existed (to my knowledge). So I wrote my own.

You may recall the Cincinnati race riots of 2001 where the city had a curfew for a few nights around Easter and was damn near under martial law. Most of the coverage about the riots cite the cause of the riot as frequent white cops killing black youth, but really, that was just the straw that broke the camel's b(l)ack. It would be like saying that the American Revolution started because Crispus Attucks got murdered.

A few years before the riots, legislation was passed in Cincinnati that gave cops free reign to racially profile people by, effectively, checking their papers, much like the AZ legislation proposes.

In 1996 the City Council passed a law making Over-the-Rhine a Drug Exclusion Zone (further reading can be had here and here). While misguided, the law attempted to ban anyone with a drug conviction from entering the low-income, mostly-black neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine. Theoretically, the law had a basis of logic- if you want to decrease the amount of drugs in that neighborhood, forbid anyone with a history of drug use to set foot there. Sadly, and predictably, practice was different than theory in the case.

So what happened if you lived in Over-the-Rhine and got caught with drugs? You had to move. Even if you were married with children and they were all in schools in Over-the-Rhine? Yes. So if you got arrested with a joint, then moved away from your family and you came back to visit them, you could be re-arrested for trespassing basically? Yes. And what if you were in Over-the-Rhine and a rogue, a-hole cop wanted to harass you? He'd just say, "Didn't I bust you with a bag of pot one time? You look familiar, and that's probable cause. I'm going to run your drivers license and search you." Take one part of that, mix it with 8 parts white cops shooting innocent black kids, and you have a recipe for race problems.

That sounds a lot like Arizona's new legislation. I am all for securing our national borders, but if this legislation results in racial unrest, it will be another example of the past serving as a prologue and being damned to repeat unpleasant history. Keep in mind that black Cincinnati youth and white Cincinnati cops both spoke English yet and several fatal misunderstandings occurred still. Let's hope all legals and illegals in Arizona know what the English phrases "freeze", and "Get your hands in the air. NOW!" mean.








That's how I roll.