Police Discourse on Racial Profiling

As central actors in the phenomenon, the police view is noticeably absent from research on racial profiling. Given the prominence of “color-blind” racial ideology in the face of disparate opinions about the police between minorities and Whites in the United States, police discourse on racial profiling bears examination. The author employs in-depth interviews of patrol officers in the Novad (a fictitious name), Texas, police department about racial profiling. A dominant narrative—“White boy in a no White boy zone” —emerges in contrast to the reverse scenario that composes the public discourse on racial profiling. This analysis supports the work of Bonilla-Silva, who suggests that rhetorical strategies have developed in the color-blind era to express racialized issues in ways that appear nonracial.