Mass Communications faculty presents research on racial profiling at national conference
Mass Communications faculty presents research on racial profiling at national conference
Toni Terrett, assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communications, presented her research paper “Shedding Light on Racial Profiling” at the 2014 Joint National Conference of National Association of African American Studies, National Association of Hispanic and Latino Studies, National Association of Native American Studies, and International Association of Asian Studies, held recently in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.The paper has been accepted for publication in the organization’s monograph series that will be published in the fall.
“This conference was a great opportunity for scholars and academians to come together to share their research on topics related to the African and African-American, Hispanic and Latino, Native American, indigenous peoples or Asian experience,” stated Terrett. “Topics discussed included literature, demographics, history, politics, economics, educations, fine arts, religion, social sciences, business and other subjects.”
“My paper addresses the ongoing epidemic of racial profiling in light of the recent acquittals of the killers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan David, two unarmed African-American youth. The verdicts suggested that Davis and Martin were responsible for their eventual deaths because their killers felt ‘threatened’. Both deaths were clearly the result of racial profiling,” explained Terrett. “Media reports of crime in communities are generally based on the reports available from local law enforcement agencies. In the absence of a federal racial profiling law, information and statistics about racial profiling are not uniformly collected and thus not always readily available to the public and media outlets. Enacting laws that require agencies to collect and disclose racial profiling data will ultimately empower media outlets and advocacy groups to compile reports that can identify possible shortcomings of these agencies when it comes to racial profiling. This will be a small, but vital, step in the grand scheme of changing perceptions, reducing biases and eventually ending racial profiling.”
She added, “In presenting my research to an interested audience, I was motivated to explore other angles and further expand my research. I was also exposed to a lot of useful information by attending other presentations.”
