reports 80 percent of the country’s cocaine users are white and the “typical cocaine user is a white middle class suburbanite.”(Harris 7) But law enforcement tactics are concentrated in the inner city. This continues to feed the perception that most drug dealers and users are black. This prompted the “drug courier profile,”(Harris 7) with racial overtones to take hold. Media coverage of this issue has begun to increase in the last couple of years or so. In the past year , front page stories and editorials have appeared in every major national newspaper and many local papers. Even though media fascination with a problem doesn’t make it real or lack of media coverage doesn’t make a problem nonexistent. But because of the many stories and statistical reports, the lawsuits and even recent action by the government, make a good argument that , “driving while black,” is not just an occasional problem. Some of these stories are absolutely ridiculous there are so many cases its crazy. Racial profiling believe it or not is a big problem among the news media itself. When the media covers a story about drugs they often show the black drug dealer , abuser , criminal or the undeserving affirmative action recipient. When we look at the ways the national media has covered or failed to cover recent stories or studies we get a better understanding of the practice or racial profiling in the media. In a recent poll taken by the child advocay group Children Now the children included said that,”the news media tends to portray African American and Latino people more negatively than white and Asian people. Most of the major news media did not cover this story and the ones that did said,” that the children were influenced by television news.” (qtd in media blackface 4) On of the major and most well known cases of racial profiling is the case of Amadou Diallo. Four white officers members of...
