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Stop-and-search
and race
There has been talk all week about the
legitimacy of stop-and-search based on racial identity. Yet with every
U-turn, Hazel Blears and Tarique Ghaffur only betray their deep
ignorance of how racism flourishes.
There is nothing to be gained, in a country with such a large ethnic
population, by certain ethnic groups having to suffer the burden of
the entire population in complying with stop-and-search. If dark skin
is to be the trigger for prompting a stop-and-search on an anonymous
individual, the intelligence is simply not specific enough to warrant
any such search.
It does nothing to legitimise a policy with well-documented racist
effects that it should be advocated by well-intentioned non-racists.
The only certainty of race-based policing is the reinforcement and
dissemination of insidious stereotypes that play straight into the
hands of the potential suicide bomber.
Dr Shahrar Ali, London policy coordinator,
Green Party
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