Even in liberal California, racial and ethnic profiling will get much worse | Opinion
We are seeing racial justice unravel in front of our very eyes. Or put another way, racial and ethnic injustice is perfectly legal thanks to the highest court in the land.
The U.S. Supreme Court endorsed blatant ethnic profiling by overturning a Southern California judge’s restraining order prohibiting federal immigration agents from detaining people based solely on their perceived ethnicity, the language they speak, or their place of work. Currently, it’s Latino immigrants, many of whom do the dirty jobs that Americans don’t want to do, who are in the firing line of this terrible court order. Historically, the consequences of profiling has most heavily befallen Black people, my ancestors included.
There is a weight of daily life that Black and brown people must carry. It’s a burden that white America puts on them. It can bring violence and oppression to those with darker complexions and attributes that don’t fit the definition of normal promoted by the dominant culture and its chief spokesman, President Donald Trump.
And it’s a heaviness that the conservative Supreme Court loves exploiting.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent following the 6-3 ruling by the high court that was made possible by all of its conservative members. Justice Sotomayor is right, but in the minority. The court has done exactly what she warned against.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence, in particular, surrendered any morality the court had left on racial and ethnic justice.
“Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and “considerably short” of the preponderance of the evidence standard,” Kavanaugh wrote. “There is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.”
Kavanaugh wrote that ethnicity can be “a relevant factor” for targeting immigrants.
The United States Supreme Court allows ethnicity to be a factor for arresting people, but not in admitting them to college.
Just as stereotyping and profiling harm Black Americans, so will this ruling negatively paint Latinos, whether they are American citizens or not. If you “look Latino,” you could be stopped and questioned. Simply living while looking Latino could mean being a suspect and subject to dehumanizing encounters that could easily go wrong depending on the adrenaline level of the federal authories.
America is surely going back to a time when white people define you if you are not white. This walks back generations of sacrifice by brave people, living and dead, who fought and bled so that marginalized communities could be defined by more than their color or zip codes.
Kavanaugh oozes white ignorance. He assumes that all one has to do when ICE agents, fully armed and wearing masks, roll up is answer a few questions. It sounds easy when you are endowed with the genetics of privilege that spare you the indignity of ever having to prove yourself to masked and armed law enforcement.
Perpetuating an American sin
There is a blood-rushing anger that I feel when I think about the work my ancestors did to fight racial profiling and stereotyping, racist tools used to oppress people, no matter their contributions to our country.
I used to believe that I stood on the shoulders of Black and brown people who bled, fought and even died for the hope of ending discrimination in this country. But I now see racial justice as a Jenga game that gets knocked down every twenty years because white people think it’s just a trend.
Americans, and those who flee countries in hopes of being Americans, do not deserve to be profiled for who they are. Many are, because of Trump and the judges that he has nominated.
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
