c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ It amazes me that, on the eve of the millennium, race continues to be the dominant fixture on the American landscape. Even as the wonders of technology send us speedily toward the future, we remain mired in the social prejudices of the past.

Witness, for example, how the issue of racial profiling-as-law enforcement has polarized the nation’s cities. Police officials, both white and black, argue that, together with other factors, race is a reliable indicator of who will commit what crime. They point to statistics indicating blacks, particularly young black men, commit a disproportionately high number of violent drug offenses. Incorporating such statistics into their aggressive, crime-fighting strategies, law enforcement officials say, is simply smart police work.

Yet in the wake of such high profile policing errors as the February shooting death of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York, many blacks are wondering whether something more insidious isn’t at work. They see such incidents as the Diallo shooting and the brutal torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima as evidence that cops _ particularly white cops _ use their law enforcement authority to specifically target blacks for abuse.

That the life-and-death struggles associated with race usually have political overtones only exacerbates the problem. In New Jersey, for example, the politics of race has, for a second time, cast a shadow over the political career of Republican Gov. Christie Whitman.

In November 1993, in the aftermath of her first gubernatorial election, Whitman’s campaign manager, Ed Rollins, enraged African-Americans by stating that the Whitman campaign paid black ministers to refrain from endorsing Whitman’s opponent, then-Governor Jim Florio. In responding to what, in political terms, amounted to self-inflicted wounds, Whitman, then a political novice, was forced to fire Rollins and mend fences with her constituency even before her administration began.

Nearly six years later, Whitman, who recently declared her candidacy for the Senate, faces an even greater struggle for survival in the wake of the profiling scandal surrounding New Jersey state troopers.

Under tremendous pressure from the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, as well as a Justice Department probe, Whitman was recently forced to admit racial profiling was being practiced by some of the state’s finest.

In the meantime, she got her attorney general, Peter Verniero _ who initially denied the existence of profiling _ appointed to the state Supreme Court, and faces a battle with her own Republican-controlled legislature over the appointment of a superintendent to replace Williams.

Interestingly, neither political maneuvering nor social debate has changed the perceptions police officers (spelled”white”) and inner-city residents (spelled”black”) have about one another. Yet, it is at the level of perception that such critical, and often deadly, judgments are made.

The four police officers who shot Amadou Diallo perceived him to be a threat and fired 41 shots at him based on that perception. However, a post-mortem investigation showed he was unarmed.

Similarly, the troopers who shot and gravely wounded three black and Hispanic young men on the New Jersey turnpike perceived them to be a threat, only to learn later they were en route to an athletic event.

At bottom, perceptions have to do with what we believe about the other person. Absent any personal knowledge of the individual, we tend to make generalizations based on stereotypes. When negative stereotypes form the basis of our perceptions and the decisions proceeding from those perceptions are made in the heat of the moment, tragedy is often the result.

Just ask those who knew Amadou Diallo.

DEA END ATCHISON