What is racial profiling, exactly?
Many questions remain about what happened between the time Akom left his daughters and when he ended up handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser in that same parking lot. Did Guevara clearly distinguish his cell phone conversation from the questions he directed at Akom? How did Guevara describe the incident to his supervisor and, subsequently, to the police dispatcher? Why did neither the guard nor the police ask Akom for his campus ID? Was it Akom or Rodgers who initiated physical contact? But perhaps the question that trumps all of the above is: What is racial profiling, exactly, and has it occurred in this instance? The term is broadly understood to refer to any law enforcement practice that treats a person as a suspect because of his or her race or ethnicity. Akom and his supporters maintain that had he been a white professor, the evening would not have ended with a trip to jail. To drive this point home, members of the “Justice 4 Akom” campaign wore T-shirts emblazoned with the
