Racial Profiling: Prejudice or Protocol?

It's a very complicated question. I've been thinking about it from time to time but never have an answer yet, while mostly sided with ACLU who firmly objects any forms of racial profiling.

There are many ways people being put into different groups given it's the color of their skin, religion, education, credit score, cars they drive, etc. Although we want to be seen as a unique person, we expect to be treated equally. In real life, it's not going to happen. You will be treated differently based on these factors. Some are acceptable, some are not. It is complicated and very difficult, if impossible, to justify which ones are okay. Nevertheless, one of the root of racial prejudice originated from the fact that the appearance between different races are so obvious, that it's an easy way out though not the correct one in most of the cases.

There're many movies dealing with the subject but two of them touched me the most: A time to Kill (Yahoo, Movieweb) and Crash, both of which happened to feature my alumna, the beautiful and talented Sandra Bullock. In A time to kill, S. L. Jackson was telling M. McConaughey (or something like that): "do you see me as the same as you? We look different and will always been treat that way."

There are many serious and meaningful discussion on this subject, but what I watched today on FoxNews tonight is certainly not one of them. The host, John Kasich, is very biased and keep interrupting the guest who's criticizing racial profiling. While watching the program, I started to ask myself the question, does my safty worth that much if it means to sacrifice civil liberty of millions of other people just because their skin color and religion?

Just looking at the wrongful shooting death of Jean Charles de Menezes (see reports on LATimes )