My assignment is to write a case study, I plan on writing about racial profiling. Are these questions workable?
1. What can the legal evidence collection process learn from the strength and weaknesses of the ethnographic research method? What can ethnographers learn from the legal circumstantial evidence collection?
2. Is it logically inconsistent to use statistics to illustrate white privilege, but not to support racial profiling?
They seem to be valid questions to me. The answers may depend on the opinions of the writer, though. For example, anecdotal (circumstantial) evidence may be discounted by some but not others. I recently heard a story on the radio about a woman who was earning $100,000+ a year as a contractor/consultant. When she applied for a mortgage, she was turned down as having no stable income (a salary). She got a job teaching at a university and was turned down again, with the suggestion that she find a co-signer. She found a white co-signer, a part-time waitress whose 2-week paycheck was under $200. The co-signer was accepted, but the black woman still had no "stable" income, perhaps because her employment was new to her, she hadn't been with the university long enough. Anecdotal, circumstantial, evidence that can easily be discounted as an aberration. So, when put together with other such anecdotal evidence, does it prove anything? What is valid? Good luck with your research!
