In his column a couple days ago, Colin McEnroe writes about the Doug Glanville article in The Atlantic, I Was Racially Profiled in My Own Driveway. Colin asks if this was ”Cops Doing Their Job? Or Profiling?”

Colin, along with people who commented on the column, both on the Courant’s website, and on social media sites like Facebook raise some interesting questions. At what point does an officer reacting to a complaint and attempting to enforce an ill-considered law cross over into racial profiling? If the officer was just reacting to a complaint by a citizen, wasn’t he just doing his job? Unfortunately, the ‘just doing my job defense doesn’t always stand up, particularly if it is reinforcing some injustice.

Perhaps the bigger questions start with how much of a reaction is appropriate, independent of whether or not it is called profiling? Instead of talking about profiling we need to be exploring how each one of us contributes to, benefits from, and is damaged by unexplored expectations about the people around us based on their age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other factors.

Perhaps we need to explore how these unexplored expectations fit into laws, rules, regulations, and ways that our institutions operate that benefit one group of people and the expense of another group of people.