Introduction Minorities have often been victims of racial profiling by law enforcement officers. They receive discriminatory treatment in various instances, for example, while driving, in shopping malls or walking in public places. The police officers usually stop them and conduct thorough searches on them. In airports the minorities are checked more keenly as the police have the notion that these are the people most likely to commit crimes. Sometimes the police officers go into their and conduct searches on them. This discriminatory behavior is humiliating, annoying and inconveniences innocent citizens. This discussion explores the extent of unfair police practices on the minorities and how they impact on the victims. Theories Explaining Racial Profiling Research has been conducted to explain the issue of disparity in the way the police treat the whites and the minorities. According to research statistics, the police are usually on the minorities than the whites. The number of minorities stopped on the road for police checks are more than whites, and they usually end up getting frisked or apprehended. This biased treatment of the minorities by the police happens in all law enforcement agencies including highway patrol, federal agencies, county police, municipal police, highway patrol and Sheriff Departments. The justification for this discriminatory treatment of the minorities is that according to the national crime data, the minority groups are the greatest offenders and therefore, the police officers have to be more vigilant on them. That is why most of the times they are the ones being stopped on the road and searched by the police while whites are rarely stopped. Even when whites get stopped, a body search is not conducted on them. The officers just check the necessary documents and allow them to leave 1 . Theories have been invented to explain the reason why harsher treatment is meted out on minorities like the blacks and Hispanics. The social conditioning and illusory correlation theory suggests that the police have formed unintentional stereotypes of race towards the minorities. These attitudes make the police to treat the minorities harshly. The police officers acquire these racial stereotypes from the society as they grow up. They mostly learn these racial stereotypes from the media like newspapers, television, songs, among others. Therefore, these attitudes and beliefs about minorities affect the decisions that they make at work. The police rely on the race of a person to make certain decisions as they work. These decisions include whether they should stop motorists or not, whether they should make arrests or give a warning to the offenders, among others. The police officers may not necessarily hate the minorities but they may draw conclusions from the statistics that show that minorities are most likely to commit crimes. Historically, the police have been known to have racist attitudes towards the minorities. Before the 1960’s the police departments were racist and rarely accommodated black officers. The black officers were not given equal advancement opportunities as their white counterparts. Competition for resources between various groups can also increase racial stereotyping. When different races compete fo