Weekly Message
RACIAL PROFILING IS WRONG!
Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. (Numbers 12:1)
We are faced, again, with making sense out of a situation that should have never occurred. A youth walking from a store (having purchased candy), is confronted by a man with a gun because the youth appears to look out of place in that area. The youth ends up dead. How does that happen in America?
I remember sitting in front of my school dormitory 46 years ago to wait for one of my parents to pick me up and take me home for the weekend. I was attending a major university and there were few minority students residing in the dormitory at that time. I was one of them. While sitting and waiting, the campus police arrived and required that I stand up, show identification, and give a reason to be where I was. After showing my student identification and my dorm papers, the campus police decided to leave. Before they left however, I asked them why they had confronted me. One officer said that "SOMEONE" had called in and said that I looked like I was about to break into some cars. They never said, it was because I was Black. But I knew why, without them saying it. I must say that the officer appeared sincere in his explanation and I believe it. I have believed since that day that it was another student-resident looking from a window in the dorm that had called in to the campus police office.
In the passage above, the brother and sister of Moses spoke against him because he married an Ethiopian woman. They made a judgment against her because of her ethnicity, and not because of her character. It was wrong. God punished Miriam, the sister, with leprosy (verse 10).
I have heard other people give different explanations for God's actions. But it seems obvious to me, that it was because of their (Aaron and Miriam's) judgmental attitude against her ethnicity.
There are those who would say that the latest events were not a result of racial profiling. Perhaps they are right. I cannot read the mind of another individual. Therefore I am not making an accusation against anyone involved. You can come to your own conclusions. However, if it was a case of racial profiling, I must say, from my perspective, racial profiling is wrong and it never should have happened!