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Racial Profiling Racial profiling did not spring into existence until 1982 when President Reagan launched the War on Drugs. Mainstream media and culture in the USA has characterized people of color as menacing figures. Racial profiling has existed in various forms since the end of slavery. During the reconstruction of the South, laws called "Black Codes" were created. These "codes" made it punishable by imprisonment and indentured servitude for African Americans to loiter, be unemployed, be drunk, or be in debt. The "Black Codes" were a very blatant form of racial profiling aimed at maintaining an unpaid labor pool in the South in the early post-slavery days. Racial profiling is a practice of using racial or ethnic characteristics (i.e. skin color) to decide who is suspicious enough to warrant law enforcement attention. (Harris, 2003