Is There a Color for Crime?

After reading many of the posts beneath this one, I was thinking a lot about the color of crime. Such as Steffanie said, we picture a black man as the one being the theft and drug dealer and the white man as the child molester. I actually see people's viewpoints of who they think commits what crimes every day. I work at the SPCA adoption center in the Galleria Mall. We have a small box that I'm sure every store has, and we get alerts when there is a shop lifter, missing child, etc. Most of the shop lifters we are looking for say, "African American" on the screen. Also, this situation happened to me at work today. A few small white boys around age 5 were playing with our donation bank. I couldn't really tell what they were doing but I didn't see them take any money out, so I didn't say anything. A few minutes later, some black boys walk by the bank and start to play with it. A middle aged white man comes up to me at the desk and says, I think those boys are trying to steal money from your donation bank. I get up and walk over and ask them what are you guys doing?! Turns out there were coins jammed in the bank so the slot was filled and no more coins could be put in. The boys were playing with it and trying to un jam it so they could put their pennies in. I felt bad because when I went over to them I had a tone in my voice because I assumed the white man who approached me was right, and that the boys were trying to steal from the bank. I apologized and thanked them for their donations. Goes to show how people think certain races are the ones that commit crimes, like African Americans and stealing money.