McVeigh and Racial Profiling

The BBQ Pit
1

One little argument I’m sick of is one person saying something about racial profiling, how we should pay more attention to arab-looking young men at airport security gates than white grandmothers, and someone else bringing up Tim McVeigh as a counterargument. That’s a pretty weak and irrelevant counterargument. Unless someone is saying that we should predicate all of our nation’s safety SOLELY AND EXCLUSIVELY on racial profiling, the fact that some dangerous people don’t fit the profile doesn’t mean the profiling is pointless.

Now, I’m not necessarily certain I’m for any kind of racial profiling… I find it to be a troubling and ambiguous topic. BUT, the mere existence of Tim McVeigh no more argues against racial profiling than the existence of heart disease argues against the importance of mammograms.

2

Thank you for saying this. People bringing up TM whan discussing racial profiling of Muslim terrorists is either dumb or disengenuous. Unfortunately, sometimes both.

3

Well, when the bombing in OKC happened, there were reports of Arab men driving south to Dallas or other places. This could have sent law enforcement on a wild goose chase and missed the actual criminals.

I think instead of racial profiling we should go after the crazies.

Are you a nutjob?

Sorry, we’re going to have to search your bag.

4

Not at all.

Serious profiling is probably moderately effective.
Racial or ethnic profiling does not work, creates too many false positives, alienates the ethnic group so profiled so that they are less likely to support general efforts by law enforcement, and gives racists an opportunity to inflict embarrassment (or even harm) on their victims of choice while providing them with a rationalization to cover their asses.

5

The moment you institute racial profiling, the terrorists will simply go, “Okay, thanks for the tip – we’ll make ourselves not look like this.”

Racial profiling is pointless in that it doesn’t stop the evildoers while treating innocents as criminals.

6

What do you mean by “serious profiling”?
I think another problem with this discussion is lack of clarity of what is being discussed, precisely.

7

Possibly, but if the 9/11 hijack planners had had to recruit from non-middle eastern countries in order to avoid the racial profile, they would have had a considerably more limited supply of people. Almost by definition, the quality of their recruits would have been lower.

It’s possible that they would have still been able to find 20 non-middle easterners, as you posit, but they would no longer have the pick of the litter. There were probably thousands of guys from middle eastern countries lining up for that job. But, if they had been forced to pick only among non-middle easterners who’s to say that they wouldn’t have had to resort to picking sub-par terrorists? Ones who couldn’t get the job done.

Besides, you have to imagine that these guys are trying their damndest to get profile busting recruits. How many have we heard about? Three? Maybe five? I doubt they could have pulled 9/11 off if limited to people of non-middle eastern descent in those planes.

This profile does not suffer from problems of other racial profiling, such as the dilemma of whether blacks commit more traffic infractions or whether police pull over and arrest more black motorists; there is no observer error when it comes to hijacking a plane.

I’m opposed to every other form of racial profiling, but in this case, terrorism, we have an overwhelming profile (as an aside, I’m well aware that “middle eastern” is a fairly generic term).

Listen, I look like a terrorist. I get randomly searched at airports a lot more frequently than randomness would suggest. Hell, I got pulled over at the airport a month ago when I was dropping someone off. I didn’t even get out of the car and I had to have a chat with the police. No harm no foul.

I have no problem with it.

8

Right, the references should be to Richard Reid and Jose Padilla.

9

What does a Middle Easterner look like?

When I lived in NJ, it sometimes wasn’t easy to place people into racial/ethnic categories until they opened their mouth or said their name. Indians, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Lebanese, Egyptians, Moroccans, Iranians, Algerians, Turks, southern Italians, Greeks, Ashekanazi Jews, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Columbians, and light-skinned black people…they all look like family! If people didn’t differ in speech patterns/accents, it would be hard to peg lots of people racially. Especially Middle Easterners.

Now, there are many who probably possess good radar and can spot an Arab from a mile away. But I don’t think most people will be good at it, unless the suspect is wearing stereotypical garb or acting in a stereotypical way. The guys who pulled off 9/11 did not look stereotypically anything to me. If had to guess what ethnicity they were without knowing anything else about them except their physical appearance, I probably would have said, in all my sophistication, “Some kind of Hispanic”. Those guys would have blended in quite well where I live.

All that said, I admit that I find it frustrating when I see old ladies being frisked. Yes, I know bombers can come in all disguises, and that old ladies can be just as law-breaking as the rest of us. But when I see such a broad security approach, it’s hard not to feel like we’re just going through the motions.

10

Are you saying that all the “not really all that white people” look alike to you monstro?

11

This actual 9/11 hijacker did IMO:

Clean shaven, and like all the other kidnapers, had no beard.

All of the 9/11 highjackers did go to acts that betrayed their original fundamentalist ways; they even did go to extreme of drinking and living a life of (pretended) wealth, I am not opposed to profiles that include the country of origin.

I do have a problem when one returned soldier from the gulf thought I looked like one of them ME guys, only his friend discouraged him from turning me into a pulp, but we digress.

The terrorists on 9/11 had the best way for not being pulled over: they arrived in style and did go first class, and that meant very little check ups, it is still to me one of the lessons of 9/11 that the US is trying to forget, just a few months ago I saw reports of airlines demanding relaxations and special plans to make their first class passengers go in faster to the planes.

I have the feeling one big attack will come someday from a fat cat from the ME. Seeing the current connections those ME dictators have to the current administration, I do think it is not only bullshit that walks thanks to money, terrorism is too.

12

I hate like hell that I’m on this side of this arguement. I wouldn’t have been only a few years ago. But, if we look at the 9/11 hijackers, like it or not there are more than a few common physical features among them.

They all have very dark, probably black, hair. They all have darker skin than your average European descendant, but not nearly as dark as your average person of African descendant. They are all male. They are all relatively young. They are all in good to great physical condition.

Moving beyond the physical, they have similar names (more than half of their names begin with “Al”). Almost all had the same country of origin (and all the same general geographic locale). I’m sure that a brief chat would reveal something of a distinctive accent.

You could start with that, and rule out a good majority of the air traveling population. Are you going to give a little extra look at people of South American origin? Southern Italian? Me? Probably.

We’re not talking about an anal probe. We’re talking about the extra pat down, and a little extra attention to your bags. I go through it more than half of the time that I travel, and it delays me less than five minutes each time. The people who perform the search are ridiculously friendly about it, and apologize for the delay. It is not dehumanizing or any such nonsense. The only bad part is that I’m in the little penalty box, and my wife is pointing at me and laughing about it from the other side because it has become a running joke for us.

I like to think of myself as open minded and tolerant, but I think that for something this important (and obvious), I’m willing to feel a little guilty about admitting that yes, there is in fact more than a passing similarity of every single person who has blown up a plane in the recent past.

13

I was not offeriing a defense of profiling. I was criticizing the rationale that TM makes profilinig a bad idea. Even if profiling Arab-looking men in the US nets out to be a bad idea, TM is not the reason. Arab men are a minority here. There is an organized effort among predominantly similar looking men to cause us further damage. The TM thing was a one-time incident by a man who looks like the majority of the population in which he is living. Apples and oranges.

14

A one time thing?
So those abortion clinics, they weren’t bombed.

Nobody ever shot the president.

That guy who tried to place bombs in mailboxes at points on a map to make a smilie face, that didn’t happen.

Churchs weren’t burned down.

Yeah, one time thing.

15

Well, I won’t speak for monstro, but for myself it’s true. I can tell one person from another, but I have a tough time pegging “racial” characteristics. Last night, my husband and I were watching a baseball game and I thought the catcher for Cleveland looked like one fo my husband’s old doctors. Only the catcher is Venezuelan and the doctor was from India. I have a feeling I’m the only person who would think they look at all alike.

16

When I was in grad school, a classmate of mine always referred to the parking lot attendant as “that Indian guy”. It was clear to me that he was Mexican or Central American. But we never did find out what race he was.

And that picture of the hijackers kind of proves my point. To me, lots of those folks look like you’d find them drinking cafe cubano and eating fritas.

17

If they were related, part of the same concerted effort you would have a point. But they weren’t.

18

So, they look like baseball players?

19

I realise racial profiling is a touchy subject- especially in the US- but I was wondering about something the other night…

Australia has, so far not had a terrorist attack (there’s nothing here of strategic value, and I do wish the Government would stop trying to pretend there is, in case they give people ideas)- but a few people have been charged with terrorist offences, and almost all of them have been… not white.

There’s a white guy in Brisbane on terrorism charges after they found all sorts of explosives in his house, but there’s something odd about the story and there doesn’t seem to be any proof he actually planned to blow up a railway station or anything like that (although quite what he was doing with all those explosives are anyone’s guess- they certainly weren’t for a film, as he claims), but unlike the US we don’t have Christian Fundies bombing abortion clinics or anti-government paranoids like McVeigh destroying federal buildings.

It’s a tough question with no easy answers, but I think the worrying thing is that if someone, somewhere started an airline that only allowed white, middle-class, professional people to fly on it, there would be no shortage of people prepared to fly on it. (In fact, wasn’t that the plot of a Law & Order episode)?

I think the bigger (and more important) question is: How does one reign in those who incite violence, whatever their ethnicity or religion?

I’m starting to worry that there isn’t a balance between freedom and security- either we all have to take our chances and hope that we don’t get involved in some sort of terrorist attack, but can live our lives relatively unmolested regardless of religion, ethnicity, or what have you- or, we end up in a police state where everyone is presumed to be a terrorist.

Given the choice, I think I prefer the former. Your results may vary, however…

20

Probably some middle infielders, yes.