# Political Correctness and Racial Profiling **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 23, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639 "2010-11-23T05:38:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/181 "2010-12-01T01:59:26Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Again, you are setting up a strawman of “exclusively.” Not at all. I simply dismissed your weasel word. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I used your example because it was your example, not because it was a perfect analogy. To date w/r/t airplane terrorism, all successful and nearly-successful terrorists have been extremist Muslims on their personal crusade. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the aspect of race or ethnicity of the person carrying the bomb that was the direct point of the OP. If you want to claim that (almost) all Muslims are Arabs (or appear Arab), you are free to make that silly claim, but in a discussion of how “race” should be employed in screening airline travellers, I have already demonstrated that it would fail and that it is counter-productive. My analogy stands: intrusive scrutiny of all sports cars and muscle cars regarding speed law traffic enforcement would still permit a lot of homicides by way of luxury cars while needlessly harrassing the owners of sports cars and muscle cars. Paying attention to the actual behavior of potential terrorists and speeders will produce better results without engaging in discriminatory actions. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I’m not sure who has claimed they are a particular ethnicity, although there have been some implications that blonde and blue-haired women should be considered equally at risk. Much of appearance-based profiling is exclusion rather than inclusion. So, you would support the exclusion from further scrutiny of Richard Reid, (because he did not appear to be an Arab) and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (who was clearly not Arab) before they boarded their respective planes? In contrast, I would have supported better screening based on their behavior, along with a better efforts to identify flammable or explosive materials, regardless of who happened to be carrying it, (such as Anne Marie Murphy). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/182 "2010-12-01T02:01:26Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > Just which poster could I have possibly conditionally called an idiot? Why are you acting silly over this? If you must play your game, take it to ATMB. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/183 "2010-12-01T03:50:01Z")
Chief Pedant, you keep decrying the lack of training or experience in the current TSA, and keep calling for “experts” to be stationed at the entrances to airports to do your profiling idea. Question: Where do we find these experts? How would we pay for them? ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/184 "2010-12-01T09:43:40Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I wonder if you’d enter into a wager where we take a general population of all flyers in line for screening and let me–well-traveled the world over, but untrained–separate out for you Middle Easterners (and by the way, that is not the only group I’d add to appearance-based profiling). I get to look at every passenger, look over their ID, and ask them one or two questions, followed by parking them into “Middle Eastern” or not. While it’s absolutely true that I would miss some and incorrectly include others, I’d wager my “Middle East” group would contain a far higher percentage of Middle Easterners than my “Everyone Else” group. And that’s what appearance-based profiling is all about. It’s not a statement about your life philosophy. It’s not an accusation you are a criminal. It’s about trying to whittle down the denominator of every single passenger into a more manageable number that is more likely to contain the tiny subset which needs to be prevented from getting on the airplane. A trained profiler would have a far higher success rate than I and obviously a more inclusive (and exclusive) list of profiling criteria beyond the “Middle Easterner” strawman you keep setting up. I’m not setting up a “strawman” and you can keep histrionically trying to pretend it all you want. The OP started this as a thread about racial profiling, and you have not only tried to ineptly cover for the OP (by claiming he/she didn’t mean racial profiling), you have also refused to give any details about your mystery screening methodology. When called on this, you simply throw out the word “histrionic” repeatedly, as if that is meaningful, because you cannot produce any screening criteria. If you are this completely unable to defend your position, then why are you in this thread? Furthermore, you are the one who posted a link of brown people, so I didn’t create any strawman. It’s apparent that you are unable to debate your position coherently (as usual), but that doesn’t mean that I’m creating strawmen. Finally, as to your challenge, are you going to ask each and every person in the group questions? Or are you going to select persons to ask for questions based on mystery criteria? If so, what is the mystery criteria. > [@](#): > > But the idea that profiling based on appearance is unhelpful at all is silly. I never said it was unhelpful (again a strawman). I want to know the criteria. But if the criteria is someone “brown” that is definitely going to be unhelpful, since it doesn’t identify the potential threat properly. It misses large numbers of people who are in the threat category and drags in large numbers of people who aren’t in the threat category. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/185 "2010-12-01T09:46:56Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Is it your position, then, that on-the-spot “profiling” by Israeli security for passengers waiting to board El Al is completely ineffective? I would bet your knowledge of Israeli screening practices is probably non-existent. But, why don’t you lay out for us what their screening procedure is. Of course, they are even more secretive than the TSA, but from what I’ve read of their screening procedures, referring to the Israeli screening process doesn’t help your case at all. > [@](#): > > There seems to be a histrionic response in several posts here that sets up a straw-man on two counts: First, that any “profiling” uses skin hue as the only criterion for presumed population origin, and second, that it would use “Muslim” as the only criterion for belief screening. Again, with the word “histrionic” because you can’t defend your position. Until you lay out the criteria for screening, no one is going to buy what you are selling. > [@](#): > > Neither of these strawmen are worth defending. Effective “short-hand” (to use TomnDeb’s language, I think) takes into account appearance, but not exclusively so, and similarly takes into account apparent or presumed religious background and beliefs, but not exclusively so. > > I can’t figure out if what is being defended is that it is equally effective to randomly screen all comers without any regard to appearance at all–a position with which I vigorously disagree–or whether on-the-spot screening which takes into account appearance as a means test for further screening (say, follow-up questions by an expert profiler) is likely to offend some people–a position with which I heartily agree (and said so in my original post in this thread). > > So, again: Is it the position of anti-profilers that appearance-based profiling is an ineffective adjunct for screening, or that it is effective, but offensive? I can’t figure out why you think we should respond to someone who refuses to lay out the screening procedure he is supposedly advocating for? ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/186 "2010-12-01T09:51:29Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Well I never mentioned Al Qaida, you did. If you are making a claim regarding Al Qaida operatives then feel free to do so. > > However I do know it is not a formal organisation so it would be difficult to consider that it had a central strategy for recruitment. It is a shared idea with shadowy figureheads and local cell structuring. It takes root wherever there is dissatisfaction amongst Muslims and antipathy to the west and it’s allies. > Certainly it tries to radicalise and recruit in the western nations as that makes good operational sense, the cover is stronger the subterfuge more complete and it is one less level of complication when planning attacks. > They will gladly take white, middle aged, english women as new recruits if they can get them. > Are you suggesting that this is now the case? > > If it helps, try this on for size. > > Imagine that the security services develop a satellite system that could sweep the globe and magically show up Al Qaida activists as blue dots. > The system isn’t racist, it doesn’t look at skin colour or any other criteria apart from detecting “Al Qaida-ness”. > Would those blue dots be evenly distributed? Would there be any clusters? Would there be any common factors, features or criteria that many of those activists share? > > In other words, were all those blue dots to be rounded up and paraded in front of you do you think any community, ethnicity, religion or area will be over or under-represented? No, we’re not playing this game. This isn’t a Socratic debate board, and I’m not going to waste time with 20 questions. Since you are unable to state which communities, ethnicities, religions or areas will be over or underrepresented, I have to assume that you really have no idea. If you want to state where you think over or under-representation will occur, I will respond, but until then, it appears to me that you really haven’t studied the issue in any depth. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/187 "2010-12-01T10:30:28Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > That particular subtype seems to be the domain of extremist young Muslim males serving the Army of God or hoping for their virgins. There have already been at least two terrorists bombings on airplanes committed by women (see, 2004 Russian aircraft bombings). Why do you choose to limit it to males? ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/188 "2010-12-01T10:44:35Z")
I can’t be on the boards for awhile, so I’m exiting this thread. Apparently there are people who think that all Muslims only exist in the Middle East. They refuse to believe that the majority of Muslims live outside the Middle East, because that would mean that there were a lot of Indonesian Muslims and Thai Muslims and black Muslims and white Muslims, which is very inconvenient for them. These same people refuse to accept that there are blond-haired and blue-eyed people in the Middle East, who are indistinguishable from white people. Again, this is too inconvenient for them, so they pretend this fact does not exist. And they absolutely refuse to believe that al Qaida routinely recruits in non-Middle Eastern places like Somalia and Nigeria. They cannot accept that not only has al Qaida recruited in these places, but it has used these recruits to carry out attacks in the US. And they absolutely refuse to believe that al Qaida has recruited Latinos, African Americans and White people in the US and used them to carry out terrorist attacks. Faced with all of these inconvenient facts, they will just keep trying to come up with ways to pretend that Al Qaida is solely a creature of the Middle East and that all Middle Easterners are brown. No matter what the reality is, the facts will never make a difference. So, have fun with your mystery screening which will almost certainly be less effective than the current screening system is. You have no idea what the screening will be, only that it will cover your made-up fantasy of who and what the actual threat is. I am always amused by people who routinely advocate for white privilege while trying to pretend they aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/189 "2010-12-01T13:07:26Z")
> [@BrightNShiny](#): > > No, we’re not playing this game. This isn’t a Socratic debate board, and I’m not going to waste time with 20 questions. Since you are unable to state which communities, ethnicities, religions or areas will be over or underrepresented, I have to assume that you really have no idea. If you want to state where you think over or under-representation will occur, I will respond, but until then, it appears to me that you really haven’t studied the issue in any depth. Well I’m absolutely sure that I don’t know the subject as well as I could. Nor do I know what a “Socratic debate” is. However, I think you want to belittle my knowledge of this area in order justify your unwillingness to deal with uncomfortable questions. Part of my reason for posting is to take on board other views and facts. As it stands though you have yet to tell me anything I didn’t already know. And, it isn’t a “game” as such. No one wins or loses here. The fact that you view it as such is quite illuminating. It might explain your unwillingness to concede any points at all, even those that are obvious and uncontroversial. For example - would you concede that, in a global sweep as I outlined before, Women would be under-represented? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/190 "2010-12-01T13:11:38Z")
> [@BrightNShiny](#): > > I can’t be on the boards for awhile, so I’m exiting this thread. Apparently there are people who think that all Muslims only exist in the Middle East. They refuse to believe that the majority of Muslims live outside the Middle East, because that would mean that there were a lot of Indonesian Muslims and Thai Muslims and black Muslims and white Muslims, which is very inconvenient for them. > > These same people refuse to accept that there are blond-haired and blue-eyed people in the Middle East, who are indistinguishable from white people. Again, this is too inconvenient for them, so they pretend this fact does not exist. > > And they absolutely refuse to believe that al Qaida routinely recruits in non-Middle Eastern places like Somalia and Nigeria. They cannot accept that not only has al Qaida recruited in these places, but it has used these recruits to carry out attacks in the US. > > And they absolutely refuse to believe that al Qaida has recruited Latinos, African Americans and White people in the US and used them to carry out terrorist attacks. > > Faced with all of these inconvenient facts, they will just keep trying to come up with ways to pretend that Al Qaida is solely a creature of the Middle East and that all Middle Easterners are brown. No matter what the reality is, the facts will never make a difference. > > So, have fun with your mystery screening which will almost certainly be less effective than the current screening system is. You have no idea what the screening will be, only that it will cover your made-up fantasy of who and what the actual threat is. > > I am always amused by people who routinely advocate for white privilege while trying to pretend they aren’t. There is definitely a lot of “Refusal to Believe” going on, I’ll give you that. This is quite possible the largest collection of strawmen and misrepresentations ever gathered together and I think being away from the boards might do you some good. Perhaps before returning you might like to re-read the thread and compare and contrast what was actually said with your own sweeping generalisations above. Cheerio. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/191 "2010-12-01T15:09:09Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Why is unfair in quotes? > > Are you postulating being singled out for special attention, such as TSA forced gropings because you look a little too Arabic, or having your car followed because you’re in the wrong neighborhood for your skin color is fair by some definitions? Because I am trying to figure out if what is being debated is fairness (it’s not fair) or effectiveness (it is more effective to profile than not). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/192 "2010-12-01T15:18:59Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Because I am trying to figure out if what is being debated is fairness (it’s not fair) or effectiveness (it is more effective to profile than not). False dilemma. Like torture, racial profiling is bad because it is both unfair and ineffective. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/193 "2010-12-01T15:24:28Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > So, you would support the exclusion from further scrutiny of Richard Reid, (because he did not appear to be an Arab) and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (who was clearly not Arab) before they boarded their respective planes? > > In contrast, I would have supported better screening based on their behavior, along with a better efforts to identify flammable or explosive materials, regardless of who happened to be carrying it, (such as Anne Marie Murphy). How many times will I have to complain that your pretense of my position is that I want to exclusively screen for only a particular profile? It’s not like you to set up strawmen, and it diminishes your credence to do so. Appearance-based profiling lets us stop wasting time on Grandmas in wheelchairs. I really think you have to fly more to see how ridiculous this practice is. I’m in airport security lines 3 to 4 times a week, and I assure you, it’s farcical. “Patting down” the naked trunk of a child neatly summarizes the TSA approach to “equality.” I think it would take about two or three personal-interview face-to-face questions by a trained expert to dump Mr Reid right into the further-screening camp. As for Umar, I’d stick any young male Muslim Nigerian into a higher-risk profiling pool than, say, an elderly Tibetan Buddhist. I ask again: Is it your position that the use of profiling criteria which include appearance-based characteristics is unlikely to increase the chance that the groups being selected for more careful analysis have a higher proportion of terrorists–i.e. that appearance-based profiling, among other screening criteria–is not helpful? Or are you simply continuing to pretend that I think the only way to screen the general population is to see what they look like on the outside? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/194 "2010-12-01T15:39:32Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > False dilemma. Like torture, racial profiling is bad because it is both unfair and ineffective. I am not setting up any “dilemma” at all, false or otherwise. I have not pretended it’s an either/or. I am simply trying to figure out which of the two are being argued. I completely agree it’s unfair to be profiled because you appear to be a member of a group only some of whom are dangerous. Life is unfair. The population into which you are born is unfair. That I’m not equipped with Tiger Woods’ genes for golf is unfair. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/195 "2010-12-01T17:12:12Z")
Why would a nigerian terrorist about to bomb an airplane tell your mythical “expert” that he is muslim instead of Christian? ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/196 "2010-12-01T17:23:41Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > Why would a nigerian terrorist about to bomb an airplane tell your mythical “expert” that he is muslim instead of Christian? This is why they need to supply food on the planes again. Hand out bacon butties as we walk on, and if you refuse to eat it, they drag you off for an introduction to the rubber glove. And I get to eat a bacon butty! (Please, realize this is not serious, please…) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/197 "2010-12-01T17:59:02Z")
Or you could, you know, make them step on a Qu’ran. It’s the only way to be sure. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/198 "2010-12-01T18:07:08Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Or you could, you know, make them step on a Qu’ran. It’s the only way to be sure. I’m not a muslim and I wouldn’t step on a Quran out of respect. I’m sure I’m not the only one with some decency. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/199 "2010-12-01T18:07:32Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Or you could, you know, make them step on a Qu’ran. It’s the only way to be sure. How does that get me a bacon butty, though, sparky? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639/200 "2010-12-01T18:12:09Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > How many times will I have to complain that your pretense of my position is that I want to exclusively screen for only a particular profile? It’s not like you to set up strawmen, and it diminishes your credence to do so. Appearance-based profiling lets us stop wasting time on Grandmas in wheelchairs. It is not a straw man and until you can provide proof (or even evidence) that we will never again have an Anne Marie Murphy, the notion that the lunatics who already employ chidren as warriors and bombers will actually refrain from using wheelchair bound nonagenarians is just dumb. I am not sure that the current TSA practices–including pat downs–are the correct approach, but using appearance to either include or exclude individuals is remarkably lacking in sense. As long as you continue to believe that we can either include or exclude people for inspection based on appearance–exclusively or not–then none of my objections to your fantasy reach the level of straw man. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-correctness-and-racial-profiling/561639.md?page=11)