As mentioned before, all this racial profiling benefits the terrorists. The terrorists can just recuit the radicals from China, India or Phillipines, and can do it faster than the police can re-profile them. Then the police will have to start over again.
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*Originally posted by Debaser *
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Yes, but are we talking about reasonable people? I agree that if you have evidence of a crime and a description of someone, there’s no reason that description should not include race, weight, age, gender, or whatever is necessary to identify them. I don’t think that’s racial profiling.
The way I’ve heard it explained, racial profiling is an excuse to assume that because a person appears to be part of a specifc race, they are likely to be guilty of something. Didn’t the controversy over this begin with “profiling” non-whites in primarily white areas?
Someone else made a statement about people who look like terrorists. I think that’s a good point. There are many things that would make me suspicious about someone, but not the fact that they look Middle Eastern. Let’s not forget Oklahoma City.
I’ve never even taken a class in criminology, and I can look at someone running down the road & tell if that person looks like a jogger or a purse snatcher based on how they run, what they’re wearing, etc. IMHO, if we accept racial profiling as a valid police procedure, we’re being tolerant of poor training & blatant incompetence. I would sincerely hope that if my car gets stolen out of my driveway by some white teenaged punks, that the police don’t go arrest one of my neighbors while jogging just because he happens to be black. If they can’t do their jobs any better than that, let’s get people who can.
Sue
Chiming in as someone who has been profiled, albeit in Israel, not the U.S.
It was the summer of 1997, a period of relative tranquility in the Middle East. (Only a few months later, a pipe bomb went off in a Jerusalem market, marking what seemed to me like the turning point between the post-coital bliss of the 1993 peace accords and the tragedy we see today). My best friend and I arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv early in the morning from London, and queued up at the immigration booth for foreign nationals (I’m a U.S. citizen). The official inquired about my Pakistani visa and why I was due to travel to Egypt in a few days. I explained that I had visited my grandparents in Pakistan a few years earlier, as I often do, and that I had won an MTV game show and was currently on a two-week trip through Israel and Egypt.
Shortly after, en route to baggage claim, a very imposing airport security officer approached me and asked me more specific questions, particularly interesed if I was traveling alone. Unfortunately, my half-Jewish, half-Italian buddy (tangentially, a cousin of Joe Lieberman) was off looking for his own bags, leaving me squirming for a few minutes. Ultimately, once the official was satisfied with my answers, I continued on and had a great time.
Such measures are integral to Israel’s social order, and besides, I did match a certain travel profile, with Pakistani, British, and Egyptian visas all present in my passport. So I certainly don’t begrudge them their methods – it was surprising, coming from our culture of privacy rights, but not insulting. In fact, on my way out of Israel, EVERYONE received identically rigorous baggage checks and interrogations. (My interrogator an stunningly fresh-faced beauty in her early 20s. Made me wish strip-searches were part of her standard operating procedure.)
Long story short (too late), as a New York-born American citizen who is Muslim but not Arab, never buys one-way tickets nor ever pays in cash, hasn’t been outside the country since 1998, and, well, isn’t a terrorist, my understanding is I have very little in common with the sort of profile the government has compiled and should be using to flag suspects.
If I were pulled aside for questioning, I’d be understanding of their nervousness, since the bastards that did this know the system and are doing what they can to exploit its enlightenment. After all, I certainly would be a “Mediterranean-looking man in his early 20s traveling alone” or however the informal profile goes. But the moment it becomes an egregious example of an individual abusing his or her authority and clearly fishing for info that’s utterly irrelevant to keeping me and my fellow citizens safe, I’ll feel (thought I doubt I’ll show it) extremely indignant, and will certainly lodge formal complaints afterwards.
Now, if it were passengers on a plane who were uncomfortable with me, I’d be laughing at the absurdity of the situation, probably. Politely laughing in a “What the hell is this?” way ever more loudly as I’m escorted off the plane for being “unsettling” to the other passengers, trying to stifle my desire to tell them, “You sure you don’t want to give me a yellow star and crescent to wear while you’re at it?”
Then I’d call my best friend and have him tell “Cousin Joe” what just happened. 