Mike at Night The Pros and Cons of Racial and Ethnic Profiling A lot of attention has been directed lately at racial and ethnic profiling. First, with Blacks being targeted at certain airports as potential drug couriers, and now people from the Middle East as potential terrorists. As with practically anything worthy of discussion, there are pros and cons to the whole business of profiling.First of all, there is a definite distinction between profiling and a description of a particular suspect. Profiling refers to a GENERAL description of a particular type of offender. When describing a particular suspect, the description is a SPECIFIC description of a particular person. Many people contend that profiling goes too far because, even though it includes people who are most likely to be guilty of committing a particular crime, it also includes people who are guilty of no crime at all, other than the crime of belonging to a particular group. So, if Blacks in general are targeted as potential drug couriers, we will always find a few guilty ones as the broad net of suspicion is deployed. The problem is that a lot of innocent, law-abiding people will be caught up in that net as well. The usual reply to this problem is that if someone is truly innocent, they don't have anything to worry about and all they really lose is a little time. If they didn't lose anything BUT time, it's still time they shouldn't have lost because the Constitution guarantees us the right to go about our business as we please unless the government has probable cause that we are committing a crime. Simply belonging to a group of people that commit a particular crime disproportionately is NOT probable cause. The courts and public opinion have come to recognize that and profiling has been abandoned in most crime scenarios. On the face of things, this appears to be a good thing. Most of the time it is. But not always. We are all aware of the heightened security these days in airports because of the events of September 11. People are being pulled from line for thorough searches, sometimes strip searches, if they continue to test positive and the cause cannot be located. Again, some people say this is overstated simply because it hasn't happened to them. The problem with being pulled from line is the manner in which security determines WHO to pull from the line. It's done by random number. Every third person or every sixth person or any other number they come up with. So, we see little old ladies, teen-agers, business men, families on vacation, etc pulled from line and thoroughly searched. The positive side to profiling is when the profile is absolutely accurate. This is the case with potential terrorism on American soil. EVERY person involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center a few years ago and the tragic events of September 11 has been a Middle Eastern male. Every single one. No little old ladies. No American teenagers. No businessmen. No White or Black men or women. Only Middle Eastern males. Do we run the risk, in our devoted attempts at Political Correctness, of not doing anything at all to make airline travel safer and more secure because we're pulling the wrong people out of line, thereby potentially allowing those bent on destroying us and our way of life easy unchallenged access to planes all across the country? That certainly seems to be the case. This is a different scenario than the drug courier profile. Although a disproportionate number of drug couriers in Florida and other southern points of entry to this country are Black, by no means are all of them Black. So racial profiling here makes little sense. With terrorism it's not the same. Except for the anomaly of Timothy McVeigh, every act of terrorism is this country has been carried out by Middle Eastern male extremists. Until teenagers and little old ladies start blowing up airplanes, maybe we should be pulling out of line those people MOST LIKELY to pose a threat to our safety and forget about political correctness. ____________ Mike can be e-mailed at mikeatnight@hotmail.com |