Racial profiling makes very good sense: NOT profiling is stupid.
However, being rude and rough before you know WTF you are doing and to whom? Really stupid! (On the other hand, that WILL guarantee you more hits in future :-)
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
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4 comments:
Guaranteed the whites are profiled in Africa. In Iraq. Everyplace that it makes sense to profile white people.
If you are hunting for a bear, you'd better look for a bear. Checking out woodchucks, beavers, squirrels is more like something out of a kids book : ""Are you a bear, Mr. Gopher"
"No", said Mr Gopher, "I am not a bear".
Here's where liberals and conservatives part: the liberal will maintain an attitude that makes not sense. If it gets the liberal killed, well and good. But we put everyone at risk, and that pisses people off.
Racial profiling does NOT mean you beat the shit out of every Arab... nor do you even ruffle their bags. You say, "excuse me sir, sorry to disturb you, but please permit me to inspect your luggage. Sorry for the inconvenience."
If there were Israeli spies about and I was wearing a star of David, I'd sure as hell expect to be treated with a little extra caution. Being short, a bit of a nose, thinning hair, I don't need to wear the star :-)
However, it IS profiling, and law enforcement CANNOT approach as if they really HAVE a bad guy! THAT is nuts. You have to know the difference between profiling and probably cause.
Racial profiling makes sense on one level to me*. If we are at "war" with Islamic terrorists then giving Muslims special attention makes sense. If we are at "war" with Arabs then profiling Arabs makes sense. Is it different from profiling people due to the nation they are from? BUT...
THE problem of racial profiling is that while we are looking for Arab terrorists, the terrorists will sneak in a white woman who will blow something up. That is why it is not helpful over the long run. It's a first line of defense. But not the defense.
I bet we're going to be stung badly by some white woman from Alabama or something along those lines.
* I know this is very politically incorrect and is patently unfair. But it none-the-less makes sense on a common sense level. What we need to do is heighten awareness that it won’t just be Muslims and Arabs that will do terrorist acts.
If we define racial profiling as "hauling them in" then I would agree with you. But it's not, it's taking extra precautions, being more guarded, inspecting more thoroughly. When the "Hispanic male, average build, with goatee, under 30" is being searched for, the cops certainly don't slow down to check out the black female to see if they fit the description. That's profiling. Once again, if we are at war with a nation let's say, then it makes sense to be wary of someone from that nation even though that would be totally unfair to the vast majority of those people.
"But to view a group of people as suspicious based on a stereotype is unfair."
This is the essence of the argument. I completely agree that it is unfair and can actually be counter productive as I motioned in another post. But it would be stupid to ignore the fact that those who wish us ill (and they do exist despite our despotic neo-fascist administration's abuse of fear) are from a certain people. You use an example of making two physically separate lines at airports, one for Arabs and another for everyone else. I submit that you don't need to form separate lines in the physical world in order to form them in the minds of people and the authorities that are doing security. Is it fair, no, but Muslims and Arabs need to get their shit together. Their cultural myth has run headlong into reality and they are playing victim and blaming us. Yes, we have a bad history and we are not being helpful. But as I heard on Air America yesterday, the Saudis teach their kids to walk and hate at about the same time. We, here in the US also need to take care of our shit. Our Taliban's cultural myth has also run into reality and they are turning on us and stealing our government.
But I ramble...
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