WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Has the Sept. 11 terror attack on New York and Washington changed public perceptions about racial profiling? Should it? UPI National Political Analysts Peter Roff, a conservative, and Jim Chapin, a liberal, face off from opposite sides on this critical question.
Roff: Sometimes a second look is necessary
In politics, language is critically important.
Often, the way something is said matters more than its substance. Case in point: racial profiling.
The left was able to shift society's sympathies away from law enforcement, especially but not exclusively those involved in the drug war, to criminals with one carefully chosen phrase.
They labeled efforts to stop criminals based in certain circumstances on physical appearance as "racial profiling," making it seem as though some suspects were stopped because of their skin color and for no other reason than their skin color.
As any student of crime statistics can attest, skin color is certainly part of the equation. Is it, therefore, racist to acknowledge that, on a per capita basis, blacks commit more crimes then any other socio-economic group? Or is it good police work to consider the characteristics of criminals, based on experience and data, when determining when to stop a suspect?
The Sept. 11 terror attack has changed the equation.
The debate is no longer about stopping blacks driving luxury cars with Florida license plates traveling at high speeds on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now it is about keeping terrorists off of airplanes and preventing acts of mass destruction from occurring.
In this new and different context, the American people see the issue in a vastly different light.
As numerous studies have shown, criminals can be typed. There are certain tactics they employ, certain habits they repeat, certain ways of operating that can be identified. This allows police to watch for the behaviors and take appropriate action.
It makes perfect sense.
The same is probably true of terrorists. If there are certain common denominators, like Arabic heritage or non-citizen status, it makes sense to at least examine them more carefully before allowing them to board and airplane. Make no bones about it; this is discrimination. But it also makes sense. Perceptibly at least it increases the security of everyone else while doing no real harm to anyone -- except a terrorist who is caught before they act.
Unfortunately, because too many public figures make a living off the notoriety they achieve every time they scream "racism" through a bullhorn, the practice of using inborn characteristics in deciding whether to stop someone has been wildly distorted.
Certainly there have been cases when the police have abused their authority that should be rooted out and exposed. But too many people have claimed that legitimate police action has been abuse, and they are resisting real attempts to minimize the number of times a false claim can be logged.
Every traffic stop isn't a result of police racism. And every challenge to an Arab traveling in America with a foreign passport isn't, either. Sometimes it's done for a good reason.
If people understood "racial profiling" to be "criminal profiling," as they now understand current efforts to be "terrorist profiling," they would be a lot more accepting of the tactic and much less willing to let vicious opportunists exploit the better aspects of the American character, principally a strong sense of justice and an innate decency.
Chapin: Racial Profiling Still Stinks, But "National Profiling" Makes Sense
In World War II, the United States government was wrong to intern 100,000 Japanese-American citizens on the basis of their ethnic heritage. It was not wrong to intern Japanese citizens at a time when we were at war with Japan.
This elementary difference between the two cases remains today. While we are not formally at war with any Arab nation, it makes perfect legal and moral sense to pay extra attention to Arab Muslim visitors from around the world, in a context in which some Arab Muslim groups have been assaulting the United States for several decades. Non-citizens don't have a right to visit any country unless they are invited in. And if they do come, that country has a right to check out their motives.
This isn't "ethnic profiling;" it is "national profiling," if one could dub it that, and it is in accord with international law. That doesn't justify indefinite internment or an indefinite expansion of presidential powers, of course.
And it is worrisome that an indefinite number of immigrants are being held with no specific charges levied against them, unless one has faith that the government is always right. The purpose of keeping the names and numbers quiet is not to prevent al Qaida from knowing what is going on, but to prevent Americans from making their own judgments about what the government is doing. In that way, it is like the "secret" bombing of Cambodia, secret to Americans but not to Cambodians.
This same attorney general, in the middle of a national crisis, is diverting DOJ resources to investigate dying marijuana smokers in California and to get doctors in Oregon who carry out their patients' wishes to die. So it's not as if his priorities can't be criticized.
And it might be nice if such matters had been agreed upon between the branches of government, rather than taken in the form of unilateral presidential decrees when there is no declaration of war.
However, some degree of "ethnic profiling" or rather "national-origin profiling" even of citizens makes practical sense in wartime conditions. When we fought Germany or Japan, the great majority of German-Americans or Japanese-Americans were loyal, but almost all citizen spies in the U.S. were indeed to be found among those with a connection to the enemy power.
One would have to be crazy not to pay more attention to Arab-Americans than to others in this situation.
None of this justifies domestic racial profiling, however. As unpleasant as drug dealers may be, they are not engaging in mass murder. Attempts to turn the struggle against drugs into a "war" have mostly been disastrous.
Even if blacks commit -- per capita -- more crimes than whites, stopping innocent blacks all the time hardly advances the struggle against crime. Making DWB ("Driving While Black") into a regular routine has not advanced the struggle against crime, but has retarded it.
Ironically, racial profiling becomes an issue as the crime rate drops, because the likelihood that the police are stopping innocent people rises. As it is, given four centuries of American history, a lot of racial profiling smacks more of the re-enactment of racial dominance rituals than of any serious policing effort.
As such, it increases hostility between minority communities and the police force, and by doing so, probably causes less reporting of crime and more crime than it stops.
So, to summarize: National profiling -- yes; national-origin profiling -- a qualified yes; ethnic profiling in peacetime conditions -- still an unqualified no.
