What is wrong with Racial Profiling?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I should add that I'm not opposed to limited racial (or anything else actually) profiling in certain circumstances (ie: in the context of an investigation or during a major terrorist scare etc).

[ag]

Seems like those opposed are getting stuck in the rut of saying that not everyone would be caught or maybe they'll use white bombers. The fact is, a majority of terrorists that have attacked lately, especially in the US and UK, the places that profiling should be put in place, have been of a different skin color/racial group than the large majority of the country. Sure, you won't catch McVeigh if you only stop non-whites, but would you have caught the 19 fuckers on 9/11 or the 8 bastards that bombed the underground? Yes, obviously you would. Don't limit the profiling to just one group or ethnicity, search everyone who doesn't look American and use random searches on all males between 16-55 and all females between 16-35.

But frequently not different skin color than millions of people in the area they attacked. In othe words, if you define the target group sufficiently generally to encompass all the attackers in recent years, you've almost defined the profiling away (at least, as a useful tool, since you won't be able to logistically check the entire target population, and would get swamped with thousands of "false positive" alerts, detracting the resources from useful terrorist-fighting efforts). And if you narrow it down to manageable levels (e.g., just Muslim Arab young males looking obviously middle-eastern and speaking with a heavy accent , you would have missed most terrorists - ALL, every single one, of the London batch, by the way).

Also, letting the women over 35 or men over 55 go just guarantees that the next attack will be by an older individual. So, why imposing these arbitrary constraints?

Once again, it is OK to "profile" as long as you continue to randomly search everyone. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), once you are doing it, you have defined profiling away - you are simply randomly searching the entire population. It is what I've been saying all this time: the most efficient way to conceal profiling is not to profile.

And it is not possible to non-randomly search the entire target population every time they enter a train, once it is defined generally enough to include even a majority of the perpetrators in recent attacks. You'd know what I am talking about if you've been to either NYC or London in recent years. If you just look at non-Americans (or non-Brits - well, over 20% of NY Metro Area population were born outside U.S. (more than that in the City proper). That's 4 million people right there!  In any case, the most of the people, who exploded in London last month were born in the U.K. - they spoke accentless British English (the only exception was Jamaican). If you define any "non-white" as a target group - well, that's a majority of NYC population. If you include "Arabs" (though most, if not all, London bombers were non-Arab, I think) - well, a lot of the Arabs are virtually indistinguishable from South Europeans (especially, those from Southern Italy and Southern Spain) and Jews - if you included those groups, you've included overwhelming majority of NYC residents.

If you insist on doing this, logistically it would be a lot easier, much more efficient and even less offensive to just prohibit the target population take public transit (or even intern it).  At least, that would have the benefit of not having to rely on faulty ethnic reconition by the police: just give the subway passes to White Native-born non-Arab Americans and don't give them to the rest.

[The Duke]

ag, you just aren't addressing what people like Jake and I are saying.  You keep up with this myth that a profiling policy means you only search those who fit the ethnic profile.  The facts is that profiling does not do this, it simply levels a higher scrutiny against those who ft the profile than those people currently recieve.  You would still see searches of older people and other ethnicities, and its fundamentally dishonest for you to continue to pretend otherwise.  It has been repeatedly explained to you and others in no unceratin terms what a profiling policy means, and you continue to willfully mischaracterize that policy.

[ag]

ag, you just aren't addressing what people like Jake and I are saying.  You keep up with this myth that a profiling policy means you only search those who fit the ethnic profile.  The facts is that profiling does not do this, it simply levels a higher scrutiny against those who ft the profile than those people currently recieve.  You would still see searches of older people and other ethnicities, and its fundamentally dishonest for you to continue to pretend otherwise.  It has been repeatedly explained to you and others in no unceratin terms what a profiling policy means, and you continue to willfully mischaracterize that policy.

Well, if you randomly search everyone, it is not profiling in my book. If you just look slightly more carefully at some types - they do it anyway, and have always done it, and will always do it, irrespective of the usefulness of the strategy. If all the discussion is about "whether some types of people should be checked more frequently" - it's not worth discussing.  Even if the police get explicit orders not to do it, they will still do it - it's human nature to single out "strange-looking foreigners". Not that I think it by itself prevented many a terrorist attack, but that's not something I would care about that much - in my book that's not profiling.

As anyone who belongs to a "suspicious" ethnic group will testify, they do face a lot more checks than a run of the mill white girl does. Hey, I am a bearded guy who travels internationally a few times a year with "strange" documents, and speaks with an untraceable but strange accent - I can testify myself (I can tell you even in which airports I am being profiled "in", and in which "out" - I've just learned never to go through Houston, since I always miss connections there).  As far as I am concerned, it is still a waste of resources, but it is a sort of a battle not worth fighting. As I said once before: if you see a Middle-Eastern looking guy going unchecked, whereas they are checking you in the airport, it is most likely because they've just checked him around the corner. If you see this on a train - well, if it's random, it's random (some Arabs won't be checked, and some whites will be, even if you check Arabs a lot more frequently, as they most definitely do).

[Jake]

I still don't think you're understanding. We continue the random searches on everyone, but supplement the searches with extra attention to those who fit whatever profile you're looking for.

[ag]

I still don't think you're understanding. We continue the random searches on everyone, but supplement the searches with extra attention to those who fit whatever profile you're looking for.

I understand.  What's so controversial? How is it different from the current practice in force since times immemorial? Do you honestly think that "young foreign-looking Arab males" don't get searched at a much higher rate than blond Swedish old ladies?  Do you honestly think that even an explicit ban on doing so would change this?  I still could argue it is a dumm waste of resources, but the world is so full of dumm waste of resources that one learns to live with it.  If all the argument is about "whether one could check 'Arabs' more ferquently than 'WASPS'", then there is nothing to argue about  - I could bet that the current practice is a lot more racially discriminatory in this respect than you'd like to impose.