INVERTED RACIAL PROFILING

Something bothered me about Jon Lehman's questioning of Condi Rice but it came and went in a flash and I got distracted in the flood of material that day. Luckily, someone else did not get distracted, and we get this incendiary piece in today's NRO.

You may think that there is always and everywhere no excuse for the use of race and ethnicity as a category in risk assessment. You may think that we have to take into consideration the fact that probabilities are what probabilities are, and random searches are a waste of resources. Now, I think that's a debate (a debate, in fact, that I wish we'd actually have openly instead of hemming and hawwing.)

But whatever your position on racial profiling per se, you would surely admit that there may be a time and a place when more than one person is suspicious, and happens to be of the same non-white race in line to board an airline. It could happen. And if it does happen, and more than one of those suspicious people were to be given security scrutiny, then the airline would be fined.

Does this make the first damn bit of sense to you?

Comments

[Athena]

I don't support "racial profiling" one bit.

Lets face it, 19 out of 19 hijackers in the US have been Arabs. I'm no math person, but from my calculations I'd say that's...umm...roughly 100%.

So I think it's a fair prediction that the next hijacker will have an Arab appearance.

That is no longer "racial profiling." That's called a description of the suspect.

We can't live in la-la land, there are terrorist cells in the United States. The authorities admit it.

I doubt the cells' members are little old ladies with oxygen tanks and older, motorcycle-type men with Harley shirts.

Putting the lives of Americans on the line, whether they be arab, black, white or whatever for the sake of not "offending" someone by giving them an extra look is ridiculous to me.

Even though I'm not a math person, I'm reminded with the phrase that I learned in elementary school, "Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles."

Not all Arabs are terrorists, but (SO FAR) all US commercial hijackers/terrorists have been Arabs.

To me it would be ridiculous to NOT check ANY person acting suspcious, especially a person who fits the description of a suspect.

Too much PC is a threat.

[mkultra]

What? What are you saying?

First, your point is far from a model of clarity. But if your point is that an airline would be penalized if it searched a person of Arab descent when there were OTHER objective indications that the person may be about to hijack an airliner, then you are simply wrong. What law says that you cannot stop and search such a person in this situation?

A silly waste of cyberspace, Cori.

[Patterico]

mkultra,

Did you read the NRO piece that Cori linked to? It sounds as though you haven't.

What you say is "simply wrong" is what that piece says is happening.

Moreover, these things aren't 100% perfect. Mistakes can be made. Would you prefer that we err on the side of security, or err on the side of P.C.? You can't have both. Which do you choose?

I know which I choose.