Racial profiling

[Qion]

I never said I was a "student of history", thanks. My thing is psychology, but I keep up with events in human history that I find to be interesting or important.

Anyway, both of your examples to me are not good for an objective comparison with this situation. They both have to deal with a much larger scale of people; the high school example having to do with thousands of blacks in a situation where they are actually the majority, and the Japanese example having to do with thousands of Japanese all living sparsely throughout the whole of the U.S. Knowledgeable, but not exactly meaningful to this situation. A British airport is less general than the entire U.S. or the entire high school population of the Bronx.

I agree, it's egotistical to assume that racial profiling would absolutely work in this given situation. It's not ill-based to relate this situation to what has worked or not worked in the past. However, it's also egotistical to assume that it wouldn't work, and would cause fear, resentment, and more conflict. That is completely dependent on situation. Both of us have strong arguments for either side, and this will do nothing but proliferate if we keep bickering back and forth.

[billbaloney]

I don't know what role egotism plays here...don't understand the choice of words.

I'm not sure that we're "bickering back and forth" either. I think this point that we're talking about was actually the core of the original question that started this thread.

I'm not assuming that racial profiling, in any quantity, will lead to these effects (fear, resentment, and so on). I'm deducing from every possible situation that I can think of. Your "strong argument", however, does seem to be based on assumptions, and not on any historical precedent.

A British airport, in fact, is a very general field of activity for this regime, because Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world. You're suggesting that it's a good idea to establish a racially-based checkpoint regime at one of the busiest airports in the world. It certainly dwarfs high schools in the Bronx in terms of its scope.

[Cat]

I'm not sure about the "scale" argument:

''BAA’s UK airports handled 15 million passengers in July''

6.5 million of which passed through Heathrow.

How is racial profiling different from giving people some recognisable badge to sew on their clothing?

It is different and worse because the stigma exists in the eye of the beholder and can be wrongfully assigned and not easily removed.

A hypothesis can be falsified by just one case against. A principle can be lost due to just one precedent. If the principle is one that is fundamental to the consitution of your free democracy, the consequences can become very scary.

[Mikuro]

Security-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-Freedom

Pick a spot on the line, because you can't have one without compromising the other. On the far end of "security", you have an evil, totalitarian government in control of everything, and the far end of "freedom" is just anarchy.

Originally Posted by Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

I truly believe those quotes (although I realize they have more weight to Americans than Brits). And I'm sick and tired of politicians acting like these are outdated beliefs held by people who don't recognize the threats we face. I live in New York City; we've obviously been hit a lot harder by terrorism than anywhere else in the country, so yeah, I think I appreciate the dangers. And I'm willing to accept them. That's the price of freedom.


I have very strong beliefs on the matter, but it's really all a matter of degress — again I point to the spots on the line — so I can certainly respect those who disagree with me....as long as their position is logical and self-consistent. (That means I can't respect most of our leaders, just for the record.)

An example of an idea I simply can't respect is the random (I mean, "random") bag searches currently going on in the NYC subway system. The primary defense its supporters use against the obvious claim that it's unconstitutional and violates human rights is that "it's voluntary; if someone doesn't want to be searched, they're free to leave the subway and come in through another entrance." Greeeaaat. That basically means that the only people who WILL be searched are innocent people who don't have the time/energy/guts to resist. It reduces the chance of a successful search to ZERO, since obviously anyone with a bomb will choose NOT to be searched. (Either that or they'll instantly blow up everyone in the vicinity; I wonder how our brave police officers feel about being assigned suicide missions. Suicide missions with a miniscule chance of success, sure, but...wait, does that make it better or worse?)

So what exactly is the purpose of these searches? I'm left with three logical conclusions: 1) The people behind this plan are breathtakingly stupid, 2) They really do just want to encroach on the freedom of the innocent, or 3) They're pandering to the fearful and uninformed. None of these are respectable.


The same is true of most of these efforts made in the name of security. I wouldn't be so opposed to them as a rule if there were any sign that they actually WORKED. The indiscriminate phone taps, random searches, and racial profiling have all failed to produce results. What HAS produced results? Only the methods that have been legal and accepted for decades: targetted surveillance based on intelligence, not shots in the dark.

You'll probably never make me agree with racial profiling. You might, however, make me respect it. But right now I don't.

[pds]

Not just in theory, but in practice I have to reject the profiling solution completely.

My daughter flew to London on the 10th (day the plot was uncovered). She had a bit of trouble getting through the airport, but mostly because of the disruption to take-off schedules and a rainstorm at JFK. I just flew from JFK to Cairo and it took me about an extra 10 minutes to get through the formal stuff at the airport (though we went an hour earlier just in case). I can put up with an extra 10 or 20 minutes of checking. (I really don't buy that much liquid stuff at the duty free anyway.)

I would be offended if there were two separate systems - or if my salt-of-the-earth brother-in-law were singled out because his brown skin or oriental origin. I'll put up with the minor inconvenience.

The present state of war is a result of the abandonment of principles in the name of practicality. The fundamentalists are not attacking western freedom, they are protesting (wrongly) against stupid western policies that have upheld oppressive regimes while abandoning (wrongly) their moral obligations to aid and educate. So how can a further abandonment of moral requirements do anything but exacerbate the situation.

[Rhisiart]

As I initially posted this thread, I would like to add further comment. My personal views have been modulated to an extent by very sound liberal postings from the likes of Cat, Bill Baloney and Mikuro.

The title of the thread is what security experts use. This of course is entirely inaccurate and meaningless. Perhaps a better term is cultural profiling. A lot more complex, but not based on skin colour.

I have a very serious problem with:
• Neo Nazis
• Stalinists
• The Klu Klux Klan
• The Black Panthers
• White and black youths carrying weapons into schools
• Christian, Jewish or Hindu fundamentalists
• Hutu militia groups in the 1990's
• Serbian ultra-nationalists
• Algerian/British/Pakistani/Indonesian/Egyptian terrorists
• The IRA and British intelligence (the latter being no better than their Republican counterparts)
• Bader-Meinhof
• Basque separatists
• Lombardian politicians (e.g. Berscolini)
• Osama Bin Laden, Bush and Blair etc.

What do they all have in common? Arrogance and blind belief - not skin colour.

Perhaps we have to get away from race and focus instead on negative sub-cultures.

Cultural identities, political beliefs and religious convictions are forces for both good and evil. Maybe focusing on fanatical sub-cultural groups is the way forward (i.e. through intelligence operations as Mikuro suggests), rather than racial profiling, which in essence is a blunt tool.

Having said this, I still don't have to make life and death decisions in our airports. It is easy to pontificate from the comfort of your ergonomically designed computer chair.

I guess Qion and I are just part of the 'Self Preservation Society'.

[reed]

rhisiart....

You forgot the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization. At Midnight.

Just jumping in here, I think we are trapped by today's events: scare tactics by the Bush/Blair crowd, true terrorists (from everywhere), The Press, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, "North/South" economics, oil, China, four wheel drives, more Chinese, greedy businessmen, ghettos, immigration, poverty, the Euro/dollar exchange (just kidding), bad television, etc. and most of all....we must CONSUME. In a word, we get what we deserve because we are pigs. The human "race" has not been playing with a full deck for centuries and now we are running out of ice.
If I'm double checked at an airport because of my looks...tough nuts. This is the crappy situation we have ALL created and that is the way the cookie will crumble from now on. What a world. Helas!!!!!

"Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves seems like a book to re-read.

Do I sound like a downer? Sorry.

[Rhisiart]

Originally Posted by reed

rhisiart....

You forgot the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization. At Midnight.

Yes, I get your point. It was bit of a pointless list. I over cooked the eggs in my attempt to reassure other contributors that I am not some right-wing WASP lunatic (actually I am White Celtic Non-Conformist Protestant).

P.S. Just how dangerous are the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization? Are they easy to identify (i.e. to do they wear just towels around their waists?).