Racial profiling

[Rhisiart]

British police, together with the CIA, and more importantly Pakistani Intelligence, have allegedly discovered a plot to blow up 12 US aircraft leaving Britain for the US, with a potential loss of life of 3,000 people.

The previous Head of the London Metropolitan Police says that international airports should concentrate on profiling potential terrorists, rather than imposing excessive screening on all flight passengers.

Some say this will lead to racist discrimination, as most Brits recognise that this de facto implies that young Muslim men should undergo extra scrutiny as opposed to white men.

Should young Muslim men accept this discrimination, given that their brethren are at Holy War with the infidels in the West, or should they complain that their rights are being denied?

 

[Qion]

I don't see how it's discrimination if that method of categorizing potential mortal threats works. I can't stop myself from being byast, but when I picture myself in their shoes, I believe I would just accept the fact that some people it up for the rest of us. This topic has been discussed so many times... I've just come to the conclusion that a line needs to be drawn between "fairness" and "logic".

 

[adambyte]

I have to admit, it first glance, it seems like a good idea.... if... only "dark" people bomb stuff, then, let's concentrate at looking at dark people, eh? Saves time, right? And although it may make snese at first.... I can only help but think that eventually the "dark" people will just find the whitey-mc-bombers, and put pressure on THEM to do the dirty work...

So... it may work for in the short-term, but... in the end, it might not matter.

Well, it's just a hypothesis. I could be completely wrong. Who knows?

 

[Cat]

You reap what you sow. If you treat them like criminals, they will become criminals. Mistrusted, shunned, oppressed, what alternative do you give them? The quality of a free democracy is measured by the way it treats its minorities, otherwise it is just a tyranny of the majority. Racial/religious profiling = racism. It will not "lead" to it, it alraedy is officially sanctioned apartheid. They are different, they are dangerous. Free democracies are inherently vulnerable: accept it or become totalitarian. There is no way to avoid some level of terrorism or criminality, not even by becoming a police state. We should rather embrace and extend, not just with mere words, but with goods and deeds, not as colonies, but as friends. What is so difficult about that? Each billion Euros, Dollars or Pounds spent on security could have gone to social programs, education, help for the poor and desperate, not just at home, but worldwide: this would save more lives, again at home and worldwide, than bolstering police and military. A bullet is an expense, a loaf of bread or a book an investment. What hope, what help have we brought to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Lebanon? More people have died on both sides as effect of the war than have died before as cause of the war. At both sides instincts take precedence over reason and we strike out in anger at each other. Then we hold all responsible for the actions of single individuals, like a vengeful god persecuting the guilty across generations. Racial profiling is assuming guilt instead of assuming innocence. That is where democracy ends. When we are not anymore all equal before the law, we do not have a free country aymore, we have civil war fought with policies, laws, oppression, segregation and deportation. Will there be a final solution?

 

[Qion]

You reap what you sow. If you treat them like criminals, they will become criminals. Mistrusted, shunned, oppressed, what alternative do you give them? The quality of a free democracy is measured by the way it treats its minorities, otherwise it is just a tyranny of the majority. Racial/religious profiling = racism. It will not "lead" to it, it alraedy is officially sanctioned apartheid. They are different, they are dangerous. Free democracies are inherently vulnerable: accept it or become totalitarian. There is no way to avoid some level of terrorism or criminality, not even by becoming a police state. We should rather embrace and extend, not just with mere words, but with goods and deeds, not as colonies, but as friends. What is so difficult about that? Each billion Euros, Dollars or Pounds spent on security could have gone to social programs, education, help for the poor and desperate, not just at home, but worldwide: this would save more lives, again at home and worldwide, than bolstering police and military. A bullet is an expense, a loaf of bread or a book an investment. What hope, what help have we brought to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Lebanon? More people have died on both sides as effect of the war than have died before as cause of the war. At both sides instincts take precedence over reason and we strike out in anger at each other. Then we hold all responsible for the actions of single individuals, like a vengeful god persecuting the guilty across generations. Racial profiling is assuming guilt instead of assuming innocence. That is where democracy ends. When we are not anymore all equal before the law, we do not have a free country aymore, we have civil war fought with policies, laws, oppression, segregation and deportation. Will there be a final solution?

I agree to some point that as racial profiling or religious profiling proliferates, so will racism. However, I still go back on my point that if a group or country is acting in a way that is causing mortal injuries to other countries or groups, people from that country should be more susceptible to being questioned. Yea, I know that sounds like I'm extrapolating the acts of individuals to a national level, but for this particular situation it's not so unruly. People of a certain group are undeniably acting in a way that is threatening to certain other groups. Treat them like criminals, and they'll become criminals? I guess, but don't we all go through random searches at airports anymore? My girlfriend was born in LA, she looks Mexican as do some of her aquaintences, and they could just as easily be sent down to the police station for looking Mexican as a dark-skinned person from the Middle East could be checked at an airport. Some of these things we just have to own up to and deal with as far as I'm concerned.

 

[fryke]

Is this really a honest question? (Replying to the first post...) Of course you have to screen everyone the same way. I don't understand how people start to throw every inch of their humanity over board only because "the other side" does. I thought this was taught in kindergarden.

 

[adambyte]

Hate breeds more hate. Cat, as wonderful and idealistic as your ideas are, I'm afraid that many many people are too selfish to even BEGIN to address them.

 

[Qion]

Hate breeds more hate. Cat, as wonderful and idealistic as your ideas are, I'm afraid that many many people are too selfish to even BEGIN to address them.

I refrained from calling them idealistic, but I agree with you. How something should be is usually not how it is or could be. Government, politics, and people have been f**ked up for milleniums.

 

[bluedevils]

and how many of you are on the recieving end of racial profiling? I was just talking to a co-worker of mine yesterday. He rolls down all his windows and puts his hands out the window when apporaching police road blocks. It is sad that this type of stuff happens. I don't think it is right, but I can't say I know what the police have to face everyday as well.

To me this type of issue cannot be black or white (no pun intended at all) and must be carefully weighed in the grey.

 

[Rhisiart]

Is this really a honest question? (Replying to the first post...) Of course you have to screen everyone the same way. I don't understand how people start to throw every inch of their humanity over board only because "the other side" does. I thought this was taught in kindergarten.

Yes, it is an honest question. Racial profiling is apparently what many security experts want (and most likely already practice). They are not suggesting that screening does not apply to everyone, but rather that extra measures may have to be taken for young Muslim men, regardless of their racial ethnicity (i.e. including East-European Muslims).

Is racial profiling unfair? What if White Supremists were on the rampage, attempting to kill as many non-Christians as they can. What if they planned to bomb airlines, subway trains or fly planes into skyscrapers? As a white male faced with this threat I would quite happily submit myself to whatever extra security checks were necessary, regardless of what country I live in. I wouldn’t take it personally.

In numerous polls, nearly a quarter of young Muslim males in Britain showed support for the bombing of London, Madrid and 9/11. With figures like these, what on earth are the security forces expected to do? To imply that those responsible for passenger safety have lost their humanity is a lazy argument. Neither you nor I have to make such difficult decisions. In the opinion of those assigned to protect us, pragmatism over-rides cultural and religious sensitivities.

Looking at the wider picture, my own view is that Bush and Blair are as much as part of the problem as some young Muslim males. Islamic radicalism preceded Bush and Blair’s legacy, but these two deluded idiots have worked damn hard to create exactly the right conditions to allow it to flourish. Perhaps a change of leadership and a radical change of foreign policy in the Middle East might obviate the need for draconian security measures at our airports.

 

[Cat]

It might be idealistic, but things like consitutions, which are at the base of our democracies, are based on ideals. When we stop following them, we become no better than totalitarian oppressive regimes. Of course it is a slippery slope, so we may argue back and forth until it is too late.

Is racial profiling unfair? What if White Supremists were on the rampage, attempting to kill as many non-Christians as they can. What if they planned to bomb airlines, subway trains or fly planes into skyscrapers? As a white male faced with this threat I would quite happily submit myself to whatever extra security checks were necessary, regardless of what country I live in. I wouldn’t take it personally.

This reverses the legal situation. You are taking steps to prove your innocence instead of the accusers taking steps to prove your guilt. By officially sanctioning racial profiling as a security policy, we declare a part of the population as unequal to the rest and treat them differently: we criminalise them, we assume guilt instead of innocence. Pro-active, pre-emptive justice is done. Even if there is no crime, we actively go looking for evidence to condemn them. At that point we have already sacrificed our human dignity, so what is left to protect? What are we saving and kepping secure by perverting it? Freedom? Democracy? We are losing them step by step with very little neeed for terrorists to actually blow up things. If you start fighting back by becoming an undemocratic police state, then you have already lost. Being a democracy means being vulnerable. Accepting to die for you ideals involves accepting the risk of being blown up by extremists rather than taking up arms against them. Already the romans discovered that normal warfare can never best guerrilla tactics. It is a useless waste of values, life and resources. This translates very concretely and pratically into amounts of money spent versus results obtained. I repeat: bullets are an expense, food and education an investment. The war has caused more loss of life and money than all succeful terrorist attacks up to now. Can't you think of a more efficient way of dealing with the situation?

 

[Rhisiart]

Cat, you make a very intelligent and convincing argument here. Yes we ought to show more courage, behave in an ethical manner and thus defy those that wish to terrorise us. As far as thinking of a more effient way of dealing with the situation, I will give that some thought.

I assume the war you refer to is Iraq, which is undoubtedly a total waste of life and resources, all in the name of Bush and Blair's Christian fundamentalist idea of democracy-making.

However, it is difficult to marry the need to hold the sort of convictions that you display (and you are of course right), with the day to day fear that some lunatic somewhere, white, brown or black, wants to kill your children in the belief that God will reward him in Paradise.

Nevertheless, I agree with what you have said in principle, and principles are important if we want to live in a fair and equitable society.

However if I am sitting on a plane with my family next to two agitiated Pakistani young men, I will watch them like a hawk. I don't mind dying for the ideals you aspire to, but I would do everything in my power to ensure my kids aren't going to.

 

[Qion]

This reverses the legal situation. You are taking steps to prove your innocence instead of the accusers taking steps to prove your guilt. By officially sanctioning racial profiling as a security policy, we declare a part of the population as unequal to the rest and treat them differently: we criminalise them, we assume guilt instead of innocence.

You're not really taking any "steps" to prove anything. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. We're not talking about strip-searches and full-body cavity checks, we're talking about running you over with a wand, having a pat-down, and going through your pockets. That seems fairly "human" to me, as it's potentially *saving* the lives that would have been lost.

Accepting to die for you ideals involves accepting the risk of being blown up by extremists rather than taking up arms against them. Already the romans discovered that normal warfare can never best guerrilla tactics. It is a useless waste of values, life and resources. This translates very concretely and pratically into amounts of money spent versus results obtained. I repeat: bullets are an expense, food and education an investment. The war has caused more loss of life and money than all succeful terrorist attacks up to now. Can't you think of a more efficient way of dealing with the situation?

Sure, you just said it. Die. Die for our ideals, die for the very thing which you purport is saving us. Maybe in the long run Cat, but we're talking about profiling right now.

Like rhsiart said, I think you have a good argument. I guess the reason I'm arguing is because it's a bit off-topic. I would love to be able to lean back on philosophy and live idealistically all the time, but that doesn't mean I won't protect my family from a lunatic with an AK and the idea that killing me will send them to heaven. That's just not my type of thing to die for.

 

[billbaloney]

You're not really taking any "steps" to prove anything. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. We're not talking about strip-searches and full-body cavity checks, we're talking about running you over with a wand, having a pat-down, and going through your pockets. That seems fairly "human" to me, as it's potentially *saving* the lives that would have been lost.

You may want to discuss the concept of the "slippery slope" with Cat, the resident academic philosopher. Here in the United States we have a seemingly endless number of instances these days of the over-application of what Congress thought it approved, or what "the people" thought they asked for.

The problem, Qion, is you never get what you want. If you think you want a racially-driven yet mild regime of extra inspection for the dark-skinned among us, what you really get is a racially-charged situation where an entire population gets painted with the brush of suspicion, which inevitably leads to fear, misunderstanding, and hate on both sides. And that, of course, leads to less security.

For instance: perhaps you'd like to take a walk through a high school in one of the poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, where because the population is overwhelmingly people of color there are guards at each door, metal detectors, and a general feeling of "control the black kids, they're all potentially gangsters". Perhaps your advice for them is, "Well, most gang members in America are black and in cities; so you should accept this if you really want to help make society safer."

Do you see why that's a bad argument? It's not because you can't make a logical argument in favor of it; witness the painstakingly constructed essays on the right in the United States in favor of just this kind of racial profiling. It's because principles themselves have real-world effects, and those effects can undermine other, more important principles.

In America we interned every Japanese citizen during WWII. The logic was sound:

1. The Japanese are attacking us.
2. The Japanese could have spies among the U.S. population.
3. These spies are most likely Japanese.
4. If we intern every Japanese person in America, we have most likely interned any possible Japanese spies.

The results undermined more important principles, i.e., our constitutional defenses regarding equal protection, search and seizure, and the inalienable right to liberty.

 

[Qion]

Look, I'm not a moron. I understand fine what Cat has to say. My entire argument was based upon the fact that this is a situational topic, not a world topic. "Should we allow racial profiling in airports in Britain for this particular event?" Hell yes! Where are you coming from, lecturing to me about American history and insinuating that I don't understand the potential outcomes of a racist society? Hello, we're not talking about a worldwide society! We're talking about some bloody airports! Would you really like to get into some ugly, political, nationalistic, racist, byast, religious, humanitarian argument with me? Go ahead... but damn... make sure you understand where somebody is coming from before you go off on a tangent and lecture to them like they've never taken a history course before.

 

[billbaloney]

I'm not making an argument about your intelligence. I am arguing that you can't ask this question -- "Should we allow racial profiling in airports in Britain for this particular event?" -- in isolation.

To ask the question and demand that it be answered strictly per se is disingenuous, or impossible, or both. My point about high schools in the Bronx, and Japanese internment, is that they both represent situations where society has tried, and failed, to implement an "isolated" policy of racial profiling.

Perhaps you can suggest, as a student of history, a situation where racial profiling was implemented as part of an isolated policy that had no far-reaching and negative side effects, and that achieved its stated goal.

 

[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.

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

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.