Racial Profiling

Racism Forum

In the wake of 9/11, is racial profiling considered racist?

Some would argue that it does. But personally, I'd rather be safe than sorry. My boyfriend is Turkish, if we were traveling together and were subjected to additional searches because of his nationality, I'd take the delay in stride. Like I said, better safe than sorry. Besides I think it makes more sense to see airport security search men of middle eastern descent than it does to see them searching 10 year old kids. (Because they were picked randomly.)
I think the ACLU and political correctness scoffs at the idea of racial profiling, and that's why they have random searches. But let's face it, all of the terrorists on 9/11 were of middle eastern descent with temporary Visas and one way tickets. I think under those circumstances, profiling should be shelved.
As for the unfortunate middle eastern men and women who were denied boarding or asked to leave their planes in the days after 9/11, I think that's wrong.

I do to but those people who complained and got them off the plane have rights too I guess.

In the '70s when Iran had held all those people hostage, we sent all their students packing and sent them home.

Hmm, I don't know. Think back to when the USA and Japan were fighting and you guys sent all the American Japanese off to camps "just in case" they were sympathetic to the Japanese. At the time it was considered the right thing to do, but now we look back at it and it's considered totally wrong and racist. I wonder in twenty years how we'll look back on this issue?

I am sure we all agree with it because we're white and haven't had to go through all the suspician and strange looks and people assumeing we're terrorists just because of our race or religion. If you were Arabic or Mulsim you might not think it was a good idea.

while I'm sure Arabs and Muslims are given the stink eye sometimes, there is not widespread oppressive racism against them, and I applaud America. We finally seem to be shedding our idioditc prejudices.

I think racial profiling is just a plain stupid idea because it will not be effective. If we were to look at all the Americans held in connection with terrorism, we get a biracial (Black and White), Peurto Rican, and White person. Racial profiling won't work also because al-Qaeda trained the people for the 9/11 attacks to avoiding "looking Muslim" (i.e. no long beards, no Islamic customs). They know what will get you caught, so they trained their members to avoid the stereotypical look. The only alternative is to take every single brown skinned person and profile them. This is just idiotic.

And racial profiling always carries racism with it because there are no calls for it when you look at people like Timothy McVeigh, no one considers profiling all white males with military connections. And if they did profiling would it work?

After Columbine, they started profiling all the goth kids, but when other shootings in schools occured, surprise, surprise, they weren't goth. However, kids that dress in goth are still targeted.

Racial profiling is just a sloppy method of enforcement because you really don't have to think. You use the "take 'em all" approach and hope for the best.

Law enforcement requires a profile, but you have to look at other factors before race. If you look at race first, you're making a big mistake.

Example: You have two one-way tickets. Law enforcement wants you to flag these tickets. Now if you wanted to look at race first, you pull your ten Arab-looking people from the group. After that you look at their tickets and further investigate the one-way ticket holders. This is just crappy methodology because there could easily be someone that doesn't fit the profile, and they have a one-way ticket, but oh, they're white, so they continue on. * BOOM * your plane goes down, because you made a judgement on race rather than other factors.

I agree the U.S. is not as racist as it used to be, but there is still a lot of racism that remains in this country. It's more of a subconscious thing for some, that's why we need to open up dialogue so we can see some of the inadvertent racism that still exists.

I am not 100% against racial profiling, there are some extreme examples where it can be used to solve crimes. And I'm not talking about just black people. If anyone's interested in a bit more depth to this argument, read "Criminal Profiling: A view into the mind of criminals and their behavior". A variety of circumstances of a crime can lead investigators to determining physical attributes of a person including race, weight, height, and even body structure. Most of these determinations come from psychological profilers.

But a blanket racial profile against Middle-Eastern people seems extreme. I pride our country on striving for racial equality. As soon as we give up that bit of freedom for that bit of security, we're just hypocrites. I know people argue that it's just a safety concern but frankly if our airports aren't secure enough that someone has to be given special search treatment to see if they're a danger, we have much bigger problems than we think.