The Case Against Racial Profiling

Last night I caught a part of the show “Tough Crowd” in which Colin Quinn was arguing in favor of racial profiling. His argument was roughly this : “If I see an Irish guy stumble out of a bar, should I automatically assume that he was just in there for the peanuts?” In other words, why shy away from stereotypes if they have a basis in fact? Rather than get on a rant about why stereotyping is just another example of self-fulfilling prophecies and selective observation (I’ll just say this : If the prevailing stereotype about young black men was that they were all nerdy, suddenly every black guy would start looking like Urkel), I want to clear up the misconception that the liberal objection to racial profiling is another example of political correctness run amok.

The real problem with racial profiling is that it doesn’t work. While these examples are about fighting terrorism, I think they’re probably applicable to any type of racial profiling.

  • Alienating the people whose help we need - One of the biggest keys in fighting terrorism is convincing people “on the inside” to become informants. In order to do this, we not only need to send the message that the terrorists are wrong, but also that we can be trusted. If we treat everyone with brown skin like a terrorist, gaining that trust becomes impossible.
  • Too much information - The intelligence failures that preceded 9-11 were failures with interpreting intelligence, not collecting it. As many experts have noted, the dots were all there, nobody was able to draw the lines to connect them. Racial profiling creates more suspects (dots), when the real problem is that we don’t have enough people “drawing lines”.
  • They’re not all Arabs - If we relied on racial profiling, we never would have caught Richard Reid, Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph…..

    Okay, the mental list I had last night when I was screaming at the TV is escaping me. There’s a couple more reasons I originally had in mind that I can’t remember. If you can think of any other, post em’ in comments.


    • posted by greg on January 23, 2004 @ 10:44 am

    10 comments

    1. How about instead of racial or gender profiling we start: “That guy looks suspicious ” profiling? Of course that would entail having security personel who were trained to spot suspicious behavior, which would cost money.

      What I’m not in favor of is the color coded passenger system. That makes it EASIER for a terrorist to blow up a plane. All they need to do is go on a couple of flights beforehand to test what they’re threat level is. If they get searched frequently, they know they have a high threat level.

      Comment by andrew — January 23, 2004 @ 11:50 am

    2. How about instead of racial or gender profiling we start: “That guy looks suspicious ” profiling?

      Exactly. People seem to forget that the reason they arrested the “20th hijacker” wasn’t because he was a creepy Arab guy, but because he wanted to learn how to fly an airliner, but didn’t want to learn how to land! If we ever wanna win this “war”, we need less racial profiling and more “questionable behavior” profiling.

      Comment by greg — January 23, 2004 @ 11:56 am

    3. speaking of profiling based on color-

      i thought that i was always getting weird looks from my fellow suburbanites for having blue hair (you’d think that in Glendale- about 5 minutes from hollywood- they’d be used to something like that), but then my girlfriend gave me a pair of pink converse shoes- now i get even weirder, dirtier looks from every mildly homophobic glendalian in town.

      Comment by tom — January 23, 2004 @ 12:20 pm

    4. I think they’re giving you dirty looks because your shoes are so rad.

      They already do “suspicious” profiling, don’t they? I usually get through airports alright but I remember recently when I had to run to the gate and was totally disheveled and out of breath. The airport screeners took me aside and practically stripped off all my clothes while they went through my bags.

      I believe all current airport personnel has been trained in this sort of profiling. I even worked on a Flash ani at my last job that an airline was using to detail what they looked for (pregnant women are suspicious too!).

      Comment by Kyle — January 23, 2004 @ 1:17 pm

    5. Good point, Kyle. I meant this more as a rebuttal to all the ignorant conservatives out there who think the only reason to oppose racial profiling is so we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings or that they should be above any suspicion because they’re white.

      Comment by greg — January 23, 2004 @ 1:31 pm

    6. I’m not sure I trust the airport employees to do any profiling what so ever. In the US the searches are prett much done at random. If someone is really suspicious they’ll get pulled out of line, but I’m pretty sure if I was planning a large scale attack I’d be as unsuspicious as possible.

      What we need are well trained people in the job, and we aren’t going to get them for $10/hour.

      Comment by andrew — January 23, 2004 @ 1:43 pm

    7. I think racial profiling is dangerous. It gives everyone a false sense of security, while letting certain people go through the net. Al Quaida could simply just get someone who doesn’t fit the profile, and kabooom!, but we’re not as wacthful because we think “Oh, he’s not Arab, so he can’t possibly be a terrorist” instead of using common sense and noticing that he has bomb parts falling out of his suitecase..

      Comment by Shannon — January 24, 2004 @ 7:24 am

    8. The question I would ask is whether there is any kind of profiling you’d tolerate? Or are you only not in favor of racial profiling? For instance, a masked offender has been raping women at a girls-only school. Do you keep on the look out for men, or is everyone a suspect?

      Comment by Earnest — January 24, 2004 @ 12:19 pm

    9. For instance, a masked offender has been raping women at a girls-only school. Do you keep on the look out for men, or is everyone a suspect?

      Well, I’d imagine the victims would probably be able to help narrow down the gender of the suspect, so I’m not so sure that’s a useful analogy. Besides, there’s a big difference between trying to track down a single person and being “at war” with an undetermined number of nameless, faceless enemies.

      But as far as the gender issue is concerned, I think it would be just as stupid to engage in gender profiling as racial profiling. While most “suiciders” (as the President likes to call them) have been male, I seem to remember hearing about a Palestinian teenage girl who did it as well.

      Comment by greg — January 24, 2004 @ 2:44 pm

    10. I know my argument sounds silly on its face, but we’ve all seen the experiment where people are asked to describe someone they’ve just seen (who usually runs into and out of a location), and everyone gives a different response. In the heat of the moment how can you expect a victim to distinguish between a male and a masculine female? The thing is– whether its fair and equal or not– you can generally assume that the offender in one of those cases will be male so it’s a good starting point.

      Comment by Earnest — January 26, 2004 @ 8:28 am

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