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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - Racial Profiling |
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emcee Red Super Koopa                  Since: 11-20-05 Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Simple question. Is it ok for security personnel (Mainly in airports, but other places, too), to give extra scrutiny to Arabs, (by searching, questioning, etc) in an effort to fight terrorism? | |||
MathOnNapkins  1100  In SPC700 HELL   Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| That's a hard question. It sounds like it makes sense until you talk to the people who have been harassed by it. I once tutored an Egyptian kid who looked more or less like most Americans, but his family was under surveillance and harassment by the government for months following 9/11. He just seemed like a normal college kid, hardly even appeared to be of Arab descent yet it happened to him b/c of his last name.
I think in Airports especially this is necessary, even if it causes those involved embarassment. In other highly sensitive areas that would be advised, but in general I'd say no it's wrong. For example, I would not find it justified to happen at my local county police office. |
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sandrocklq Red Cheep-cheep  Since: 07-31-06 Last post: 6432 days Last view: 6432 days |
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| Apparently racial profiling is extremely effective in Israel.
Honestly though, I don't understand why terrorists haven't gone for the cargo holds and such. Can it really be that hard. I keep hearing about these cargo vulnerabilities. |
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emcee Red Super Koopa Since: 11-20-05 Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I really wonder how many of the people who think racial profiling is acceptable now felt that way before the the attacks of September 11th. I wonder how many of those people who are ok with racial profiling of Arabs (or those who just look Arab), are also ok with racial profiling to prevent other crimes besides terrorism. I mean if I can find statistics that show the largest percent of murderers are black men, does that make it ok to search every black man in an area with a high murder rate for concealed weapons? Certainly traditional (non-terrorism related) violent crime kills more Americans than terrorism. So why is it suddenly ok to use racial profiling to combat terrorism when it was already decided that it wasn't ok to combat other crimes?
To me, right and wrong aren't relative concepts, if something was wrong before 9/11/01, its wrong after 9/11/01. Racial profiling is wrong. It allows people to justify their discrimination through their fear. Unfairly singling out individuals to be searched or interrogated based simply their ethicity is harrassment. Besides that, I question its effectiveness. Allowing screeners to use something as simple as physical appearance as an identifier causes complacency. People like Bill O'Reilly want to give a false choice between hasseling little old ladies and focusing on Arabs. If screeners were better trained in identifying suspicious behavior and mannerisms it would be far more effective then racial profiling. Things like simply asking people simple friendly questions as they past through, to look for nervousness and hesitation. Because whether we seem to remember or not, not every terrorist is a Muslim extremist. While screeners are hasseling a Muhammad al-Jamil, what's to stop a Timothy Mcveigh from slipping through? |
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witeasprinwow Since: 12-29-05 Last post: 6404 days Last view: 6404 days |
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| If we scan all the arabs they'll just start finding black or white fanatics to do the work for them. There's probably not as many of them as arab fanatics, but it doesn't really matter. You only need one guy to do the job.
What we need is security well-trained and smart enough to know what a terrorist will act like at an airport and discriminate based on behavior. And more strict guidelines for EVERYONE. I know, "2 hours is a long time to wait already before a flight!" Deal with it. It saves people's lives. |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I have a friend. His last name is Azad. It's actually just a really, really uncommon name from some island north o' Ireland. He gets hassled all the time because of it.
I also know people that look like Arabs (my uncle, for instance) who are Catholic and Ukrainian. 
I think that racial profiling does offer some merit, but a system of registration is probably better. Particularly because I have little faith in other people and the fact that many of these people with whom one must deal with are probably little more than slack-jaws I think that the whole situation is ripe for people to vent their inner-racist. (edited by Plus Sign Abomination on 08-17-06 02:18 PM) |
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sandrocklq Red Cheep-cheep Since: 07-31-06 Last post: 6432 days Last view: 6432 days |
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| If they do intend to profile, it can't be by looks alone. Looks don't tell you mutch unless it's a baby or an eighty year old woman. I'm not really for profiling, they wouldn't do it right if they tried and they probably don't have the money for it. | |||
Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| Morally, it's abhorrent. It would be an entirely unwarranted undermining of the principles of equality and presumption of innocence and so forth, it would encourge abuse by overzealous security forces which would easily descend into racist harassment. It's a blank cheque to assume everyone who looks foreign is a terorrist, it's legal sanctioning for racist perceptions in the rest of the populace. It's a recipe for blowback and resentment among the target population. It's essentially a proposal to hassle a minority of millions of people for the actions of literally a few dozen.
The fact that this is even getting serious discussion demonstrates perfectly how bad people are at accurately concieving conception of statistical risk. 99.999% of Arabs are not risks. Out of the millions of Arabs in the west or elsewhere, (and other predominantly Islamic ethnic groups... the London bombings were performed by Pakistanis, not Arabs, for example, and the Bali bombings by Indonesians of some sort) virtually none have ever been terrorists, a few thousand at most. The % of Arabs who've ever been terrorists in the west versus the % of other ethnic groups, or the % of total population, is probably quite similar... about .001% or something, purely because even in the current climate of fear and paranoia there's just not that many terrorists, Arab or otherwise. It's simply unfair to institue a policy which paints all Arabs, or middle easterners, or people who might be muslim, as potential terrorists by default. Should we profile Basques or the Irish too? What about rednecks in the US given their propensity towards violent political exp On a practical level, Arabs are a caucasian people and it's difficult to differentiate clearly from others. And if you wanna go by religion, well, there's Muslims of every race on earth including Europeans. Focussing on certain characteristics can only let things slip through the net. Most terrorists are men... but focussing on that can let women through. At the moment... most terrorists are inspired by shitty readings of Islam, but does that mean it can be guaranteed all potential threats are? By focussing on that you can easily miss other threats, be it white supremicists, hardcore leftists, anti-government paranoids, random psychopaths, or whatever. Narrowing the focus makes it easier to get through. Sure, we've never had a little-old-lady terrorist but can anyone of you guarantee there never will be, to the extent of actually giving them a free pass through security? Given the numerous nasty implications and complete lack of practical basis as a policy... it's not an efficient or worthwhile policy to target a single ethnic group like that for the actions of a vanishingly small minority. It's not practically effective and even if it was, it's still morally wrong and sends us down a dangerous path of assuming certain groups are guilty automatically. (edited by Arwon on 08-17-06 10:37 PM) |
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||bass Administrator  Since: 11-17-05 From: Salem, Connecticut Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Morally, I have no opinion either way. It depends on how you appliy it. If a very small group of people (say 10%) committed a disproportionately high amount of crime (50%) than I would say that profiling is justified. On the other hand, when there is no statistical evidence to back up the practice and continue to profile, that crosses the line and enters into the realm of racism. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| So we should racially profile young men?
Anyways Bass, we're talking about profiling for fighting terorrism here, so those sorts of big proportions don't apply. Even in a case such as crime (and I'm gonna assume that despite the abstractions we're arguing in terms of black Americans here since they're the archetypical example), focussing on that 10% of that populace disproportionately, has a couple of ramifications which I think can undermine the effectiveness of policing completely. Policing, afterall, is not a military exercise of force against hostile threats, it's supposed to be a cooperative, consensusal exercise. Policing relies, at least partly, on the willingness of the community to be policed. And I think such things as racial profiling massively undermines that. Firstly, to use your hypotheticals, it takes the heat off the people committing the other 50% of the crime, which can only have a deleterious effect on law enforcement overall. A prime example would be in American drug laws where despite the fact that drug use is pretty even across all ethnic groups, the largest group of prisoners for drug offences are, by a wide margin, young blacks. Whites are far less likely to either get caught or jailed for drug use (now for me the solution is to STOP JAILING PEOPLE FOR DRUG USE but that's a whole other argument). Secondly it creates an over-policing bias, where because there's more cops on certain beats, a higher proportion of people get caught for, often, less severe things (the "Driving while black" phenomenon?). It must be noted that "amount of crime committed" is at least partly a function of how much gets prosecuted... in fact most crime statistics in most places are based on prosecution numbers (that's certainly how the ABS does it), so crime statistics and ethnic profiling can be a kind of a reinforcing cycle to some extent. One brilliant illustration of the way crime statistics are affected by reporting and prosecution levels is the fact that assault rates in Australia have been skyrocketing for 25 years and making it seem like ALL crime is going up, when a truer explaination would be that assaults get reported and prosecuted more nowadays because the culture is changing. Anyways, over-policing can even lead to a kind of self-perpetuating cycle where the target group ends up with more and more people in prison which breeds more hard-core criminals and drug-addicts, who commit more crme and crate a greater perception of criminality, which leads to more police focus, and so forth. Third, as kind of a flow-on from these first two things--letting other slip by, and overpolicing--it will usually create perceptions of racism and persecution which render overall policing less effective since a sizable chunk of the population sees you as racist and unfair at best, and downright ineffective and corrupt at worst. (edited by Arwon on 08-17-06 10:57 PM) |
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||bass Administrator Since: 11-17-05 From: Salem, Connecticut Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I don't think those are the numbers for black Americans. While they are about 10% of the population, I seriously doubt they commit an entire 50% of the crime. I don't actually have the statistics in front of me but I find it seriously unlikley that they commit 20 crimes for every one committed by all the other races combined (required by the 10/50 statistic). That seems way over the top. Those numbers were really just pulled out of my ass for the purpose of my example.
Now, on to specifics: Actually... I'm not going to argue your numbered points (the "Firstly....", "Secondly...." and "Third...." paragraphs). Mostly because they make sence and are probably right. Seriously though, I made those percentage numbers up to make the example very clear-cut. Also, I know it's not a thread about general profiling, but you made the point that it was always morally incorrect and I just felt like giving a counter point. Don't get used to hearing this very often because I almost always am right about everything but I take back my previous post. I don't care so much about the part about losing faith in the system, but your arguement about how profiling can further distort the crime statistics, thus becoming a self-sustaining incorrect system in itself is pretty convincing and probably right. I hadn't thought of the cyclical effect before. In short: I take back my previous post because I made a mistake. Just don't get comfortable because it's a rare event. |
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sandrocklq Red Cheep-cheep Since: 07-31-06 Last post: 6432 days Last view: 6432 days |
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| One thing about the profiling of blacks. The majority of the crimes they commit are against other black people, especially if you consider only violent crime such as rape, murder, and assualt. | |||
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||bass Administrator Since: 11-17-05 From: Salem, Connecticut Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I doub't that's deliberate. Most crimes are committed near the home. The fact that people commit crimes on others of their own race is because most of the time all the people of |
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Jomb Deddorokku  Since: 12-03-05 From: purgatory Last post: 6298 days Last view: 6298 days |
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| Go look in a prison sometime, at least 60% of the people in there are black. Considering they make up about 10% of the population.... So it becomes a case of which came first, the high crime rate amongst blacks, or the racial profiling of blacks? Prisons in general are getting ridiculously over-crowded in the US, we are talking about millions and millions of people, we lock up more people than the rest of the world combined, including China.
So you can only reach one of 2 conclusions, either the USA is a country over-whelmingly full of dangerous criminals, more so than all the rest of the world, or we have a broken justice system and a "lock em' and throw away the key" mentality. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| Bass: Yeah, I wasn't assuming those numbers were for black Americans, I just wanted a concrete example to refer to instead of speaking entirely in abstractions. Poor wording on my part. | |||
Shadic The Adventure of Link Perfect Member Since: 11-18-05 From: Olympia, Washington Last post: 6302 days Last view: 6298 days |
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Originally posted by Jomb No, it's the fact that it's a "Lock them away for two years, and now they'll be better" policy. Either we need harsher punishments for like, violence and such, or something. |
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sandrocklq Red Cheep-cheep Since: 07-31-06 Last post: 6432 days Last view: 6432 days |
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| There's also a problem with this mandatory sentencing range. It forces judges to apply a sentence that may be too harsh or too light based on the guidelines for that crime. I believe a good example of this was a first timeoffender who got life in prision for drug possession. He only got life for the quantity of drugs, which was a lot. Do we really need to lock someone up for life for drug possession? I'm not sure what his race was though. | |||
Sin Dogan  860  Uoodo Original Blend Armored Trooper Votoms Canned Coffee! Since: 11-17-05 Last post: 6300 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by sandrocklq How is that possible? Most Israelis look pretty Arabic. It must be more of just looking at their faces and stuff. Racial profiling is stupid. Considering that terrorists have been from many different countries, racial and ethnic groups, it's pretty difficult to confine it to one group. If one were to look at the Radical 'Islamic' terrorist group plots, one would see that there have been several people who are Black, Asian(South, East, whatever), White, and Hispanic, to name a few. This is on a slightly different topic, but I remember last year hearing of a flight coming from Cuba that crashed and like everyone knew who was behind it and could've locked away the culprit but the US didn't want to mess with any Cuban related issues. Fuckin stupid. |
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Snow Tomato Snap Dragon  Since: 12-31-05 From: NYC Last post: 6316 days Last view: 6301 days |
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| It's not the racial profiling of blacks. The majority of black americans are poor, they live in poor neighborhoods.. and can't afford good attournies to defend them. That's why a majority of people in jail are black. Black crime and white crime is committed at basically the same level within each group.. but it's unfortunate that money makes the world go round.
Racial profiling is obviously going to occur. I don't think you can help it. I don't think it's fair to the people who it's unfairly used against.. but at airports or other places where precaustions need to be taken.. I say it's okay. I wouldn't mind my bags being searched if it made everyone else on the plane feel safer. Like if you're innocent.. it shouldn't really be a problem. Yes.. it's annoying but.. what are you gonna do? They just wanna search you. But in no way should they harass you because of your race. There should be no effort to go out of their way unless there is reasonable suspicion surrounding you. |
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Sin Dogan 860 Uoodo Original Blend Armored Trooper Votoms Canned Coffee! Since: 11-17-05 Last post: 6300 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| Yes but it's not always the question of "Is racial profiling ethical?" as much as "Is it efficient?". As I mentioned, with international threats, like at airports, it's not efficient because:
a.)Many times it can be difficult to determine someone's race just by looking at them, which is what happens. And ignorance to outside cultures doesn't help in determining these things. b.)There have been attackers from various races and ethnicities. |
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