The Case for Ethnic Profiling

The cartoon at right (from the Daily Telegraph, via Ace of Spades) finally prompted me to write down some thoughts that were fresh in my mind a year ago (better late than never!), when I read this Salon piece about catching terrorism suspects. It's called "Why Racial Profiling Doesn't Work."

Racial profiling doesn't work? Bullbeef and twaddle. I would argue that — while profiling is hardly a magic bullet that will neutralize any and all terror threats — it's one of the most useful things we can do if we are serious about nabbing terrorist evildoers before they strike.

No mincing words now: What, pray tell, are the most common characteristics of the terrorists who seek to inflict mass casualties on western populations? Who was behind the World Trade Center massacre, the Madrid blasts, the Bali bloodbath, the London subway bombings, and last week's foiled plot to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic?

For starters, and most importantly, the perpetrators were all muslims. In most cases, they or their parents hail from countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, and it follows that their names are more likely to be Tariq or Mohammed than Charlie or Franz. The vast majority of them are men, and they're mostly in their twenties and thirties.

We know this, but we're not supposed to act on it. In the United States at least, when it comes to screening for terrorists, we're supposed to pretend that a 70-year-old grandmother from Boise and a 13-year-old spelling-bee contestant from Duluth are just as likely to cause murder and mayhem as a 23-year-old engineering student who just flew in from Islamabad.

It's a dangerous and self-defeating deceit.

Unfortunately, the term 'ethnic profiling' — a.k.a. 'racial profiling' — is a discussion-stopper, a sure-fire way to get the bien pensants (including the boo-hiss PC crowd) on one's side. But some form of ethnic profiling happens to be a necessity when it comes to preventing the next 9/11. Why wouldn't we do it? The Salon article offers several reasons, and every one of them is flawed.

Argument One: Not every terrorist fits the profile. Timothy McVeigh was a white, non-muslim American. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a British citizen with Jamaican blood.

True, but incomplete. McVeigh was an anomaly; despite supposedly like-minded small fry like Eric Rudolph, McVeigh's brand of violent radicalism has not served as an inspiration to other Americans, much less inspired a movement. As for Reid, he's not as much an exception as opponents of profiling make him out to be. Reid had begun calling himself Abdul Raheem Abu Ibrahim; he learned Arabic and dressed in traditional Islamic garb; he attended a London mosque known for its radical preachings; intelligence connected him to Al Qaeda, based in part on Reid's trip to the Khalden terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He fits the profile of a terrorist in more ways than one.

Besides, that there are exceptions to the rule doesn't mean there's no rule.

The fact that profiling won't identify every jihadist doesn't make it useless, or wrong. It will identify enough of them to help prevent bloodbaths that will occur if law enforcement officers and airport screeners don't cast an extra-watchful eye on youngish muslims of North African, Middle Eastern or South East Asian descent.

Argument Two: Focusing on muslims alienates the very people — peaceful members of muslim communities — whose tips authorities rely on to help them catch terrorists.

Muslims will have to face the music just like everyone else. Again, the radicals who would visit large-scale violence upon innocent civilians are not Italian septuagenarians or high-school-age Chilean exchange students. If I were a law-abiding muslim in my prime, I believe I'd understand why screeners would want to take a closer look at me and my luggage, and why law enforcement officials might take an interest in my affiliations. It would all be burdensome and inconvenient, for sure — invasive, even. But it would only strengthen my desire to help root out potential mass murderers who, after all, cause all that scrutiny, and who abuse and insult my faith to justify their actions. I'd also understand — from taking an unflinching look at terrorism's bloody record — why police officers and intelligence operators would focus more on muslim areas than on Hindu communities and Amish neighborhoods.

Argument Three: Ethnic profiling is unnecessary. Behavior profiling — looking for signs of unusual conduct, such as avoiding eye contact and sweating profusely — is both more palatable and more effective.

Why would it have to be a matter of either/or? Combining the two approaches is likely to be the most effective of all. No one is saying that people who don't fit the typical terrorist's profile never warrant a second look. Suspicious behavior should obviously be a red flag no matter who displays it — and doubly so when the person fits the ethnic and age profile.

Truth be told, as someone who has spent much of his life fighting against attacks on our liberty, I'm not thrilled to find myself in the company of wingnut hotheads such as Michelle Malkin — much less xenophobic redneck assholes like Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.), who, shortly after 9/11, remarked

"If I see someone [who] comes in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over."

Cooksey's idea of justice is about as distasteful as they come, but not all profiling efforts are necessarily cut from that ugly cloth. Nothing about ethnic profiling needs to signify a lack of respect, courtesy, or professionalism. People, no matter their color, creed, or nationality, will continue to be innocent until proof to the contrary is established.

If Cooksey is guilty of spouting reactionary drivel, much of the Left, and plenty of libertarians too, are guilty of veering much too far in the opposite direction. It simply doesn't hold water to insist on subjecting Southern Baptists, Scottish pensioners and kindergartners from Paducah to the same scrutiny as young muslim men, for fear of offending the latter.

Suspicion falls more easily on muslims because muslims have turned out to be responsible for one major terrorist act after another. No amount of pussyfooting or sugarcoating will change that fact. The sooner all sides face it honestly and squarely, the safer we all will be.

Comments

[Phil]

As a security measure, putting a big focus on racial profiling is at best not very effective. It is natural to keep a more watchful eye on the people who look like the people who've committed atrocities in the past, but in doing so you're leaving yourself open in a big way to future attacks.

Terrorists and plain-old nutjobs do not fit a racial profile.

Muslims are attacking the US now. They're in the headlines. Muslims that look and act like we think Muslims look and act. But they're not stupid. That will change.

Just as McVeigh is an anomaly, so were the attacks on the towers. It's very easy to go back even 20 years and look at just how well profiling would've worked in any number of tragedies. Examples:

1962: The first ever commercial jetliner hijacking. Carried out by a 34 year old white American male, apparently for an insurance scam.

1986: The Hindawi Affair, wherein semtex explosives were found in the bag of a pregnant Irish woman. Later, it was found that the stuff was put there by her fiance, a Jordanian. Racial profiling couldn't have known this from how she looked.

1994: FedEX Flight 705, carried out by Auburn Calloway, from Memphis, Tennessee. Also apparently for insurance.

I could go on, but, oddly enough, I'm late for Snakes On A Plane.

[colson]

Hindsight is 20/20. The problem is that in order to adequately profile someone standing in line at an airport, you need to know information about their personal life, motivations, religious affiliation, etc. How does this information make it to screeners ahead of your arrival at the airport?

My ex-girlfriend's mother was native american and managed to get searched on every single flight we boarded to and from New York when we went on vacation there. The problem with racial profiling is that you have to know more about the person otherwise you can only go on skin color which invariably does not work.

[Phil]

Well, Colson, that's not *racial* profiling, then. That's just profiling. An important difference.

[GreginOz]

Well now, Racial Profiling CAN help us identify the true terrorists. Lemme see; they are (mostly) white, religious, drive SUVs, watch FoxNews and CNN, and have a "support the troops" sticker displayed prominently on their vehicle.

[James Pawlak-Matemoros]

It is NOT "Racial Profiling"; But, "Crime OR Criminal Profiling". As all Muslims must believe that their "Allah" commands them to be in a state of perpetual war with all "unbelievers", every Muslim is a hard and fast suspect for all acts-of-war (Including terror attacks).

MECCA DELENDA EST DEUS VULT

[Vache Folle]

Racial profiling would be inefficient and would do little more than permit us to feel as we were doing something. Since only a very small percentage of Muslims are terrorists, extra scrutiny of Muslims will not be particularly productive and will divert resources from more meaningful detection and prevention efforts.

[markm]

The question is, how do you recognize Muslims by sight? IIRC, Bin Laden told his 19 suicide hijackers to lose the beards and turbans. Surely Allah will forgive a minor violation of the rules to forward a larger goal... (Was frequenting a strip club while waiting for 9/11 also protective coloration?)

Go by skin color, and the next batch of recruits will be light-skinned. The only thing that would actually work (most of the time) would be deep background checks of as many travelers as possible - but since the TSA is so incompetent that it can't even include descriptions in a list of names once used by suspected terrorists, and so stops babies and fat old Irish-American senators because their names happen to match, the chance of them doing background investigations properly seems even slimmer than the chance of them getting any use out of such information.