Racial Profiling
by
Dick Prosapio © 2006
All my liberal and ACLU friends are going to hate
me for saying this even though they may be thinking it too, but here
it is, America has been doing racial profiling for years, in fact,
ever since we set the country up. And we're not the only country or
people to do this. In fact, everybody does it.
Is it right? I don't know, probably not
philosophically, but one thing I do know, it's human. However,
rather than get into the whole sociological theme this could turn
into, let's just look at what kind of a problem we are creating by
denying that we do it and that, under certain circumstances, it's
the logical and rational thing to do.
First of all, let me begin by saying that the
racial profiling that went on after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor was insane. Shipping Japanese-Americans to concentration
camps after that attack was the result of fear and ignorance and
that sort of wholesale profiling, a kind of knee-jerk revenge, could
probably never happen again. At least not in this country. I could
be wrong but I think we've come a long way since then. And the
profiling of African-Americans and Hispanics that goes on in our
society is not a good thing either and we need to get that worked
out so that we can have a more just society.
But what happened on 9/11 has caused a swing in
the pendulum to an extreme in the "politically correct" direction.
Reality; Mexicans are not interested in bombing
American businesses or killing Americans. The last time that
happened was a raid staged by Poncho Villa on Columbus, New Mexico
after WW l. The Canadians aren't after us either nor are the
Germans, Italians, Brazilians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards,
Irishmen, Scots, Africans, Chinese or Japanese, your grandmother, my
grandchildren, my wife, me, my kids, or.well, just about anyone I
can think of who isn't a hostile Muslim from the Middle East.
Of course, there is the occasional fanatic who may
be a non-Muslim, a white, middle class looking person who can be a
nut case as in Oklahoma City. This is rare.
Reality; the only GROUP of people who might be
suspected of harboring ideas of destroying the U.S. is NOT from any
of the countries listed above and IS a Muslim. So why is everybody
who is not Muslim and is from these places, or from the U.S. being
treated as a potential threat? All this is doing is tying up our
transportation system, costing us billions of dollars in wasted time
and energy and creating massive paranoia.
The justification for all of this hoopla is that
"The terrorists are very cleaver and use many means to achieve their
ends." Well, that's probably true. But planting a bomb on your
grandmother hasn't been one of them. Unless your grandmother is from
one of the Middle Eastern countries in question.
Sorry, but that's a fact.
Reality; if you are a Muslim person from that area
of the World, well, gee, your bothers and sisters over there have
created a problem for all of us over here and we are going to have
to be cautious about anyone from that area. We don't have to be
cautious about everybody from everywhere, that's the reality of the
World right now. If everyone in the Middle East loved us and
everyone from France hated and wanted to kill us, we wouldn't stop
you, we'd check out the French.
It would clean up a lot of the American psyche if
we could simply admit that sometimes what we are calling "racial
profiling" is really an attempt at a rational way of dealing with
the actual origins of the threat.
Generalizations are dangerous you will
say....absolutely true without a doubt. But they are also often
based on probabilities and "probabilities" are based on logic. In an
attempt to be seen as fair and kind we are making the vast majority
of obviously well intended people who want to travel jump through
hoops which are totally unnecessary because we don't want to offend
anybody. In effect we are offending everybody in this
bending-over-backwards attempt at fair play. Under the circumstances
we don't have to be "fair", we have to be intelligent and realistic.
Doing what we are doing now is playing the terrorists game,
disrupting, creating fear & anxiety and weakening the economy. Look
at the shoeless lines of frustrated people in our airports and see
who's winning this war of nerves.
And regarding the kind of thinking that creates
and adds to this crazy-making note this; the U.S. government is now
telling ranchers and farmers that they cannot bale and transport hay
on pubic roads unless each bale is inspected for possible hidden
terrorists or biological agents hidden in them.
These people, none of them from the Middle East,
are actually nuts. So maybe we can make an exception and be sure to
screen them out at our airports.
