By Peter Simonson ACLU of New Mexico
It's a bad sign for civil rights when two well-known essayists from opposite sides of the political spectrum agree that racial profiling is a rational tool to prevent terrorism. In recent weeks, columns by both both William F. Buckley and Michael Kinsley were published in the Journal arguing that airport security officials should single out "Arab-looking men" for "intrusive inspections." Kinsley even concludes that the only cost of racial profiling to minorities is "pretty small: inconvenience and embarrassment."
That's a pretty bold statement coming from a white man of some stature and privilege — a man who will never live the experience of a Chicana friend of mine, for example, who was in New York City during the attack. As she awaited her flight back to Albuquerque in a bar at Kennedy airport, a television flashed nighttime scenes of the Afghan opposition bombing the Taliban's stronghold in Kabul. Thinking that the U.S. was behind the attack, people in the bar raucously cheered to see flames rising from the city. At that point my friend noted that she was the only woman of color in a room full of revved-up white men in various states of intoxication.
"Were they going to think that I was from Afghanistan, that I was a terrorist?" she asked herself. Fear of that possibility, and what people might do as a result, drove her from the bar and nagged at her for the remainder of the trip.
A key reason why racial profiling should never be considered a legitimate tool for law enforcement is that the concept of race is absolutely arbitrary. Who among us can distinguish an Afghan or a Saudi man from a crowd of people as diverse as that which passes through most East Coast airports? It is to be hoped that we've all learned enough from the recent murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz., to know that a beard and a turban do not a terrorist make.
Unavoidably, racial profiling hinges on simple stereotypes of what certain ethnic and religious groups look like, how they speak, and how their last names sound. Those facile categories quickly shatter against the hard reality of ethnic diversity, and when they do, profiling becomes a free-for-all to scrutinize any person of color. And innocent people are unlawfully searched, detained, and sometimes jailed.
Racial profiling is racial discrimination — clear and simple. If you still doubt that fact, then consider why racial profiling is never proposed in the case of white criminals. Where was the clamor for federal courthouses to "intrusively inspect" thin, white men with crew cuts after the Oklahoma City bombing? I fear the notion never came up because people in positions of power assume, unconsciously or otherwise, that "whiteness" is the standard against which other races are profiled.
Once law enforcement authorities demonstrate that it's OK to automatically suspect people of Islamic faith or Middle Eastern descent of terrorist inclinations, the public adopts that suspicion as well. As the recent wave of race-based crimes across the country has shown, that suspicion readily adds up to hate, and hate to violence.
Once Congress passes laws that make racial profiling OK for the specific purpose of combating terrorism, some attorney somewhere will twist the meaning of that law to justify race-based traffic stops or drug searches in other, non-terrorist contexts. From there, it's a slippery slope to the mentality that driving while black means you're just asking for trouble from the police.
Federal law enforcement already has far-reaching authority to find and neutralize any person remotely suspected of terrorist involvement — they just need to use it, and use it well. Americans should not stand to see that authority expanded to include racial profiling.
Whatever benefits we derive in the battle against terrorism will pale in comparison to the damage done to race relations in this country and constitutional guarantees of equal protection under law.
Peter G. Simonson is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico
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