Sun, 31 Jul 2005

You Can't Fight Terrorism With Racism

He's right: it would be a bad move on several levels to start racial profiling for terrorists. He does however, neglect to mention one huge side effect that will occur if we do start using race and ethnicity as a criteria for closer scrutiny of suspected terrorists: the bad guys will start recruiting and using "non-obvious" persons who don't fit the classic "angry young male Arab" category. Look no further than Richard Reed. Of course, a few successful attacks like this and we'll end up searching everybody randomly again anyway. The policy is not only wrong-headed, it's practically useless.

A New York Times op-ed piece by Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow ["It's the Age of Terror: What Would You Do?"], and a Post column by Charles Krauthammer ["Give Grandma a Pass; Politically Correct Screening Won't Catch Jihadists"] endorsed the practice of using ethnicity, national origin and religion as primary factors in deciding whom police should regard as possible terrorists -- in other words, racial profiling.

(link) [Washington Post]

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