Profiles not always flattering

On a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai, India, a little more than a week… On a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai, India, a little more than a week ago, 12 passengers were detained for 30 hours by Dutch authorities on grounds of “suspicious” conduct. These passengers aroused feelings of insecurity among the cabin crew because some of them had not fastened their seat belts and were exchanging cell phones among themselves. But this type of behavior is a common breach of airline rules and is usually resolved with civil involvement by airline staff. So why was this particular case different? Why were these passengers severely punished with arrest and detainment?

Despite the fervent denials of Dutch authorities, this episode can be nothing else but a case of racial profiling. The 12 passengers aboard the flight were Indian Muslim men, dressed in common South Asian attire, with long beards and excited voices which issued a strange and suspicious language. With the stereotypical image of a terrorist before them, the airline crew overreacted, aggressively arrested the men inside the plane and asked the pilot to fly back to Amsterdam.

This is certainly not the first case of racial profiling, nor is it unseen in other parts of the world. In fact, just months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, former Attorney General John Ashcroft eagerly pursued a “deliberate campaign of arrest and detention to protect American lives.”

As a result, during Ashcroft’s time as Attorney General, the Justice Department brought criminal charges against about 5,000 people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent who were mostly held on charges entirely unrelated to terrorism (this, despite both Ashcroft and President Bush vehemently stating their opposition to the use of racial profiling both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks).

When questioned about the frequent use of arrest and detainment, Ashcroft said that the method is “carefully drawn to target a narrow class of individuals — terrorists.” But who exactly fits the description of a terrorist? Dark-skinned male, between the ages of 15 and 80, long beard and Middle Eastern apparel? I personally know many people who fit that description and I’m absolutely certain they are not terrorists.

No, the people who are usually detained and investigated today actually fall under a very broad “class of individuals” — Muslims, Arabs and people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. Unfortunately, because of the horrific acts by al-Qaeda, America’s War on Terror and continuing instability in the Middle East, fear and prejudice has been generalized to this specific group of people and the world is targeting them based on this fear. We find ourselves generalizing an entire public based upon the horrendous acts of few, and victims are treated as guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent.

Is this fair? Turn back time 60 years when 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forced to leave their homes for internment camps, lest an attack like the one on Pearl Harbor should be repeated — their only crime being their Japanese ancestry. For decades, African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities have been singled out in traffic and drug stops and have been suspected of gang membership simply because of their ethnicity, despite statistics showing that the searching of minorities does not yield higher success rates than the searching of whites.

And take the Oklahoma City Bombing, for example. If racial profiling were used (as it initially was) as a means to find the culprits responsible for the murder of the 168 innocent people, terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols would never be suspected or found. The reason is that racial profiling does not recognize one’s ability to kill or terrorize. However, a close examination of one’s behavior does.

And that’s the problem with racial profiling — it does not work. In fact, it’s holding us back in our efforts to combat this unseen enemy. The truth is that terrorists come in all shapes and sizes, all races and religions, and often do not fit the common image of what they are. Pursuing one specific description limits us tremendously.

Also, racial profiling severely undermines the basic civil liberties and freedoms which every person deserves, violating not only the American ideals of liberty and justice, but also the international standards of human rights. Its usage eliminates the potential for unity and trust between all of society’s members and alienates from the public those who are targeted.

So we need to stop wasting our time just looking for turbans and beards at airports and instead depend upon reliable detective work. Racial profiling is ineffective and immoral and certainly not worth the temporary ease of some ill-founded fear.