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 ccording
to the Gallup Organization, 71 percent of African Americans approve
of profiling Arabs to combat terrorism. Yet an overwhelming percentage
of African Americans condemn racial profiling in the war against
crime. Do those two seemingly contradictory positions suggest an
underlying hypocrisy? Not necessarily.
To determine
whether African Americans are being hypocritical or just plain sensible,
consider these three questions: How important is the objective that
the profile seeks to accomplish? How effective is the profile in
advancing that objective? What is the potential for abuse?
Let's begin
by examining the goal of the profile, and the benefit if that goal
is achieved. The gain from a criminal profile can range from, say,
identifying a drug dealer to capturing a serial murderer. The gain
from a terrorist profile might reach from halting an airline hijacking
to preventing madmen from using a weapon of mass destruction.
Indisputably,
the potential benefit of a criminal profile, while certainly not
trivial, extends at most to saving a small number of lives. That
pales in comparison with the potential benefit of a terrorist profile
— a matter of saving thousands or conceivably hundreds of thousands
of lives. On those grounds alone, it seems rational to protest the
former while applauding the latter.
Next, how effective
is a racial or ethnic profile in stopping crime or terrorism? Imagine,
for the sake of argument, that all terrorists are Arabs. Only a
fool or a masochist would then prohibit Arab ethnicity from being
added to a multi-factor profile of suspected terrorists. Indeed,
all of the 9/11 terrorists were reportedly of Middle Eastern descent.
Yet, self-evidently, all criminals are not African Americans. Thus,
other things being equal, the fit of a terrorist profile that included
ethnicity would likely be tighter than the fit of a criminal profile
that included race.
To be sure,
behavior profiling — that is, monitoring conduct rather than
immutable characteristics such as race or ethnicity — is less
invasive and may be equally effective. In fact, law-enforcement
officials who focus on race and ethnicity may ignore more productive
profiles based on behavior. Obvious tip-offs include nervousness,
conflicting answers to questions, one-way travel arrangements, no
luggage for a long trip, lots of cash, no driver's license, or the
use of a rental car. Yet the question remains: Does the addition
of race or ethnicity to a behavior-based profile significantly improve
the ability of the profile to ferret out criminals or terrorists?
On the basis of the events of 9/11, the answer is more likely to
be "yes" when profiling terrorists than when profiling
ordinary criminals.
Finally, consider
the potential for abuse. No doubt, African Americans' anxiety about
criminal profiling stems from our country's troubled history of
racial discrimination. We have no comparable history of bias against
Middle Easterners, nor have responsible persons suggested that airport
searches, for example, are motivated by traditional bigotry toward
Arabs or Muslims. Because the principal objection to profiling is
its exploitation at the hands of officials animated by deep-rooted
prejudice, on that score, African Americans have more cause for
concern than do Middle Easterners.
Moreover, perverse
incentives operate to encourage criminal profiling. Those same incentives,
which are notorious in the African-American community, do not likewise
promote terrorist profiling. First, criminal profiling is inextricably
linked to the war on drugs. We spend $37 billion a year trying to
stop willing suppliers from selling drugs to willing consumers.
In that victimless-crime context, the culprits will not be identified
through the use of specific information from what are typically
satisfied customers. And without individualized evidence, police
are forced to rely on more readily available tools, like statistical
profiles.
Second, asset-forfeiture
laws give police an enormous incentive to grab drug suspects so
they can seize and keep money and property. The Justice Department
reports that local police and sheriffs' departments received nearly
$650 million in "cash, goods, and property from drug asset
forfeiture programs during fiscal 1997." Gene Callahan and
William Anderson, writing in the August-September 2001 issue of
Reason, put it this way: "If the police begin harassing
every motorist in a particular locale, support for their activities
will soon evaporate. However, if they can identify a minority group…
and if they know that members of that group are not politically
powerful, then the police can focus on those people in order to
enhance departmental revenue."
Here's what
it all means: It may be entirely logical to condemn criminal profiling
of African Americans while advocating terrorist profiling of Middle
Easterners. In the terrorist context, the damage that could be prevented
is measured in thousands of lives, the profiles are probably more
effective for fingering guilty parties, and it is much less likely
that abusive practices will be driven by institutionalized racism.
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