Defending Racial Profiling — Again
Why Roger Clegg is wrong.

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor
February 9, 2001 10:30 a.m.

appreciate Roger Clegg's taking the trouble to read my article "In Defense of Racial Profiling" in the print National Review, and his thoughtful response to it. The editor suggested posting Mr. Clegg's response on our website, followed by my comments about it. I was very glad to agree to this. This is an important issue, and there can never be enough calm, reasoned debate about it. There can, of course, very soon be enough — there is already way too much! — yelling, posturing, and intimidating about racial profiling, and other race issues.

Mr. Clegg rests his main case on Randall Kennedy's argument that racial profiling, though reasonable, is immoral and socially inflammatory. So would I have done: Kennedy's piece is brilliant. I did not have space to do justice to it in my print article, and have not here either, so I urge anyone interested in this subject to seek out the essay and read it for himself. I do not see how a better case against racial profiling can be made, and anyone who wants to defend the practice, as I do, must show why Prof. Kennedy is wrong. Where arguments against racial profiling are concerned, Kennedy is the gold standard.

Unless you are an adherent of one of the more demanding religious confessions, the essence of moral wrong — the lowest common-denominator essence, I mean, that all modern people can agree on — is the wish to harm, or at the very least to vex, somebody else. That is really what underlies the case against racial profiling: The conviction that policemen who preferentially detain black people do so because they bear ill will towards the black race. They want to keep us down, the way they used to. Racial profiling is a manifestation of white racism — that is the heart of the matter.

I had better say right now — Mr. Clegg might want to sit down for this one — that I do not believe in white racism, except as a fringe phenomenon at the very bottom of society. Yes, white Americans used to keep black Americans down, though this should never be said without noting that very large numbers of white Americans were always unhappy with the arrangement. That, however, was then, and this is now. Like promiscuous smoking, though much more effectively and thoroughly, the malice that many white people felt toward blacks has been almost shamed out of existence in the past 40 years. I have been living in the United States for 15 of those years, mainly among white Americans. I have known several hundred white Americans, of all ages and classes (and including a handful of policemen), well enough to say confidently that I don't believe a single one of them bore any ill will towards black people.

The following statement is true, as best I can judge, of every white American I have ever known: He would be happier in himself, and would feel better about his country, if the statistical profiles of black American lives and behaviors were identical with those of whites. The fact that they are not, is distressing to everybody I know, though of course in very varying degrees.

There are many opinions about the reasons for those statistical differences. Quite a lot of white Americans, unlike me, believe in the reality of white racism as a major social force. Many, on the other hand — a fast-growing number, it seems to me — believe that there is some deep, intractable, and presumably biological reason why persons of West African descent or part-descent do not (statistically speaking) do well in our society. Whatever you might think of this belief, I can tell you for sure that when it fixes itself on a white person's mind, it does not induce glee: Great! This means we'll be able to keep them down for ever, the way we used to! What it induces is despair: Oh God, we're stuck with this damn race thing for ever! White Americans do not want a race-divided society. There is hardly anything they want less.

Suppose I am right — as, of course, I think I am — in believing that white racism is a vanishingly insignificant phenomenon in current American life. What then happens to Randall Kennedy's argument from morality? It seems to me that it collapses, for it is based on the belief that without enforced, supervised restraints, the racism of white policemen will bubble up irresistibly, causing them to commit wrongs against black people. If that racism does not exist, except very occasionally, how can the restraints be justified, when their effect would be, as Kennedy admits (while, as I argued in my print piece, seriously under-estimating this effect) socially negative? If white policemen pulling over black motorists mean no harm, and restraints on them doing so will greatly increase crime — a very harmful thing to its victims — where is the point of moral balance? Kennedy suggests we restore that balance by hiring more policemen. This does not sound to me very sincere, or very convincing.

But what about "socially inflammatory"? Even if policemen are not acting immorally in preferentially detaining black people, is the anger and resentment of black people worth it? That's a big social negative by itself, isn't it? Yes it is, but I don't see what we can honestly do about it, other than keep trying to show that police procedures are reasonable, and correcting them if they are not. If a reasonable and useful policy makes people unreasonably angry, I personally would stick with the policy and work on the people…. Though, reading back over that last sentence, I do see that is the kind of assertion that might cause a professional politician to double over laughing.

And where the police have not been reasonable, where there has been a real injustice — where it can be shown that a person has been inconvenienced for no other reason than his race — current laws already provide sufficient remedy. Certainly our citizens seem to believe they do: They are suing police departments for racial profiling malfeasances left, right, and center. Let me introduce you to Mr. Robert Hluchan, for example, a white driver pulled over in a black neighborhood of Philadelphia and made to stand handcuffed for 20 minutes while cops strip-searched his BMW. He has filed a lawsuit against that city for racial profiling. The police thought he was cruising for drugs; in fact he was visiting his girlfriend, who is black.

There is much more to say about this. I personally have much, much more. My first draft of this rejoinder went to 3,000 words, but the webmaster threatened to resign and I had to cut it to 1,000. I hope to come back to the issue in a future web column: I hope NRO will publish more dissents by Roger Clegg and anyone else who has a contribution and can express himself with Mr. Clegg's clarity and fluency. I started out my print piece by calling racial profiling "a shibboleth of our time." I don't like shibboleths. If we can debate this stuff frankly and sensibly, without posturing, self-righteousness, moral blackmail, and bogus displays of indignation, then whatever we collectively decide to do about this issue, at least we shall be one shibboleth the less.