Over at the Weekly Standard, Joseph M. Bessette has a noteworthy article that underscores, once again, the inane hypersensitivity of the Bush administration to allegations of racial profiling – even in cases that don’t involve federal agencies. (I have previously addressed this depressing mindset in the magazine here – subscription required.)

By Bessette’s account, a dedicated public servant, Lawrence Greenfeld of DOJ’s much-lauded Bureau of Justice Statistics, was unjustly dismissed, despite having provided long and distinguished service, for declining to spin a press release in a manner that would have bleached out mildly discomforting information.

Specifically, a BJS study on traffic stops by police nationally demonstrated that whites were stopped at roughly the same rate as blacks and Hispanics. This should have been good news for anyone concerned about improper profiling (i.e., investigative action taken on the basis of nothing other than racial, ethnic, religious or cultural affiliation, as opposed to actions that take such factors into account because they are relevant to known crimes being investigated). It shows that police, as a class, are behaving appropriately.

Nevertheless, the same study also showed that of those stopped, blacks and Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to suffer additional negative consequences (e.g., search or arrest). Naturally, our grievance class seeks to spin this as profiling.

That’s just silly. First, if police were of a mind to profile improperly, that would inevitably show up in the who-gets-stopped statistics. It doesn’t. Second, the “twice as likely” statistic is deceiving. Of those stopped, additional negative consequences were visited on about 5 percent of whites and 11 percent of blacks and Hispanics. That means for every 20 people stopped, the vast majority of all groups – about 19 whites and 18 blacks and Hispanics – gets nothing more than a traffic ticket. Third, given the disparity of overall crime statistics among various groups, a small disparity (which this really is) in police-stop consequences is inevitable. That is not indicative of profiling at all, much less improper profiling.

Nevertheless, in a froth at the merest hint of anything that could, however implausibly, be used to suggest profiling, the Justice Department reportedly tried to get the BJS to remove the information about stop consequences from its press release about the study. When Greenfeld declined to do so, he was cashiered. (I note, in fairness, that the press release and the full report were published.)

The PC march rolls on.