Racial Profiling is Stupid and Dangerous
Not only is it a step in the direction of another Holocaust, it simply is not based in reality.
And hasn't anyone noticed that none of the most high-profile arrests; dirty-bomber, shoe-bomber, recent grendade bomber in london; WERE NOT ARAB.
It makes no sense, as <a href="http://www.dot.gov/affairs/042002sp.htm"; target="_blank">the US Sec. of Transportation points out.</a>
What about all of the asian militant islamists? Black muslims? White europeans? So far, we've seen that every race is involved.
Some examples Mineta points out in the speech above:
[quote]In 1986, a 32-year-old Irish woman, pregnant at the time, was about to board an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv when El Al security agents discovered an explosive device hidden in the false bottom of her bag. The woman’s boyfriend – the father of her unborn child – had hidden the bomb.
In 1987, a 70-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman – neither of whom were Middle Eastern – posed as father and daughter and brought a bomb aboard a Korean Air flight from Baghdad to Thailand. En route to Bangkok, the bomb exploded, killing all on board.
In 1999, men dressed as businessmen (and one dressed as a Catholic priest) turned out to be terrorist hijackers, who forced an Avianca flight to divert to an airstrip in Colombia, where some passengers were held as hostages for more than a year-and-half.
<hr></blockquote>
Americans are able to make the disctinction between average whites and KKK members.
I think Americans are forgetting the reason racism is so bad: it literally kills millions upon millions of wonderful human beings every year. People literally disemboweled while still living only because they were born a certain color. Have you forgotten what has happen to the Jews, Armenians? Rwanda, Native Americans?!?! We are still struggling to come out of the horrid oppression of Blacks in the US, and now people avdocating regression!
It's easy to be racist when you are a member of the privilaged race.
Advocating racial profiling is very much a form of hate-speech.
And hasn't anyone noticed that none of the most high-profile arrests; dirty-bomber, shoe-bomber, recent grendade bomber in london; WERE NOT ARAB.
It makes no sense, as <a href="http://www.dot.gov/affairs/042002sp.htm"; target="_blank">the US Sec. of Transportation points out.</a>
What about all of the asian militant islamists? Black muslims? White europeans? So far, we've seen that every race is involved.
Some examples Mineta points out in the speech above:
[quote]In 1986, a 32-year-old Irish woman, pregnant at the time, was about to board an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv when El Al security agents discovered an explosive device hidden in the false bottom of her bag. The woman’s boyfriend – the father of her unborn child – had hidden the bomb.
In 1987, a 70-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman – neither of whom were Middle Eastern – posed as father and daughter and brought a bomb aboard a Korean Air flight from Baghdad to Thailand. En route to Bangkok, the bomb exploded, killing all on board.
In 1999, men dressed as businessmen (and one dressed as a Catholic priest) turned out to be terrorist hijackers, who forced an Avianca flight to divert to an airstrip in Colombia, where some passengers were held as hostages for more than a year-and-half.
<hr></blockquote>
Americans are able to make the disctinction between average whites and KKK members.
I think Americans are forgetting the reason racism is so bad: it literally kills millions upon millions of wonderful human beings every year. People literally disemboweled while still living only because they were born a certain color. Have you forgotten what has happen to the Jews, Armenians? Rwanda, Native Americans?!?! We are still struggling to come out of the horrid oppression of Blacks in the US, and now people avdocating regression!
It's easy to be racist when you are a member of the privilaged race.
Advocating racial profiling is very much a form of hate-speech.
Comments
You lost me with the first sentence.
Let's make good points and not be drama queens.
It just goes to show how under-educated Americans really are.
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: giant ]</p>
Genocide may be something that happens in modern times where you come from, but around my parts genocide hasn't been en vogue for well nigh 2 centuries.
Silly to extrapolate U.S. racial profiling to the Holocaust. Borderline disrespectful to Holocaust victims.
If you were making a general observation, sure I can swing with that, but your point was specific. And by making it specific you ruled out certain things, like bringing up the Holocaust.
The strength of racial profiling is that it has (should have) some sort of statistical analysis to use as an aid to law enforcement. That's just what profiling is in general, and it's a good thing. What's bad, or rather what's at risk is that the people who are supposed to use it merely as a very general aid use it dependently, that they too will think it somehow determines who is a terrorist, drug dealer, smoker, whatever. So as giant said, it fails when the people who are supposed to use it as an instrument of law enforcement instead use it as an instument of punishment. Profiling works with probabilities, it isn't a formula for success.
I don't know if any of that was clear. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
<strong>
Silly to extrapolate U.S. racial profiling to the Holocaust. Borderline disrespectful to Holocaust victims.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Who the **** are you to talk about respect?!?!?
Hell, we have engravings hanging outside of Spec Collections her at the Library showing how black men were punished. One of them shows a black man hanging from a tree by a hook through his rib.
You really are sick, groverat. And don't you dare start preaching to me. Maybe when you get a ****ing life and meet some people that eventually die violently due to racism you will actually get a ****ing clue.
I might post my ideas if this thing turns around.
I guess you guys don't know any of the thousands of Arabs that have been harrassed since 9.11. I know a few. Take my ex-girlfriend, fo example. She even Iraqi! But she's a goddamn american. No different than your sister. How many millions of Arabs are there in the US? How would you like to be harrassed and interrogated for hours, just because of the color of your skin? Think about it!
My major gripe with racial profiling is that it's up to people to act on the (somewhat questionable) statisical findings. It's like the old saying: Guns don't kill people. People do.
People are giant ****-ups when it comes to judging other people. Give 'em a free ticket to judge others, as racial profiling does, and you're just asking for discrimination and racism to rear their ugly heads. It's like sticking a federal seal of approval on the whole thing and having people accuse others of xy and z just because of their race. Then they can hide behind this stupid "homeland security" bs saying they were just being vigilant. (Does the expression "homeland security" remind anyone else of the nazis?)
If racial profiling becomes codified and acceptable, we've got a problem. The statistics are flawed (the whole field of stats is one big joke. I can make my data say just about anything I want. And give me a large enough sample size, everything I chose to look for will be there. Trust me.) And the people carrying out these things are also flawed.
Of course, Eugene is going to come in here and say this and that about some shit and then I'm going to disagree with him and then I'll get frustrated arguing with a privileged minority - as asians in california are - and I'll give up.
Let's roll.
<strong>Actually, statistically, as I pointed out, all of the high-profile threats in the American media WERE NOT ARABS.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not sure this was stated anywhere really. I see three case studies of where racial profing wouldn't work (and assumably didn't if it was in effect then) which proves that it's not a solution, but doesn't prove the opposite.
<strong>
Not sure this was stated anywhere really. I see three case studies of where racial profing wouldn't work (and assumably didn't if it was in effect then) which proves that it's not a solution, but doesn't prove the opposite.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]And hasn't anyone noticed that none of the most high-profile arrests; dirty-bomber, shoe-bomber, recent grendade bomber in london; WERE NOT ARAB.<hr></blockquote>
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: giant ]</p>
<strong>Oh torifile, you know I looooove you.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Good this is Valentine Day
<strong>Oh torifile, you know I looooove you.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Bring it on. I'm ready for you. It's the weekend and I've got no plans.
<cracking my knuckles>
I'm talking about how people trivialize the deaths of 6 million Jews to gripe about a policy that isn't even officially in place that has caused the deaths of very few, if any at all.
It's disrespectful to their suffering to use it as a weapon.
[quote]<strong>Hell, we have engravings hanging outside of Spec Collections her at the Library showing how black men were punished. One of them shows a black man hanging from a tree by a hook through his rib.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Do you know what genocide is?
There is a difference between situational murders based on race and genocide.
[quote]<strong>You really are sick, groverat. And don't you dare start preaching to me. Maybe when you get a ****ing life and meet some people that eventually die violently due to racism you will actually get a ****ing clue.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Who is preaching, outrage-boy?
I'm aware of my region's very checkerd and shameful past with regard to race relations, but I'm also aware that it wasn't genocide. I know more about racist Southern hate crimes than you ever will.
Racial profiling in the U.S. is stupid and dangerous, but it's not the start of a slippery slope to gas-chamebered concentration camps.
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: MrBillData ]</p>
<hr></blockquote>
Yes I do, on a PERSONAL level from several fronts. Which is why you need to get a clue. Genocide is very real.
[quote]Racial profiling in the U.S. is stupid and dangerous, but it's not the start of a slippery slope to gas-chamebered concentration camps.<hr></blockquote>
Um...yes it is. We've already had the racial profiling and concentration camps here in the US.
Regardless of anything, it's oppression and demonization people with a certain amount of color in their skin. And that's just the very beginning!
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: giant ]</p>
One thing a LOT (again, not all) these people have in common is belief in fundamental Islam. Perhaps we should be using religious profiling?
Profiling itself isn't inherently bad. Using it as a crutch and as a misleading means of finding these people is bad. I agree that racial profiling is the wrong avenue here.
[ 02-14-2003: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>