Although the issue has always drawn a crowd and incited a heated debate, after the attacks of September 11, racial profiling has become even more important because of the looming threat over this nation.
Does it work? Is it right? Is it even legal? These questions and many more were tackled at a Suffolk University Law School forum last week titled Profiles in Injustice: Racial Profiling Yesterday and Today.
Balk Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law David A. Harris took to the podium first while the cover of his newest book was projected overhead.
It's called Profiles in Injustice and although it was finished before the September 11 attacks, it now takes on a whole different meaning.
"Racial profiling is no longer about African Americans, Latinos, drugs and guns," said Harris as he looked on to the curious faces in the audience. "It is now about Arabs, Muslims and anti-terrorism and that makes it ok?" he asked.
He clearly says it is not ok and further asserts that not only is it not ok but it doesn't work.
"This is not about race," said Harris. "This is about crime fighting."
Going back in history, Harris revisited the time when cops used race to catch home-made criminals.
"This is not about cops being bigoted," said Harris. "This is about institutional practises and assumptions that went unchallenged for too long."
In his book, Harris provides numerical evidence that proves that racial profiling is not an effective crime-fighting tool. He calculated so called "hit rates," rates of success of stop and search strategies based on racial and ethnic groupings.
One might assume, Harris argued, that if indeed racial profiling works, "at least we would be catching bad guys at a higher rate."
Meanwhile, whites were not stopped and searched unless they were undertaking suspicious activity.
Harris' results showed that out of 175,000 stops and frisks, 12.5 percent of the stops were successful among whites, 10.5 percent of the stops were successful among blacks, and 11.3 percent of the stops were successful among Latinos.
According to Harris, these statistics prove that racial profiling does not work. Harris further stated that "racial profiling has a corrosive influence on the entire system of justice."
"It creates distrust," said Harris. "How is it good when there is no trust between the police and the people? Set that aside, the statistics show it's not a good crime fighting tool."
Since September 11, polls taken in both white communities and communities of color show the public's approval of the use of racial profiling against people of Arab or Muslim backgrounds. Harris argues that the criminals behind the September 11 attacks are not stupid.
"They have shown to be adaptable, cunning and smart," said Harris of the Al-Qaeda members. "They know what we're looking for because we were nice enough to tell them," continued Harris in reference to to the Attorney General's announcement that 5,000 young Arab men will be questioned by the FBI.
"What was their first reaction to this announcement?" asked Harris. "They allegedly sent a British man to blow up a plane. He was not an Arab, nor did he look like one. They're too smart for us to be using a tool like profiling against them."
There are those who disagree with Harris. They believe in racial profiling. But it's not happening to them. Will they still believe in it if it's they who are being profiled?
Mona Charon, a conservative newspaper columnists called Walied Shater, an Arab-American Secret Service agent a "whiner" for having a problem with being kicked off a plane because of his ethnic background. Charon says Shater was "inconvenienced, treated with suspicion, and doubtless embarrassed and a little humiliated by how he was treated."
He found himself a little more than just "a little humiliated" as do the numerous other Arab-Americans who have been pulled out of lines, thrown out of planes, and ordered to remove their religious headscarfs in plain view of the entire passenger populations of O'Hare airport as was the case with Samar Kaukab, an American Muslim who filed suit for discriminatory treatment.
Susan Akram, associate professor at Boston University School of Law and founding director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project in Boston also spoke at the forum. She started by reminding the Americans in the room of all the rights they had to protect themselves.
She then proceeded to inform the uninformed about the harsh realities of what it is like to be an alien in this nation after September 11.
"All these rights are inapplicable in the context of immigrants," she said. "There is a whole in the donut and the non-citizens fall right through."
According to Akram, racial profiling, targeting and demonization of Arabs and Muslims began long before 9/11.
"In the 70's it was Nixon's operations Boulder," said Akram referring to the investigation of people's of "Arab speaking origin" under Nixon's orders where Arabs' homes were tapped by the government.
Akram gave other examples where during the Gulf war, there was a nationwide effort against Arabs where residents and immigrants were fingerprinted en masse, airline profiling was first used, and reading or distributing pro-Palestinian literature could have led to deportation.
And her list goes on.
"Within weeks of the attacks, over 1,200 Arab and Muslim immigrants were arrested and detained, were not allowed access to lawyers or to their families," said Akram. "The government is invoking secrecy to shield their violations of civil rights."
Still there are many who still believe that targeting Arabs and Muslims is the best way to root out terror. Is the tradeoff between losing some civil rights and liberties for the sake of security really going to make people safer?
Photograph (Susan Akram, King Downing, David Harris, John Roberts)
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