We in the United States seem to be caught in an ideological conundrum. In reaction to the United Kingdom's recent battles with extremists, the debate about racial profiling has begun anew. Columnists far more educated than myself have claimed that the numerical airline-passenger checking method employed by many security officials is both ineffective and a waste of time.
Why shouldn't the guard at the airport be more suspicious of the young Middle-Eastern man than the young white man? After all, as many pundits will point out, most of the men involved in the majority of public acts of terrorism have fit the profile of young Muslim men from North Africa, the Middle East or West Asia.
David Gelernter, a Yale professor and contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, goes as far as to claim that dark-skinned people owe their country this prejudice because we -whomever he considers we to include and exclude -have treated them so solicitously
and worked so hard to suppress racial prejudice that dark-skinned people owe their country the benefit of the doubt.
If you aren't as infuriated with that statement as I, well, you're a terrible person. It is hard to stomach the audacity of this man, who thinks that a nation attempting to fulfill its duty to provide equality for its citizens earns some sort of bonus points and the right to revoke those rights whenever it suits its mood. As if it were the American government that gave these peoples those unalienable rights, not the God to which the very same advocates love to make reference.
Fear always brings out the worst in any population. Part of me wants to forgive those who advocate racial profiling out of their feelings of empathy for the damaging effects fear has on people. It is easy to abandon your convictions when you aren't the targeted population, just so that you feel much safer hopping on the subway or catching a plane out of the airport.
But what would truly be accomplished by racial profiling? Society would further ostracize young Muslim men, a part of our country Americans should be working to develop better relations with and not trying to further alienate them. By making a population feel less American than the rest, society is doing nothing but fanning the flame of hatred and thus creating new angry, young and impressionable minds for terrorist leaders to manipulate.
More disturbingly, America is abandoning the foundations on which it was built. Equality never becomes stupid, no matter what those who are afraid might believe. Treating every section of our population the same -regardless of skin color -will always be the right response to any situation.
If a man getting on a subway in the middle of July has a huge overcoat on and is twitching, of course, stop him instead of the 50-year-old man with the cane who is numerically next. But if the choice is between the 50-year-old man and the young dark-skinned man, I hope we have the courage to stick to the numbers.
-Eric Dryden is a senior specialized studies major. Send him an email at ed890402@ohiou.edu.
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Eric Dryden
