Victor Davis Hanson: Profiling, Diversity, and Arizona’s New Law
[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.]
Profiling is considered among the worst of American sins.
Not long ago, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by the Cambridge, Mass., police for trying to enter his own locked home after misplacing his key. Almost immediately, President Obama rushed to condemn what he thought was racial profiling. The police were acting “stupidly,” Obama concluded. He added: “There’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
Here is where the argument about an individual and the group turns nasty: Is using statistics on collective behavior a reasonable tool of law enforcement for anticipating the greater likelihood of a crime, or does it gratuitously stereotype the innocent? Or sometimes both, depending on how it’s done?...
On a recent international flight, I noticed that the cabin crew was far more attentive to a group of Arabic-speaking, Middle Eastern males than it was to a group of Chinese nationals. Had the attendants collated the number of terrorist incidents since 9/11, concluded that the vast majority of them were attempted by Middle Eastern males, and so tried to give more attention to politely watching one group than another? And should they have, given that the vast majority of Middle Eastern males reject terrorism?...
When Justice Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to the Supreme Court, the media unabashedly wrote that President Obama was focusing on naming the court’s first Hispanic justice. Sotomayor herself had used the term “wise Latina” to suggest that her gender and ethnic profile, in some cases, made her a better judge than stereotypical white males.
When we weigh racial and gender stereotypes for what we deem noble purposes, we call it “diversity,” but when we consider criteria other than someone’s individuality for matters of public safety, it devolves into “profiling.”...
Read entire article at National Review
Profiling is considered among the worst of American sins.
Not long ago, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by the Cambridge, Mass., police for trying to enter his own locked home after misplacing his key. Almost immediately, President Obama rushed to condemn what he thought was racial profiling. The police were acting “stupidly,” Obama concluded. He added: “There’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
Here is where the argument about an individual and the group turns nasty: Is using statistics on collective behavior a reasonable tool of law enforcement for anticipating the greater likelihood of a crime, or does it gratuitously stereotype the innocent? Or sometimes both, depending on how it’s done?...
On a recent international flight, I noticed that the cabin crew was far more attentive to a group of Arabic-speaking, Middle Eastern males than it was to a group of Chinese nationals. Had the attendants collated the number of terrorist incidents since 9/11, concluded that the vast majority of them were attempted by Middle Eastern males, and so tried to give more attention to politely watching one group than another? And should they have, given that the vast majority of Middle Eastern males reject terrorism?...
When Justice Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to the Supreme Court, the media unabashedly wrote that President Obama was focusing on naming the court’s first Hispanic justice. Sotomayor herself had used the term “wise Latina” to suggest that her gender and ethnic profile, in some cases, made her a better judge than stereotypical white males.
When we weigh racial and gender stereotypes for what we deem noble purposes, we call it “diversity,” but when we consider criteria other than someone’s individuality for matters of public safety, it devolves into “profiling.”...