Racial Profiling

[Anthony]

Sorry, something tweaked with the post.

[The Gaijin]

I will concede, however, that solely targetting Arabs is a bit silly -- better yet to keep a watchful eye on anybody who had recently spent time in an Arab or predominantly Muslim country.

The problem with this sort of thinking is that it opens up a floodgate; once you start targeting one minority for a crime perpetuated by a small percentage of its people you've just basically given the OK to sanctioned racism/segregation.

Until it can adequately be shown that blacks, whites, Asians or Hispanics hijack nearly as many planes as Arabs do, I disagree.

Let me rephrase: just because most hijackers are Arabs, does that mean most Arabs are hijackers? If that's not the case then we shouldn't treat them as such.

An airport is a chokepoint, so any security checks can be easily done there. And there's a difference between a cop following you around because you're black, and giving a more thorough security check on an Arab.

I don't see the difference, could you clarify? Also, a school could be considered a choke point--would you condone metal detectors being set up and certain minorities being checked there too?

In any case, why would profiling Arabs be so bad, anyway? If a person crashes a plane into a building, everybody gets blown up, including the innocent Arabs. If waiting five extra minutes means less chance of getting blown up, I'd consider it a bargain.

I don't like the idea of profiling, because like I said it opens up a lot of doors that took a long time to get closed. It makes more sense to me to simply increase security all around and get some competent people to work in fucking airports.

I'm not sure that's such a good example. We only manage to catch about 1% of serial killers, most of whom were white, yes. But we know pretty quickly about airplane hijackings, because they are hard to miss.

Fair enough.

[LlamaGod]

Profiling is bad in all it's forms as I see it, and let me clarify upon that before I become declared captain obvious; both the bad, chase down the black/asian/white/whatever, and the "good", granting of money just because you're a certain ethnicity and favoratism. I've picked up scholarships before to find that they're Asian only, or black only, or what have you.. but none that are white, native to the US, I've not found any. Hope that didn't sound too racist there.. but the only thing I've really found exclusively for whites is the KKK.. and to my knowledge, they really don't have an appealing scholarship plan. Neutral, to the best of my knowledge, profiling even... when the little slip asks "What ethnicity are you?" and y'just know they're going to do something with that, store it in a vault or something, who knows. I COULD qualify for Indian(American) scholarships, but that's just another form of favoratism due to race. How many other people chose other on those and pick American?

Yeah makes sense, kinda like the thing about jokes and whatnot, if a black guy makes a joke about a white guy's race, it's hilarious. If a white guy makes a joke about a black guy's race, it's racism.

Same thing with guys and gals, if a guy makes fun of a girl for being a girl, it's sexist, if a girl makes fun of a guy for being a guy, it's COMEDY (probably lesbian, OH BOY THERE I GO).

So then white males resort to poop jokes.

[Mandalorian FaLLouT GoD]

Profiling is bad in all it's forms as I see it, and let me clarify upon that before I become declared captain obvious; both the bad, chase down the black/asian/white/whatever, and the "good", granting of money just because you're a certain ethnicity and favoratism. I've picked up scholarships before to find that they're Asian only, or black only, or what have you.. but none that are white, native to the US, I've not found any. Hope that didn't sound too racist there.. but the only thing I've really found exclusively for whites is the KKK.. and to my knowledge, they really don't have an appealing scholarship plan. Neutral, to the best of my knowledge, profiling even... when the little slip asks "What ethnicity are you?" and y'just know they're going to do something with that, store it in a vault or something, who knows. I COULD qualify for Indian(American) scholarships, but that's just another form of favoratism due to race. How many other people chose other on those and pick American?

reverse racism that isnt actual racism pwns you.

[ApTyp]

Racism is connecting the dots. However stupid it might be (culture-based profiling makes much more sense), that's just how human brain works, whether you like it or not.

[Slave_Master]

stuff.

After reading your post and carefully considering it, I've reached the rather obvious conclusion that even though all (Of course it's not all, just for the sake of argument) hijackers are Arabs, that doesn't necessarily mean that all Arabs are hijackers. Instead, anybody who had contact with Muslim extremists groups, regardless of race, should be profiled.

[Maximus]

Racism is connecting the dots. However stupid it might be (culture-based profiling makes much more sense), that's just how human brain works, whether you like it or not.

I totally agree, btw i do like it.

stuff.

After reading your post and carefully considering it, I've reached the rather obvious conclusion that even though all (Of course it's not all, just for the sake of argument) hijackers are Arabs, that doesn't necessarily mean that all Arabs are hijackers. Instead, anybody who had contact with Muslim extremists groups, regardless of race, should be profiled.

And shot too, don't forget shot.

[CloudNineGT]

After reading your post and carefully considering it, I've reached the rather obvious conclusion that even though all (Of course it's not all, just for the sake of argument) hijackers are Arabs, that doesn't necessarily mean that all Arabs are hijackers. Instead, anybody who had contact with Muslim extremists groups, regardless of race, should be profiled.

I wish other people would catch on to that idea. I've heard some buzz about assigning "terrorist threat" numbers to those who wish to travel by air, and though I certainly dont plan on hijacking any planes (at least for anti-American terrorist purposes) its going to be damn hard for me to catch a flight, with me being half Syrian from my dads side, and my mother an Iranian. But I understand the necessity to speed and efficiency to insure the safety of others traveling. Race is easy to determine, where as a detailed study of my background is not.
Racial profiling is a double edged sword. In one case, some organizations recognizes for example a greater amount of poverty and uneducation among blacks. The solution: scholarships only for black Americans. Fantastic! On the other edge of this metaphorical sword lies the injustice of race oriented arrests, and judgements about a person solely based on ethnicity.

[Maximus]

Not to sound like a supremacist, but if everyone acted a little more caucasian (I don't mean Jeryy Springer Caucasian either) there would be far less problems in public schools in this country.

[jetbaby]

Racial profiling is one of the more moronic things ever. He's black so lets beat 'em and arrest him for owning a gun. He's of Arab descent so lets consider you a terrorist and arrest you, though you were born in America and raised in an upper-middle class familly with a history of faithful military service. You want racial profiling? How about we just arrest every Arab-American and send them to concentration camps in the midwest (see American concentration camps for the Japanese in World War 2). Background profiling si teh winnar. Judging solely on race is simply moronic. However, since no one cares about humanity anymore and the public just wants to FEEL secure, not BE secure, let's just do what I said, arrest Arabs, and have that nice shiny color code system for terrorist threat levels.

[jetbaby]

Not to sound like a supremacist, but if everyone acted a little more caucasian (I don't mean Jeryy Springer Caucasian either) there would be far less problems in public schools in this country.

<strike>Hahahaha, thats a good one. Let's all be hypocritical lying bastards. "We are here to hunt terrorists and those who support them! ... but Pakistan, we'll ignore your history of terrorism against India long enough to abuse your land for airbases in Afghanistan, then we'll leave. Don't worry. We'll be on your ass in a few years. Oh, and Great Britain! We don't mind your whole past with the IRA and that whole deal. Terrorism isn't terrorism if it isn't directed against the US of A."</strike>

[Slave_Master]

lots of retarded shit, lame rhetoric, and silly strawmen

Shut the fuck up and die, you dumb sack of shit. Thanks for attempting to ruin a decent conversation we were having with your pathetic theatrics.

[jetbaby]

I'm sorry that I believe that there are better options than claiming total democracy and delivering only scraps of it. I'm sorry the the western world isn't the perfection of mankind's evolution in my view.

I'm so VERY sorry for having an opinion and view to call my own! Oh my! God forbid we think independently of each other. Not like thats what the original idea of democracy is. Everyone having their share of input. I HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION THAN YOU! FLAME ME. Moron. I even struck it out, just for you, asscaptain.

[Menno]

I'm sorry that I believe that there are better options than claiming total democracy and delivering only scraps of it.

What are your better options?

And if any of it involves "bringing everybody to the table", you get dick-slapped.

[jetbaby]

What are your better options?

And if any of it involves "bringing everybody to the table", you get dick-slapped.

Hahaha are you kidding me? That is such bullshit. The "lets bring everyone to the table, sit down and make sweet sweet love with our peaceful ways" way is the most ignorant idea ever. Democracy is an all-or-nothing deal to me. If you have it, HAVE it, don't limit it for stupid reasons. I'd rather run the risk of being hit by an airplane full of suicide bombing Arabs than have innocents gagged and bagged for no reason at all other than their race. The Patriot Act makes me sick to my stomach. Personally, I'm a fan of communism, simply because it offers complete equality in any sense acceptable by humankind accounting for most of our flaws. And no, I am not talking about the socialist government Russia was stuck in. I mean the <i>true</i> communism as it was meant to be, defined by our friends at dictionary.com as the "theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members." However, communism is unachieveable due to the fact that humans are greedy and self-serving. When we can raise ourselves beyond that and work for the greater good of the species, not the individual, I think that is what we should work for. Capitalism in the modern democratic society only encourages individual gain at the cost of the majority. You can't take your ten trillion dollar company with you to the grave, now can you? When humans realize that they are not a single unit, but a block in the larger picture of the species is when I will be happy.

[Sol Invictus]

but none that are white, native to the US

Asians and blacks are just as native to the United States as any white. Most whites didn't come to the United States as free men. They came as slaves and indentured servants. They weren't 'seeking freedom' from England or any of the other Old World countries. They were banished, abandoned, forgotten. The colonies in America were as much penal colonies as Botany Bay in Australia.

The history books in American schools these days practice a lot of revisionism when it comes to the subject of the colonization of America. If you'll read up you'll notice a similarity between most, if not all of the colonization efforts throughout history, in that a majority of the colonists were slaves and indentured servants who were exiled from their homelands. The nobles sure as hell wouldn't give up their luxuries to go live in a life of dirt farming and mining. The few of the rich that went to the New World were plantation owners, merchants and other rich folk, like George Bush's ancestors (who are supposedly descendents of the Czech royalty) and the Marriot family.

That said, I disagree with racial profiling of any sort. Whites are disadvantaged when it comes to getting free shit from the ACLU, and I can't enter the United States without having a thorough background check run on me and a full body inspection. I think Muslims suck as much as the next American does so what the fuck is up with that?

[Menno]

Hahaha are you kidding me? That is such bullshit. The "lets bring everyone to the table, sit down and make sweet sweet love with our peaceful ways" way is the most ignorant idea ever.

Haha, well I'm glad we see eye to eye there.

Democracy is an all-or-nothing deal to me. If you have it, HAVE it, don't limit it for stupid reasons. I'd rather run the risk of being hit by an airplane full of suicide bombing Arabs than have innocents gagged and bagged for no reason at all other than their race.

You would rather run that risk. Other men have families and won't play with their family's lives by worrying about inconveniences imposed upon Muslims. Does it make it "right"? No, I agree with you in that it doesn't. However, there is always a trade-off when it comes to security and freedom. You give up some of one to have more of the other and vice versa. This is not new in America's history and has happened before. The true test is when the government has to give those freedoms back to the people.

A Muslim having to wait on line longer because of a background check or being pulled over to check his ID is an inconvenience and it absolutely sucks, I wholeheartedly agree. But I get inconvienenced when I wait on line at the DMV, as do millions of other Amerikkkans. Large trucks are searched when the threat level increases, so they get profiled as well. These are all inconveniences.

You could argue that profiling is a violation of a person's rights and again, I'd probably agree with you. But let's say you completely remove profiling of any kind. Most foreign jihadists, whether you like it or not, are Muslim. By leveling the playing field and forcing authorities to not look into Muslims more than any other racial group, you are in essence making it easier for the few Muslims with bad intentions to slip through the cracks. And then you will realize that there are worse things in life than being inconvenienced.

Lets say for example your fictional daughter is kidnapped by someone in your small town. And let's say that the town's population is 95 blacks and 5 whites. Witnesses say that the person who kidnapped your daughter is a white man. Now what would you want the police to do? Would you want them to search every man's home [both white and black], knowing that 95% of the search would be futile and waste valuable time and risk your daughter's life? Or would you rather be on the lookout for the white men in the area, in essence profiling them, but at the same time increasing your chances of finding your child?

So yeah, there are good and bad aspects of profiling. That's what makes it a debate. Can profiling be abused and taken too far [such as physical abuse or following them around everywhere]? Yes it can, but citizens can also abuse their right to bear arms and free speech, and so forth. When it's abused, you crack down and punish the abusers.

I don't understand exactly what you meant about "having innocents gagged and bagged for no reason", in that were you referencing police/federal conduct against Muslims here in the United States or overseas? So I won't comment on that until you clarify.

The Patriot Act makes me sick to my stomach.

Most of the powers granted in the Patriot Act have been on the books already; except this time all it does is put them in writing and/or streamlines them. There's a thread on here somewhere about the Patriot Act where I pointed out a lot of the misconceptions. A few of the powers in the Patriot Act should be removed [and I believe it went back to Congress to do so, though I'm not sure how that's progressing], but all this "OMG PATRIOT ACT ST3ALING MY RIGHTS & FR33D0MS!!" is way overblown, and if you're going to complain about it now, you're about 20-30 years too late, since most of this stuff has been on the books already and used during trials.

Your feelings about Communism

I respect your feelings about Communism and, while I disagree, I won't debate them. However, to give me an example of your utopia economic system, I'll give you my address via PM, and you can send all of your excess money you have in your pocket every month to me; after all you aren't greedy like us capitalists so it shouldn't make a difference to you.

[Thor Kaufman]

From what I heard the whole Patriot Act and the execution of it isn't even able to serve its pretended purpose, anyway ?

Like for instance the insane amount of data is mostly garbage, anyway or can only be used for other profiling means (to make people into glass humans and see which porns they are watching, or something ?) hence leading people to think of fake security and just taking away their basic (democratic) rights in the end ?

And just because a similar system has been in use since decades makes it better and more justified ? Hm, great logic, there, yeah.


Ah, and about the ID-thingy:
I hate the idea that any government or any other one has access to this data, hence could watch my every step even though I didn't commit a crime, I am not guilty and I don't feel and don't want to feel guilty, if I did nothing bad and that's one of my most basic rights if I am informed correctly or something into that direction.
Apart from that it is long since known that watched people don't act like they would act normally hence everyone would become insane or like in "1984", or something ?

[Grey Fil]

I dont think racial profiling per se is bad. The problem is that it allows a lot of racist and xenophobic abuse to surface.

And allowing for "positive descrimination" in school or work is BS. The South African whites had it during apartheid.

[Phias]

I believe that the actual concept of Racial Profiling has point, but since so many people will abuse the system to no end, I believe the execution of such a program would result in one hell of a civil liberties battle.