Thought I'd resurrect this thread seeing as it was lost thanks to the hack (damn retarded hackers). Last time I looked, we were asking whether or not it's an unfortunate inevitability that Muslims will feel the brunt of security measures in the 'war on terror'; and whether it was a sensible move for a Home Office minister to announce this, or if that just fuels racist backlash.

While it might be sensible to carefully eye an imported Imam from an Islamist madras and his known associates; broad brush targetting of Arab looking populations is just a racist and pandering response. This is especially true here in the States; where white protestants are much more likely to commit terrorist acts (blowing up Federal buildings, murdering the family of a judge, assassinating abortion providers; that kind of thing) than semitic muslims.

The accuracy of this particular case aside, has there been any case where racial profiling has been proven to work? It's inherently unjust, but it's often defended as saving lives, and I'm curious if that's actually true.

The enemy who seems to hate us the most violently right now defines itself as being made up entirely of Muslims (or some perversion thereof). There is a strong tendency, though it is merely a tendency, among Muslims - especially the more extremist Muslims - to be of Middle Eastern upbringing or descent. This information cannot be ignored on the grounds of racism, because it is a simple fact that a Southwest-Asian looking male is more likely to be a Muslim extremist than a member of any other demographic, and Muslim extremists are far more likely to bear a violent grudge against the United States.

This does not excuse the line of thinking "Towelheads = guilty," but that's racism rather than simply racial profiling. It doesn't work when there are no strong and genuine trends that correlate to race (i.e. the classic example of black people being pulled over more often than white people - this is racial profiling, but it is also racist because what correlation exists between race and crime rate is too weak to make such an assumption, as well as for a number of other reasons I'll add in a footnote if anybody's interested) but in this case, there are.

Ultimately race is just a person's physical appearance. We should not forbid law enforcement from making appropriate use of any part of a potential suspect's appearance.

If the police in, say, Colorado get evidence that a Muslim terrorist is somewhere in the state, then in that case I could see them being a little more watchful for Middle Eastern-looking people.

If, however, the police are not looking for a specific target, and instead are just stopping Middle Eastern-looking people on the basis that they MIGHT be a terrorist, that's just ludicrous.



But the numbers, BB, the numbers! The number of Muslims who aren't extremist is far, far greater than the number who are (hence the term "extremist"). The number of extremists who don't hate us, even, is probably greater than the number of terrorists. Just because somebody doesn't like America doesn't mean they are willing to bomb us. If you haven't noticed, a lot of the world doesn't like us right now; but they haven't acted on it.

The numbers don't match up. You can't stop all people of Middle Eastern descent because a tiny, vocal majority happens to express their dislike of the US violently.

Analogy: Let's say a new study finds that about 5% of serial killers are homosexual, but on average they kill twice as many people as straight serial killers. Do we search the homes of all effeminate men? By your logic, since many effeminate men are gay, and since "many" gays are terrible killers, it's perfectly acceptable to look for bodies in the gardens of males with good fashion.

Let's not jump to conclusions, here. I'm just saying that while the probability of any given traveler having a bomb of some sort is very small, it's many times higher among Middle Eastern men. (Think about .009% vs. .0018%.) There's not much chance for anybody, but if you're going to be tightening security anyway you shouldn't ignore the statistics.

I have 2 points, which aren't really all that related:

1) A lot of the racial profiling talked about occurs during customs and immigration. "Home Grown" terrorists don't go through customs and immigration, so there is no opportunity to search/question them really. When you analyze just the visitors, I think that the ratio of terrorists to non terrorists higher among middle easterners than any other group.


2) I grew up in Saudi Arabia, and have gone through US customs. All the profiling there basically came down people with middle eastern connections had to go through a different line up. At least I assume it was because of middle eastern connections, as almost everybody in the line was "brown." Anyway, the extra security measures basically were just a few extra questions, something like this:

Customs Guy: Are you a Terrorist?
Me: No.
CG: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
CG: Really sure? Promise?
Me: Yes.
CG: Okay.

I didn't particularly mind standing in line for an hour. Just the extreme pointlessness of the whole thing was annoying.


Edit: I just thought I'd add I'm not Islamic, so you don't have to worry about offending me or anything (not that you would anyway...)

There are more Asians than Arabs that are Muslim. I might cite tomorrow.

And that's it. I'm going back to bed.

"Asian" is a pretty broad term. After all, the Arabian Peninsula is in Asia. I think you would have to refine that a bit.

He prob'ly means Indonesians. World's most populous Muslim country.
But then, they're brown too so it doesn't matter. [/crass joke]

As I asked, can someone give an example where it has worked?

Ironshark - the cases being talked about that sparked this discussion weren't customs and immigration related; they were about police stop and search powers. The whole debate arose when a Home Office minister tried to justify the fact that while Asian-looking people make up just under 5% of the population, they make up 12.5% of those subject to stop-and-search. The disproportionate number of Asians being searched has increased over the past few years.

Here's a fact to bear in mind when we worry about all the Muslims waiting to bomb us (the BBC's the source, the bloke being paraphrased is leader of some Muslim Human Rights group):

"Statistics showed that of the 17 people found guilty of terrorist acts in the UK since the 11 September attacks, only four of the 12 whose ethnic backgrounds were known were Muslim, he added "

Does anyone know what the chances are to determinate the ethnic background of a person especially if they don't cooperate by wearing ethnic clothes or do stuff like dyeing their hair.

An arab with a sikh turban would not look different from a sikh and after all there is no threat of sikh terrorists.

Some arabs could pose as southern europeans if they have the language skills. If i were running one of thoose infamous terrorist training camps i'd put Spanish on the curriculum.

Does anyone know if such stop searches (regardless of racially profiled or not) have ever prevented a crime?

You may want to narrow that, Arcosh. Search enough people, and you'll turn up contraband (illegal weapons, drugs, whatever). So one way or the other, such searches have stopped crimes; whether they've ever stopped an upcoming terrorist atrocity is another story entirely.