Profiling is a technique for identifying the characteristics which indicate likely behaviors. It can be used in many areas to predict a desired or undesirable behavior. Profiling, when done on the basis of a single characteristic, is not profiling but prejudice.
We've heard much discussion about "racial profiling" which, when true, is wrong and illegal. Sometimes the single characteristic is ethnicity, you know, all Italians are Mafia, all Muslims are terrorists or all Hispanics are drug dealers. The problem arises when someone of an identifiable group is stopped by police, there is no easy way for us to know if the officer would have taken the same action if the person had not been of that group. If there are other criteria used to make the stop, we must know to judge the cause of the stop. When others from that group will not accept the possibility that the stop was warranted on the basis of other information, there are violent protests which are a reverse type of profiling, that is, that anyone from their group could not possibly do the things accused of, therefore it was a stop based upon some prejudice.
When race or ethnicity is an overwhelming characteristic in certain behaviors, it would be foolish, no, stupid to not give it the weight it deserves. Given this reality, you would expect, in a less than perfect world, that sometimes the PERCEPTION would suggest some unfairness. The question of safety is not always precise and those who err on the excess side should be commended just as they would be condemned if they went the other way. A folksy analysis I've quoted before is, "When you're goin' fishing, you go to a pond where you know there are fish."
Don't blame those who protect us for the conditions which have led us to doing this, blame those in the group you resemble for giving the rest of you an undeserved, bad reputation. Ideally, those who belong to groups which are heavily profiled should be the ones who do more to change that perception rather than complain about it.
What do you think, or do you?
We've heard much discussion about "racial profiling" which, when true, is wrong and illegal. Sometimes the single characteristic is ethnicity, you know, all Italians are Mafia, all Muslims are terrorists or all Hispanics are drug dealers. The problem arises when someone of an identifiable group is stopped by police, there is no easy way for us to know if the officer would have taken the same action if the person had not been of that group. If there are other criteria used to make the stop, we must know to judge the cause of the stop. When others from that group will not accept the possibility that the stop was warranted on the basis of other information, there are violent protests which are a reverse type of profiling, that is, that anyone from their group could not possibly do the things accused of, therefore it was a stop based upon some prejudice.
When race or ethnicity is an overwhelming characteristic in certain behaviors, it would be foolish, no, stupid to not give it the weight it deserves. Given this reality, you would expect, in a less than perfect world, that sometimes the PERCEPTION would suggest some unfairness. The question of safety is not always precise and those who err on the excess side should be commended just as they would be condemned if they went the other way. A folksy analysis I've quoted before is, "When you're goin' fishing, you go to a pond where you know there are fish."
Don't blame those who protect us for the conditions which have led us to doing this, blame those in the group you resemble for giving the rest of you an undeserved, bad reputation. Ideally, those who belong to groups which are heavily profiled should be the ones who do more to change that perception rather than complain about it.
What do you think, or do you?
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