Is there a better term?

[Robert Fitzke]

Well said, RK.

Bob

http://www.michigan.gov/deq/1,1607,7-135-3313_3675---,00.html
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Kennerly <rick at MOUSEHERDER.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 6:26 AM
Subject: Re: Is there a better term?


> ><))));>anger. Racial profiling has too often been used by lower
> ><))));>middle class
> ><))));>whites in law enforcement to revenge themselves against
> ><))));>highly successful
>
> Nice fantasy, but a majority of the NJ State Police are college educated
and
> all make a professional salary.  The profiling schemes they've admitted in
> court was pushed down on them in an institutional way by their
supervisors,
> relying on pop psychology, pseudoscience and selectively sampled
> statistically data to predetermine the outcome--Nazis did the same thing.
> Driving while black is still an offense in a lot of places, we shouldn't
> honor NJ alone.
>
> ><))));>there probably are. You suggest a one way ticket, but that is
easily
>
> Trip profiling was just one example of a more successful method of drug
> interdiction that works better than racial profiling for US Customs, and
it
> does take into account the country that issued your passport.  But this
> problem, like drug interdiction,  is also an ever shifting puzzle--like a
> ball a clay, if you squeeze here, it pops out somewhere else--just like
the
> current problem.
>
> ><))));>should a 50 year old woman
> ><))));>from Denmark be
> ><))));>treated in the same way as a 28 year old man from Saudi Arabia?
> ><))));>
>
> Ah, by your own example we're back to physical attributes to determine who
> is singled out for intense scrutiny--if white, all right.  If brown, strip
> them down.   And we're going to let who, exactly, make these decisions?
> Those highly professional--cum federal employees--with a wand and a  badge
> at the gates nowadays? And thanks for the information that there are no
> aging white terrorists--not even a few old left over bader meinhoff folks
in
> Germany? no old desperate Europeans muling drugs or worse for rent money?
no
> grandmotherly dupes inadvertently carrying somebody else's package for a
> grandchild back home? or traveling with bags that their angry radicalized
> Indonesian house slave packed for them?  Amazing insight.  Of course,
until
> 911 the worst mass murderer in US history was a super patriotic white guy,
> an Army veteran living in the Midwest, who no one would suspect, but it's
> too much trouble to intensely scrutinize white folks, too many of 'em.
>
> But that's okay, after all after 911 the black community, the oriental
> community and the latino community were right in there with everybody
else,
> pitching like a lodge brother, to have people of Arab descent thrown off
of
> planes and ghettoized in neighborhoods.  The fact that they've been there
> makes it particularly wrong.   But, listen it's a natural response.  We're
> all right, they're not.  But the beauty America is that through our ideals
> we can rise above that, despite our historical lapses.
>
> In any event, being of demonstrated cleverness, well-financed, and
patient,
> I'm sure, regardless of what we do, a determined group of
terrorists--maybe
> Filipino or Malaysian or Indonesian this time--will strike again.  But it
> might just be another Timothy  McVeigh, too.  The question is where do we
> draw that line which, if crossed, we stop being America?  If we abandon
our
> ideals yet survive physically, is this country still American?  Did we not
> learn anything from the interment of Americans of Japanese descent?  The
> ghettoization of the Jews?  The hell German-Americans lived at the hands
of
> their neighbors during the war?
>
> ><))));>Maybe I'm just old fashioned
>
> Yep, and it's that old fashioned thinking that will open the door to allow
> the next group of terrorist to strike.
>
> rhk
>