First off let me say that racial profiling is inherently racist, unjust and does not solve problems, whether they be crime, drugs terrorism or immigration. However, seeing as how the justice department is already considering legalizing racial profiling, shouldn’t we be equal opportunity racial profilers.
We now have an African American President. This opens the doors to the sleeping giant of white racism and supremacy that has been complacent during the Bush years. There is a new demographic of extremist terrorists that pose a threat to our new President and our African American citizens.
We have seen the results that white supremacist extremist terrorism has caused before: the bombing of the Birmingham church that killed 4 young black girls, the torture and murder of Emmit Till, the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, countless lynchings, vandalism, intimidation, kidnappings, rapes and murders.
The Obama presidential victory has already provoked carbombings, threats, beatings, racist vandalism, and even the old racist standard of burning crosses. The actions by themselves may be seen as just petty stupid acts by stupid bigots, but the hatred behind the acts must be taken into mind by law officials as they may be pre-cursors to other more deadly attacks. There has been three plots by white supremacists to kill President Elect Obama that have been broken up by the FBI and the ATF.
For years the government has been racially profiling minority groups. While focusing their attention on trying to catch black drug dealers and Arab terrorists, they have been giving a pass to white terrorists and white drug dealers.
Case in point, seven years after the fact we finally foung out that the cause of the Anthrax scare in 2001 was not a raging Muslim terrorist, but a sorority obsessed Caucasian sicko in August. Rather than pushing the FBI to find the source of the of the anthrax, President Bush told the FBI to blame it on Al Qaeda and pressured the director of the FBI to find Islamic, extremist links.
How many man hours were used by the FBI to find the non existent link between Al Qaeda and the anthrax scare? Maybe if the FBI used actual detective skills instead of divisive profiling, they would’ve been able to catch him a lot sooner than the seven years it took to apprehend him. The guy worked for the US government in the anthrax department for Christ’s sakes. No wonder they can’t catch Bin Laden, it took them seven years to find a legit psycho who was working right under their noses.
We’re lucky that this guy was just a sorority hating nutjob not a full fledged white terrorist sociopath. With access to all that anthrax can you imagine the damage he could have done if he was on some McVeigh status?
Which brings me to my point. If we are going to racially profile Arabic people for terrorism, shouldn’t we apply the same standard to white people?
After all, other than 9/11, most of the major terrorists in the states have been white men. The guy who shot Kennedy was white(either Lee Harvey Oswald or the CIA), the guys who shot Reagan, Lennon, Martin Luther King and Medgar Evars were all white.
Also the mastermind of the deadliest domestic attack on the US before 9/11 was a white man as well. McVeigh’s attack killed 168 people and injured 450 doing more damage than the worst terrorist attack in Iraq. McVeigh was a white supremacist who toured the gun show circuit. Also according to McVeigh, he began harboring anti-government feelings after being ordered to execute surrendering prisoners and seeing the carnage on the road in the first Gulf War. Imagine how many more McVeigh’s we are creating in the second gulf war?
We must remember the original domestic terrorist organization in the US is the Klu Klux Klan. They were almost exactly like Al Qaeda except for they didn’t wear black robes, they wore white ones, they didn’t behead people, they hung them from trees and they didn’t blow up mosques, they blew up churches.
The KKK is still alive and well in the states. While they’ve been relatively quiet, we’ve got to remember that Al Qaeda was quiet for 8 years in between Trade Center attacks. The KKK and other white supremacist groups have already pledged to kill Obama. Is the justice department profiling all those who fit the KKK’s background as much as they are of Al Qaeda’s? I hope they are. Now that Obama is President, the white terrorist has become a reality the country will have to deal with if it does not want to fall into chaos.
Will airlines start being suspicious of men with two first names? Sorry Billy Ray but you’re going to have to go through a full cavity search. Should police officers pull over anyone with a pick up truck and a confederate flag bumper sticker? Should the FBI start monitoring all the white supremacist sites on the internet site as closely as they’ve been of Al Qaeda’s?
I remember growing up in Boston, reading about the Charles Stuart case. A white guy claimed that two black guys ran up on him and his pregnant wife and shot both of them, killing his wife and injuring him. The police harassed every black person in a 12 mile area and even locked up a black guy for her murder.
Later we found out that Charles Stuart was the man who killed his pregnant wife and that the police had racially profiled half of Boston for no reason. If the police would’ve done their job and examined the case thoroughly they would’ve seen through his lies from the jump, but they decided that racial profiling was a better way to fight crime.
This is why racial profiling doesn’t work because it distracts you from good detective work. If the FBI was smart they would’ve asked who had the motive and access to anthrax send it to the different Senators? Maybe we should look into the looney guy in the Anthrax dept? But no, they spent years trying to pin it on Al Qaeda, probably harassing every middle eastern person with a degree in science while he roamed free to plot more anthrax attacks.
So the answer is no, the FBI shouldn’t racially profile white people. But they shouldn’t racially profile Arabs or blacks or latinos either. The FBI needs to realize that threats to our country come from all sorts of different ways of lives, all which mostly produce decent people. Racially profiling will only result in making a demographic feel like they are being unjustly treated and allows people from outside that demographic to get way with that crime with out any speculation.
Good detective work is trying to find out every possible motive angle or opportunity for a crime. When you use racial profiling you lose focus on the number of possible motives and angles by pinning it on members of one community.
The War on Drugs has been a way of racially profiling blacks has not only allowed millions of blacks to be treated unjustly and unfairly under the law, has also allowed millions of white people to become addicted to pills and meth, while the government has ignored that problem. Whites do drugs at the same rate as blacks, yet blacks are 5 times more likely to be incarcerated for drugs. If we can learn anything from the War on Drugs it is that racial profiling only creates a culture of resentment and does not solve any problems.
The War on Terror has also unjustly incarcerated hundreds of Muslims whose only crime was their religion or skin color. How many innocent muslims have been through Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, or the hundreds of prisons across the world?
Treating every Bobby Jo, Billy Ray, NASCAR fan, Southern Evangelical Christian, Bo and Luke Duke fan, like a , as a possible Klansman is the same as treating every Abdul, Mohamed, beard having, Kufi wearing Muslim like a possible Al Qaeda member, or every Hip Hop listening, baggy pants wearing, Tyrone or Jamal like a possible gang member or drug dealer.
Racially profiling is a cheap divisive way to solve problems. Maybe it will take white people being racially profiled for the majority of America to realize this. Hopefully it won’t have to happen and we can give up on this racist inherently unjust tactic once and for all.
