On April 28, 2012, atheist Sam Harris shocked a lot of people with his blog post “In Defense of Profiling.” He defended profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim….”
To his credit, on May 8, 2012, Harris carried a superbly argued guest post by Bruce Schneier, “a highly-respected expert on security,” who brilliantly demonstrated the absurdity and unfairness of profiling (“The Trouble with Profiling.”)
Schneier writes that almost no Muslims are out to blow up airplanes. Indeed, Muslims come in all colors and from many nations. There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other nation.
Schneier relates that recent terrorists have included Whites, Blacks, and a Latino American.
In October, 2009, Colleen R. LaRose, a.k.a. Jihad Jane, was arrested and accused of trying to recruit militant Muslims to kill a Swedish cartoonist that satirized the Prophet Muhammad. Jihad Jane is a middle-aged White woman from Montgomery, Pennsylvania. Some in the media have stated that she looks like a typical soccer mom.
Harris is no dummy. Like other White males intent on going after historically despised groups, he continually whines about “political correctness” when others challenge his views. Ah, yes! Paint yourself as a courageous opponent of political correctness and feel free to attack the group of your choice.
In his addendum (5/1/12), Harris notes that many have called his blog post “racist,” “dreadful,” “sickening,” “appalling,” “frighteningly ignorant,” etc. This is understandable. After all, in Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris wrote that Christians in Europe are fearful of the Muslim “hordes” sweeping through their nations. The word “horde” is mostly derogatory, and is often used when speaking of rats, flies, mosquitoes, etc. According to one dictionary definition, a horde can mean “a moving pack or swarm of animals.” This is immediately what came to my mind when I read the passage; and no doubt it entered the minds of many others that read it.
Whether Harris is racist might be beside the point. The fact remains that Islamophobes find much ammunition against Muslims in his writings. It reminds me of the saying, “Fox News: not racist, but number one with racists.” Indeed, it should bother Harris that his writings resonate so loudly with Islamophobes. After all, he is much harder on Muslims than he is on other religionists (though I readily admit that he is hard on religion, in general).
As an African American, I have been repeatedly stopped and harassed for Walking While Black, Driving While Black, etc. Like most other African American males with similar experiences, I do not grin and bear it, and chalk it up to good police work. It is insulting, humiliating and unfair, even though some Whites might feel safer because of it.
Following is a short anecdote. When I was an adolescent, I was in a drug store one day, purchasing candy. The White store clerk had his eyes on me the entire time. Meanwhile, a White boy my age was filling his pockets with candy bars, smiling at me all the while. Racial profiling in this case led to theft, be it relatively small. Still, I cannot help but wonder how often this kind of situation occurs, and how much money businesses lose as a result of it.
Racial profiling has had some fascinating and unexpected twists. For example, some trans- gendered African Americans have gone from living as women to men. Most of them have discovered that, now that they are living as men, they are often harassed by the cops, whereas this was not their experience when they were living as women.
What are the actual results of profiling? Racial profiling led to the internment of Japanese Americans during W.W. II. It certainly made many Americans feel safer, but at what cost?
A perfect recent example of racial profiling is the sad case of Trayvon Martin. George - Zimmerman, a 28-year-old “White Hispanic,” shot 17-year-old Martin in Florida because Martin “looked suspicious.” However, what made him look suspicious, other than the fact that he was a young African American male wearing a hoodie? As it turned out, Martin was carrying nothing but a beverage, a bag of candy, and his cell phone. As Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts keenly observed, “Trayvon Martin was killed by a stereotype. George Zimmerman is just the guy who fired the gun.” (“Race and criminality,” in The Buffalo News, p. A9, May 8, 2012.)
In another case, in early May, 2012, Judge Pamela White convicted Eliyahu Werdesheim, 24, of beating a “suspicious” Black teen in 2010, while he was in their Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore. Werdesheim accused the teen of trying to case homes and cars.
These are just two examples of how racial profiling can turn into violence against African Americans who are simply minding their business. It is just too bad that so many African Americans are dangerously hypocritical when it comes to profiling. For example, many African American comedians, such as Martin Lawrence and D.L. Hughley, bemoan the profiling of African Americans, while approving of it jokingly for Arabs and Muslims.
This can never work. There must be a single standard for everyone. Profiling is de-humanizing and must not be tolerated, especially for the false illusion of safety.