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Two
recent and separately done surveys by two
highly respected polling units, the Gallup
Organizations and Zogby International,
seem to have provided dramatic evidence
of the shock that the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pantagon
have given America's psyche. Both surveys
found that African Americans, who in recent
years have raised a justifiable hue and
cry about police racial profiling against
them, are more likely than other Americans
to favor the racial profiling of Arab Americans
and Arab nationals.
In
the Gallup Poll, 71 percent of blacks supported
requiring those of Arabic descent to undergo
more intensive security checks at airports.
In the Zogby International survey that figure
was 54 percent. And again in the Gallup Poll,
64 percent of blacks supported requiring all
those of Arabic descent to carry special identification.
In all instances, these percentages were higher
than those for any other groups of Americans.
The findings have clearly dismayed leading
African-American politicians, scholars and
activists, who have spoken against the racial
profiling of Arab Americans in unambiguous
terms-most recently during several panel discussions
at the just-concluded annual conference of
the Congressional Black Caucus. So have I in
this column and other forums.
Beyond our initial amazement at the polls'
findings, however, we shouldn't really be surprised
that African-Americans themselves would harbor
such attitudes.
For one thing, as Professor Alvin Poussaint
of the Harvard Medical School has suggested,
they show how profoundly affronted African-Americans,
whose deep-rooted patriotism is only rarely
acknowledged, are by the attacks.
Professor Poussaint,
a psychiatrist, told The Boston Globe that
the attacks may have
been the more disorienting to blacks because
their own long struggle for full American citizenship
has been unshakably rooted "in the turn-the-other-cheek,
Christian principles of love, and thou shalt
not kill" and in reforming America through
its political process.
More broadly, we also should see in these
polls' findings more evidence of the perniciousness
of racial profiling itself, no matter how it's
seemingly bolstered by glib or urgently declared
rationalizations.
These polls show that whenever people speak
in favor of racial profiling, they always favor
its use against some other group, not theirs.
That said,
for any African-Americans, or anyone else,
to think that a policy of racial profiling
of those who "look" Arabic would
be confined to those who are of Arabic descent
is ludicrous.
The harassment and killings of not only innocent
Arab-Americans but also Sikhs-who are neither
Arabic nor Muslims but of Indian descent, and
whose religion requires males to wear a beard
and a turban-has provided tragic evidence that
many Americans, including some who are African
American, have trouble telling people of color
apart.
I'm all for
stringent security measures. This emergency
demands them. But let them be imposed
equally on everyone, unless there are specific
reasons to single out individuals for special
attention. We already have more than enough
evidence that racial profiling, whether as
an instrument against "regular" crime
or against terrorism, is not just pernicious;
it's bad police work.
That was underscored last year by the crime-fighting
results of reforms which ended racial profiling
at the US Customs Service, the federal agency
charged with preventing the smuggling of contraband
at the nation's airports. After a decade of
criticism of Customs' practices of singling
out black and Latino passengers arriving from
abroad for intrusive body searches, and several
egregious incidents in which black women at
different airports were subjected to humiliating
strip searches, Raymond W. Kelly, then the
agency's Commissioner, pushed through a comprehensive
overhaul of passenger-surveillance practices.
The reforms scrapped procedures that virtually
automatically equated color and ethnicity with
a profile of suspicion in favor of a disciplined
approach to determining which individuals really
deserve inspectors' suspicion.
The result:
From 1998 to 2000 the agency sharply reduced-by
80 percent, from more than 40,000
to under 10,000-the number of intrusive body
searches it conducted. But the reduction substantially
increased the agency's "yield" of
drug and contraband seizures-from 4 percent
of searches in 1998 to almost 18 percent by
mid-2001.
Customs' commitment-to develop justifiable
reasons to be suspicious of someone and good
procedures for detaining and searching someone
based on something other than bias masquerading
as expertise-is what should be adhered to in
our present emergency if America, in its search
for security, is to not lose sight of those
values which make America a beacon of freedom.
That is the last point the findings of the
Gallup and Zogby polls underscore: The importance
of leadership.
Just as President Bush and New York City Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani from the first spoke out
forcefully against stereotyping all people
of Arabic descent, so in fact have leading
black figures. They have all ably fulfilled
that part of the responsibilities of leadership.
Now, all Americans, including those who are
African-American, need to be sure they fulfill
the responsibilities of America citizenship.
Hugh B. Price is President of the National
Urban League.
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