Historical, and present, profiling
Reader comment on item: A Call for Intelligent Profiling[ by Frederick Schauer]

Submitted by Pauline T. Earles (United States), Jan 3, 2004 at 16:16

I can sympathize with those muslims who simply want to raise their children and mind their own business. It's tough being regarded askance because some of your number are criminal. All southerners have been painted with the racist brush, even though a great many lived peaceably with blacks for many years. I suspect decent Germans could add to this discussion, having been blamed for the cruelty of Hitler and the Germans who supported him. The same could be said for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. And today, blacks in America suffer for the criminality of some among them because, in the minds of some, all are cut from the same cloth. We can learn something from this: (1) To try to regard each person as an individual and not lay on him the sins of others, and (2) To keep in mind, when profiling becomes necessary to keep us safe, that we are not the only ones this has ever happened to.
Further, if each group, instead of directing its anger against those who try to bring to justice some member of its group for his misdeeds, would direct its anger at those among them who are disgracing them; if all of us would do this, i.e. unite against the miscreants in our own groups, we would soon achieve much more harmony among the various groups.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.