God Bless Racial Profiling

Racial profiling, as it has unfondly become known, is simply a particular breed of common sense. When evaluating other people, it is intellectually outrageous to assert that one ought to blind oneself to another's race, as if race has absolutely zero relation to any useful assessment of a person. I am not speaking of a comprehensive assessment of a person in general, but rather a rapid, rational, and logical assessment of probabilities, likelihoods, and threats, based on minimal available information.

Consider a hypothetical. An African nation, Imaginutu, has recently been exposed to several significant security threats. Nearly every week, a white nationalist successfully detonates an explosive device in one of many impoverished neighborhoods. George, an Imaginutan security specialist, is part of a special team dispatched to prevent further bombings. On a routine patrol of one of these neighborhoods, he comes across a blond-haired, blue-eyed, clean-cut young man, strolling down the sidewalk, wearing a large backpack. George pulls his car over and chats with the young man.

Those of you who decry racial profiling at mere mention are logically compelled (not that logic makes a difference to any of you) to condemn this behavior. After all, George has used RACE in his security assessment of this person! He wouldn't have stopped a black man in the same situation (even with the backpack); thus, he is a bigot! No. George is not a bigot, he is an effective officer. Imagine him blindly forcing himself to ignore this person's race; imagine him driving right on by, and stopping a regular-looking black citizen instead. His blind allegiance to some perverted vision of "fairness" prevents him from exercising his basic mental faculties.

If I visited Imaginutan during this time, I would expect to be the subject of closer scrutiny at the airport or on the streets. For them to ignore my skin color, and focus equal or greater attention on the 70-year-old black woman behind me, would be a disgustingly incompetent.