America Needs Racial Profiling For Terrorists

With bigots harassing and violently attacking loyal Arab-Americans, it is a bit taboo in some circles to advocate racial or ethnic profiling of any kind, in any place, ever. "I'm against using race as a profiling component," even in screening would-be airline passengers, Attorney General John Ashcroft declared in a television interview.

At the same time, the Bush Administration has rushed to adopt rules authorizing indefinite detention of legal immigrants, and is pressing Congress to pass immediately-with minimal scrutiny-far-reaching new powers that would (among other things) enable law enforcement officials, without presenting evidence, to lock up indefinitely foreigners suspected of terrorist links.

This, I respectfully submit, seems backwards. The new powers may be justified if they would, in fact, make us safer. But Congress should not simply assume as much without first hearing out critics who fear heavy costs to liberty with only illusory benefits to safety. The emergency measures adopted now could be with us for decades, because this emergency is not going away. So we'd better be careful. History is replete with hasty emergency legislation that we later came to regret-from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the detention camps for Japanese-Americans-and with abuses of the new powers years later by officials whose invocations of national security proved overblown or even fraudulent.

If the Administration says it needs new powers immediately, Congress should provide that they will lapse in 30 days unless reauthorized after due deliberation.

Racial profiling of people boarding airliners, on the other hand-done politely and respectfully-may be an essential component (at least for now) of the effort to ensure that we see no more mass-murdersuicide hijackings. If you doubt this, please try a thought experiment: A few weeks hence, or a year hence, you are about to board a cross-country flight. Glancing around the departure lounge, you notice lots of white men and women; some black men and women; four young, casually dressed Latino-looking men; and three young, well-dressed Arab-looking men.

Would your next thought be, "I sure do hope that the people who let me through security without patting me down didn't violate Ashcroft's policy by frisking any of those three guys"? Or more like, "I hope somebody gave those three a good frisking to make sure they didn't have box cutters"? If the former, perhaps you care less than I do about staying alive.