Racial Porfiling Arguments

In this report I will focus on three different arguments dealing with racial profiling in airline passenger security in the post 9/11 world. The first point addresses racial profiling as an ineffective tool. The second argument suggests watching for behavior patterns in all airline passengers that could indicate a potential threat instead of racial profiling signs of passengers to rule out racial profiling and the third strongly suggests racial profiling as an investigative tool, not false accusations.

The first argument has a strong focus on the fact that a terrorist, whoever he or she may be, can come in all shapes and forms. We can support this by stating that Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh were terrorists, but not Muslims. With racial profiling, these men could board an airline in the post 9/11 world and could create yet another terrorist attack in this country. In addition the 9/11 world we would also want to keep in mind that the 9/11 hijackers had the innocence of the American people on their side and today airline passengers would not allow another handful of Muslims to take over an airliner for more than five minutes without a life and death struggle. Profiling also can be defeated in obvious ways. A dark-skinned Islamic extremist can disguise his name, ethnicity, religion, hair color and even his gender. Terrorists today realize all of this, and are willing to transition the method of their plots to regain that element of surprise.

The second argument suggests implementing programs to train airport security personal in general psychology techniques. This technique observes behavior and/or signs such as chapped dry lips or a pounding carotid artery. That as a proven track record, monitoring of who is stopped and why, sensitivity to complaints, and solid training can counteract racial profiling. Terrorists also know this and can be trained to answer questions convincingly, through eye-contact and by remaining calm. This should help them easily be able to evade the system. To assist in this system the training would have to go from janitors to skycaps to Starbucks baristas trained to watch travelers' movements and detect potentially dangerous fliers.

The third argument strongly suggests racial profiling in airport security. Jonah Goldberg (Goldberg, 2005) references the movie "Airplane" in which one gun-toting terrorist after another walks through a metal detector