If it were, literally, *only* persons of type X doing something, then it would make a certain amount of sense to subject all people of Type X to at least a little more scrutiny than everyone else. Because any sort of system is going to have limited resources, and you have to figure out how to use those efficiently.
But while it's demonstrably evident that the *majority* of Islamic extremist terrorists have been of Arabic or South Asian ethnicity, there have also been people of other ethnicities participating in attacks. So for detection resources to be efficiently employed, there needs to be some better system worked out.
This is complicated by the very strong possibility that even if such better system is worked out (a) its subtleties may be lost on the public, leading to it appearing like straightforward racism, (b) its subtleties may be lost on some of its practitioners, leading to actual outright racism, (c) its effectivness may be lost on the geenral public leading to cases like the (in)famous batshit-crazy woman who wanted a group of Arabic wedding singers on her plane arrested because, well, they were friends travelling togethr, clearly Middle Eastern, and used the restroom and got things out of their hand luggage during the flight.
Because of problems A, B, and C as concisely and insightfully presented by your good self, I think I'm inclined to bow to the wisdom of the late great Ben Franklin. There's also the "values" issue to consider: what is logically the right thing to do is not necessarily always the morally right thing to do. I think that's why it still chills my blood to remember Mo'Nique's defense of racial profiling. Not only does racial profiling invite abuse, it's just wrong to single out one "type" of person to be denied rights (such as presumption of innocence) that are accorded to all other types of people. We should all be equal under the law.
Of course, the foregoing is strictly IMO, as well. *wry grin* But I'd definitely feel better if either of us had some say-so in the matter. I don't feel at all good about the people who do decide these things, at present...
If it were, literally, *only* persons of type X doing something, then it would make a certain amount of sense to subject all people of Type X to at least a little more scrutiny than everyone else. Because any sort of system is going to have limited resources, and you have to figure out how to use those efficiently.
But while it's demonstrably evident that the *majority* of Islamic extremist terrorists have been of Arabic or South Asian ethnicity, there have also been people of other ethnicities participating in attacks. So for detection resources to be efficiently employed, there needs to be some better system worked out.
This is complicated by the very strong possibility that even if such better system is worked out (a) its subtleties may be lost on the public, leading to it appearing like straightforward racism, (b) its subtleties may be lost on some of its practitioners, leading to actual outright racism, (c) its effectivness may be lost on the geenral public leading to cases like the (in)famous batshit-crazy woman who wanted a group of Arabic wedding singers on her plane arrested because, well, they were friends travelling togethr, clearly Middle Eastern, and used the restroom and got things out of their hand luggage during the flight.
I'm not sure what the answer is either... :-(
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Of course, the foregoing is strictly IMO, as well. *wry grin* But I'd definitely feel better if either of us had some say-so in the matter. I don't feel at all good about the people who do decide these things, at present...
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