Don't Search Me, I'm Caucasian
In the National Review, in a piece entitled "Looking the Wrong Way," Heather MacDonald expresses a sentiment that I'm sure is shared by a lot of people these days, even those who are otherwise very liberal. She questions why the police in New York City insist on a policy of "random" bag searching when we know that "only Muslims commit Islamic terrorism." She asks why we allow "political correctness" to take priority over public safety.
The most obvious (and uninteresting) answer to MacDonald's question is that any other kind of policy would be patently unconstitutional. Indeed, the current policy of "random" searches is highly problematic under current case law, and will likely be challenged. So MacDonald's problem is not really with the sinister forces of political correctness, but with the Constitution itself, particularly the 4th and 14th amendments.
MacDonald also seems to display little understanding of the difference between policy and practice. If she thinks that the police (or airport security for that matter) truly stop people at random, then I doubt she has any friends who are "Middle-Eastern looking." If she did, they'd tell her just how "random" these searches really are.
Nevertheless, let's assume arguendo that there's no Constitution barrier to enacting the type of search policy that MacDonald suggests. It's pretty clear from her piece that MacDonald understands that the label "Muslim" refers to a creed, not an ethnicity. Indeed she acknowledges that her search profile would have to include "Middle Easterners, South Asians, and North Africans." That alone is a pretty big group of people in New York. And MacDonald seems to have forgotten that many Muslims are of East Asian or sub-Saharan African descent. After all, Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population. And one of the London bombers was a Jamaican man of African descent. Moreover, it's not as if the London bombers were wearing turbans or any other clear religious or cultural identifiers (and purposely so). They were dressed like anyone else. Without such identifiers it is often very difficult to determine someone's ethnic or cultural origin at a glance. Under such conditions, it is frequently difficult to tell those of Middle-Eastern, African, and Asian descent apart from, say, Latinos or Native Americans, particularly in a cosmopolitan setting like New York.
Indeed, the only ethic group which lacks a significant Muslim population and is easy to distinguish by sight is Caucasians. And it seems pretty clear from MacDonald's piece that this is the group she's concerned about. The two examples she gives of people who should not be subjected to searches are a "Minnesota grandmother" and "worshippers at St. Patricks Cathedral." Fair enough, but do we really want an official policy that sets out two different standards: one for Caucasians and one for all dark-skinned people? In practice, that's largely what we have anyway, human nature being what it is. But I think it says something positive about us as a country, that we refuse to enshrine such distinctions in our policy. It says that we believe that people should not be treated differently because of traits that are beyond their control. It says that we don't want to live in a two-tiered society, a society where your privacy rights depend on the color of your skin. If that means that a few Minnesota grandmothers have their bags searched, so be it. We're all in this together.
Final Note: Even if we were to institute the type of targeted search policy that MacDonald suggests, there is little reason to think it would make us any safer. For a thorough analysis of New York's new search policy and a solid argument as to why it will do more harm than good, see this excellent post at The Cunning Realist.
UPDATE: Today the New York Times reports that the man who was tracked and fatally shot in the London tube yesterday "was believed to be South American; it was not known whether he was Muslim."
The most obvious (and uninteresting) answer to MacDonald's question is that any other kind of policy would be patently unconstitutional. Indeed, the current policy of "random" searches is highly problematic under current case law, and will likely be challenged. So MacDonald's problem is not really with the sinister forces of political correctness, but with the Constitution itself, particularly the 4th and 14th amendments.
MacDonald also seems to display little understanding of the difference between policy and practice. If she thinks that the police (or airport security for that matter) truly stop people at random, then I doubt she has any friends who are "Middle-Eastern looking." If she did, they'd tell her just how "random" these searches really are.
Nevertheless, let's assume arguendo that there's no Constitution barrier to enacting the type of search policy that MacDonald suggests. It's pretty clear from her piece that MacDonald understands that the label "Muslim" refers to a creed, not an ethnicity. Indeed she acknowledges that her search profile would have to include "Middle Easterners, South Asians, and North Africans." That alone is a pretty big group of people in New York. And MacDonald seems to have forgotten that many Muslims are of East Asian or sub-Saharan African descent. After all, Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population. And one of the London bombers was a Jamaican man of African descent. Moreover, it's not as if the London bombers were wearing turbans or any other clear religious or cultural identifiers (and purposely so). They were dressed like anyone else. Without such identifiers it is often very difficult to determine someone's ethnic or cultural origin at a glance. Under such conditions, it is frequently difficult to tell those of Middle-Eastern, African, and Asian descent apart from, say, Latinos or Native Americans, particularly in a cosmopolitan setting like New York.
Indeed, the only ethic group which lacks a significant Muslim population and is easy to distinguish by sight is Caucasians. And it seems pretty clear from MacDonald's piece that this is the group she's concerned about. The two examples she gives of people who should not be subjected to searches are a "Minnesota grandmother" and "worshippers at St. Patricks Cathedral." Fair enough, but do we really want an official policy that sets out two different standards: one for Caucasians and one for all dark-skinned people? In practice, that's largely what we have anyway, human nature being what it is. But I think it says something positive about us as a country, that we refuse to enshrine such distinctions in our policy. It says that we believe that people should not be treated differently because of traits that are beyond their control. It says that we don't want to live in a two-tiered society, a society where your privacy rights depend on the color of your skin. If that means that a few Minnesota grandmothers have their bags searched, so be it. We're all in this together.
Final Note: Even if we were to institute the type of targeted search policy that MacDonald suggests, there is little reason to think it would make us any safer. For a thorough analysis of New York's new search policy and a solid argument as to why it will do more harm than good, see this excellent post at The Cunning Realist.
UPDATE: Today the New York Times reports that the man who was tracked and fatally shot in the London tube yesterday "was believed to be South American; it was not known whether he was Muslim."
posted by A.L. at 10:20 PM
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