Profiling petulance
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/wwilliams.htm
Profiling petulance
WALTER WILLIAMS
By Walter E. Williams
December 20, 2006
Charges of racial, religious and ethnic profiling swirl in the wake of
US Airways' removal of six imams. According to police reports, the men
made anti-American statements, were praying and chanting "Allah,"
refused the pilot's requests to disembark for additional screening and
asked for seat-belt extensions for no obvious reason. Three of the men
had no checked baggage and only one-way tickets.
According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),
five of the men have retained lawyers and will probably bring a
discrimination lawsuit against the airline.
Racial profiling controversy is nothing new. For a number of
years, black Americans have made charges of racial profiling by police
and store personnel who might give them extra scrutiny. Clever phrases
have emerged, such as "driving while black" and now "flying while
Muslim," but they don't aid understanding much. Let's apply some
economic analysis.
God, or some other omniscient being, would never racially profile.
Why? Since He is all-knowing, He would know who is and is not a
terrorist or a criminal. We humans are not all-knowing. While a god
would have perfect and complete information about everything, we
humans have less than perfect and incomplete information. We must use
substitutes such as guesses and hunches for certain kinds of
information. It turns out some physical attributes correlate highly
with other attributes less easily, or more costly, observed.
Let's look at a few, and the associated "profiling," that cause
little or no controversy. Mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases
were about 30 percent higher among black adults than among white
adults. The Pima Indians of Arizona have the world's highest known
diabetes rates. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black
men as white men. Would anyone bring racial profiling charges against
a doctor who routinely ordered more frequent blood tests and prostate
screening among his black patients and more glucose tolerance tests
for his Pima Indian patients? Of course, God wouldn't have to do that
because He'd know for sure which patient was more prone to
cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer and diabetes.
It is clear, whether we like it or not, or want to say it or not,
that there is a strong correlation between committing terrorist acts
and being a Muslim, and being black and high rates of crime. That
means if one is trying to deter terrorism and in some cases capture a
criminal, he would expend greater investigatory resources on Muslims
and blacks. A law-abiding Muslim who is given extra airport screening
or a black who is stopped by the police is justifiably angry, but with
whom should he be angry? I think a Muslim should be angry with those
who've made terrorism and Muslim synonymous and blacks angry with
those who've made blacks and crime synonymous. The latter is my
response to the insulting sounds of car doors locking sometimes when
I'm crossing a street in downtown Washington, D.C., or when taxi
drivers pass me by.
It would be a serious misallocation of resources if airport
security intensively screened everyone. After all, intensively
screening someone who had a near zero probability of being a
terrorist, such as an 80-year-old woman using a walker, would not only
be a waste but it would take resources away from screening a person
with a much higher probability.
You say, "Williams, are you justifying religious and racial
profiling?" No. I'm not justifying anything any more than I would try
to justify Einstein's special law of relativity. I'm trying to explain
a phenomenon. By the way, I think some of the airport screening is
grossly stupid, but I'm at peace with the Transportation Security
Administration. They have their rules, and I have mine. One of mine is
to minimize my association with idiocy. Thus, I no longer fly
commercial.
Walter E. Williams is nationally syndicated columnist and an
economics professor at George Mason University.
