Racial profiling

Great statement I read from a British writer, discussing the idiocy of banning all forms of profiling when protecting planes from terrorism.

The anti-profiling argument is like saying if the police keep pulling in fat, shaven-headed, white troglodytes covered in tattoos, England’s football hooligans will cleverly start recruiting from the ranks of hip, urbane black people who are all itching to get hopelessly pissed, sing “No surrender to the IRA” and be tear-gassed by the Carabinieri. Nonsense. In the event of racial profiling, there will be no Mid-Surrey Branch of al-Qaeda forming on the hoof. As for cunning disguises, we know them. There are two looks: beard on and beard off. Call me fanciful, but when Mohammed Atta imagined his meeting with the Almighty and his many virgins, he did not picture himself done up like Mrs Doubtfire. The quicker we can get the white matrons through, the more thoroughly we can check those that by age, race, behaviour or appearance fit what is becoming not so much a profile as a cliché.

~ Martin Samuels www.timesonline.co.uk