Guest opinion: Profiling is not always harmful

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has promised a campaign to end profiling “once and for all.” This despite the fact that, as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently pointed out, blacks account for a highly disproportionate amount of crime.

Black males are murdered at a rate of 31.7 per 100,000 – 93 percent at the hands of other blacks – while white males are murdered at a rate of 3.9 per 100,000.

Given these statistics, what is the difference between profiling and common sense generalizing?

We routinely judge the likelihood of threat and act accordingly. A cop who receives a report of an armed robbery – with no further information – would surely use his judgment about whom to scrutinize. Not the nun, not the 80-year-old with a cane, maybe the guy with the teardrop tattoo at the corner of his eye.

How could race not be part of this calculus?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has admitted to racial profiling: “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see someone white and feel relieved.”

While profiling is often characterized as pernicious and irrational, you can’t get through the day without it. Countless decisions are based on, usually informal, statistical judgments. I am wary of pit bulls, not Pekingese or sparrows.

The curious thing about those who denounce profiling is that they have no problem doing so when it suits them. It’s OK for black parents to warn their sons about cops, especially white cops. Is there a parent who fails to warn a daughter to be wary of men?

Not profiling, regarding everyone as of equal threat, is foolish and dangerous.

At an airport I watched as an old man was pulled out of line for intensive scrutiny. He looked to be well into his 70s. And he was blind. He and his wife were distraught. But apparently his number had come up, and no matter how absurd – and cruel – the procedure, he needed to be checked.

When all airline passengers are equally suspect, surveillance is diluted. Time spent harassing this old guy could have surely been better spent. Acknowledging that profiling works, the recent Justice Department injunction against profiling excludes borders and airports.

A particular kind of profiling is dismissed as Islamophobia, an irrational fear presumably on par with ablutophobia (the fear of bathing) or anthrophobia (the fear of flowers). But can anyone who has read a newspaper in the last 20 years dismiss the threat of Islamic terrorism?

Profiling is unavoidably unfair to individuals. But those so targeted should understand it is a fact of life that those who resemble those who threaten will be viewed with suspicion. Group membership matters and symbols convey information. Tattoo a teardrop in the corner of your eye and police will notice.

Like everyone else, I have been profiled. One night in Chicago, I noticed a woman walking about 50 feet in front of me. She glanced nervously over her shoulder and quickened her pace. If I had been a woman, a young boy or an old man, would she have reacted this way? Unlikely. She quite properly used age and gender as indicia of threat.

Far from being angry, I felt bad for having unintentionally frightened this woman. I crossed the street and slowed my pace.

Surely there are cases of improper and prejudicial profiling. We ought to be especially careful of profiling by race, national origin or religion. But I suspect that few police profile by race alone. Surely gender, age, dress and demeanor figure into their judgments.

According to data analyzed by the news service ProPublica, 78 percent of those killed by black officers are black while just 46 percent of those killed by white officers are black. This may – in part – reflect differential police assignments: black officers assigned to black neighborhoods and whites to white neighborhoods. But it is not clear that race plays any role in police killings – and there is no evidence that race played a role in the deaths of Eric Garner or Michael Brown.

In light of racial differences in crime rates, black lives will be saved by judicious profiling.