Racial Profiling … Here And There

Liberals support racial profiling by college admissions officers but oppose it everywhere else. Conservatives oppose it in college admissions but often support it by the police, at least with regard to Arabs and Muslims in the post 9/11 era.

Since both forms of profiling must be justified by a “compelling government interest,” and advocates of both forms hasten to explain that race/ethnicity is only “one of many factors” being considered, it is becoming more difficult to make consistent, principled arguments in this area. Some liberals, such as Prof. John Banzhaf of the the George Washington University law school (“the Ralph Nader of the tobacco industry” and/or “the Ralph Nader of junk food”), have begun to recognize the sauce (as in what’s sauce for the goose…).

During World War II, the court upheld the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, saying the federal government could abrogate an ethnic group’s rights in the name of serious national security issues.

John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, said the current situation probably meets that test.

“A very compelling argument can be made that the government’s interest in protecting the lives, safety and health of thousands of its citizens from another major terrorist attack similar to those carried out in New York, London and other cities … is at least as ‘compelling’ as a racially diverse student body,” he wrote recently.

Banzhaf also said a suspected terrorist’s race or ethnicity might be one of many factors that police could consider in figuring out whom to stop in searching for suspected suicide bombers.”

Say What? (3)

  1. Eric August 16, 2005 at 8:58 am | | Reply

    God bless liberal moral equivication. So if I’m reading this right, Mr. Banzhaf thinks that the government has as much duty to protect you from being blown up as it does to get you into Harvard. I’m sure that Hobbes and Locke and Mill all thought that getting an Ivy League education is a natural right just like life.

  2. Nels Nelson August 16, 2005 at 2:03 pm | | Reply

    Eric, I interpreted that quite differently, on account of Banzhaf’s use of “at least”, though with just a short quote it is hard to know for sure his meaning.

  3. Eric August 16, 2005 at 3:18 pm | | Reply

    Upon re-reading, I defer to your interpretation. I guess I’m so used to seeing moral equivelance in these kinds of articles that I just connected dots that weren’t there.

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