Looking Like the Enemy
Of the 19 hijackers who directly instigated the September 11th attacks, 15 hailed from Saudi Arabia, three from the United Arab Emirates, and one from Lebanon. The terrorist group behind the attacks, al-Qaeda, has an obviously Arabic name. Osama bin Laden, the leader of the organization, is from Yemen. Many government officials and other Americans did something very basic, very simple, very primitive: They developed prejudices. And, some suggested, if these prejudices were codified into law--by, say, requiring additional security measures for Arabs boarding airlines--wouldn't we make ourselves safer by identifying people of Arab ancestry and subjecting them to additional scrutiny?
A Dangerous and Unconstitutional Approach
There are several practical problems with racial profiling as a counterterrorism strategy. The first is that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment--so the only way to institute it, under an honest court system, is to amend the Constitution. The second is that it is unjust. But the third is that it encourages a false sense of security. Because racial profiling increases the amount of attention given to Middle Easterners, it decreases the amount of attention given to other passengers. That's great news for non-Arab terrorists (such as Richard Reid and the London subway bombers, to name two high-profile examples).
An Avenue for Abuse
Even though racial profiling has not been codified into law, it has already been practiced in many cases--with nasty results. In a report titled Sanctioning Bias, the ACLU documented many instances of gross racial profiling by federal law enforcement officials. The U.S. government has used popular anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment to prevent many opponents of the Iraq War from entering the country. Even public acceptance of racial profiling, independent of formal policy implementation, encourages a general climate of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry impacting a wide range of decisions. Whether officials are laying out international free speech standards or just deciding who makes the football team, post-9/11 profiling stands an excellent chance of playing some role in their decision--and there's no evidence that this atmosphere of bigotry prevents terrorism.