Melanie E. L. Bush's letter to the Washington Post in response to William Bennett's comment reminded me of one I wrote for the Harrisburg Patriot News (which was published). I use it in class and it generates good discussion! It was written in 2002 when suggestions to limit international students and stories abounded about discriminatory acts against Arabs and Muslims.
"Profiling Can Be Costly to Society, People John W. Eby, Ph.D. Published in the Patriot News Harrisburg, PA Sunday, August 4, 2002 With very few exceptions, every person named in current and past business scandals is a middle-aged white male. Practically no business scandals are perpetrated by women, persons of color, or young people. White, middle-aged males are the key villains at Tyco, Adelphia, Rite Aid, WorldCom, Enron, InCom, Arthur Anderson, Global Crossing, and Xerox. The not-for-profit sector has been victimized by pyramid schemes by the New Era Fund and Greater Ministries, again perpetrated by white males. If the accusations against Martha Stewart are proven to be correct, she may well be the exception that proves the rule! Given these facts, it is prudent to profile middle-aged white males. Do not do business with them. Certainly do not trust them to manage financial assets or run large powerful companies. When one comes close, hold on to your purse. Only a fool would choose a white middle-aged male to manage their investments or as their accountant or stockbroker, or for that matter, their lawyer, priest or politician! Ridiculous? Of course! But no more so than the profiling many of us accept without question; profiling that chooses particular racial, ethnic, or religious groups for particular scrutiny by police or profiling that discriminates against persons from particular countries or religions simply because a few of them are terrorists. This profiling is advocated by some high government officials. Surveys show that many Americans are prepared to restrict the civil liberties of certain groups because of their profile. Profiling is a form of generalization that seems necessary and harmless. We profile every time we make a quick judgment based on external appearance. We can tell a lot about a person by their facial expression, the kind of clothes they wear or how they speak. But even this kind of profiling, based on choices people make, is often very misleading. Profiling by race, ethnicity, religion, or color is dangerous and can be very costly to individuals and to society. This is true when profiling results in special treatment for profiled persons such as being stopped by police, followed in stores or excluded from certain places. Recently, a real estate agent told a client they would not be comfortable in a particular neighborhood because they fit a particular profile. In other places people have been put off airplanes, refused service in stores or stopped by police. Some have been imprisoned. International students face new obstacles to study in this country. Some immigrants will be excluded because of their profile. Mosques have been desecrated. There are several kinds of profiling and generalizing. We often generalize from an individual to a group, particularly when minorities are involved. If we only know one person from a group, it is natural, but sometimes very misleading to assume that all members of the group are like the person we know. We attribute the acts of a few to the group. Some fundamentalist Christians bomb abortion clinics and are active in hate groups. Some fundamentalist Muslims are terrorists. It is seriously wrong to assume that all Christians or Muslims support those actions or to blame their religion for the misguided actions of individuals. Another form of profiling, goes the other way, applying a generalization from a group to an individual. This is dangerous even if the generalization for the group is true. Men tend to be more aggressive and less nurturing then women. But we all know men who do not fit that stereotype and know that the nurturing part of men should be encouraged. A third, more subtle form of profiling is based on using rates at which a phenomenon occurs within a particular group to suggest a causal relationship to the race, religion, gender, color or ethnicity of the group. We might assume that since white men have higher rates of business fraud than any other group, there is something about being white and male that makes people immoral. We often do this with family structure or unemployment rates or school performance. In the past, research that linked intelligence with race made this serious error. When we make this error we forget that society is structured to place certain groups in situations related to particular characteristics. Middle aged white males have a higher rate of white collar crime because they are over-represented in positions where they have opportunity to commit those crimes, not because they are white. It is discouraging, but likely true, that if women or persons of color were equally represented in similar positions they would most likely have similar rates of fraud! Profiling unfairly discriminates against people, limits opportunity and prevents society from using the skills and contributions of profiled people. It would be particularly costly to make it more difficult for international students to study in the United States or to restrict immigration or to exclude certain profiled groups from particular jobs. Expelling white males from business and accounting programs in colleges would not be very smart! Our society has worked hard to provide opportunities for persons from all ethnic, racial and religious groups. We are strong because of contributions of diverse people. Let's continue to resist the tendency to profile in ways that turn back that progress and put people of color or of particular national origins or of particular religions at a disadvantage. Judge people by their character and their actions, not by the color of their skin. John W. Eby, Ph.D. is an upper middle aged, white, male sociologist from Dillsburg. " >>> "Melanie E. L. Bush" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/05/05 12:52 PM >>> fyi ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Submitted to the Washington Post but not published October 1, 2005 To the Editor: William Bennett is right about one thing: that whole issue of crime and race has been on my mind recently. So here's a thought experiment for him. If we aborted all white children, the rate of white-collar crime would go way down--think Enron, World.com <http://world.com/>, Adelphia, etc. We'd probably see an even larger reduction in the incidence of Congressional corruption and malfeasance, including among high-ranking Congressional officers. The possibilities are huge, from organized-crime contract murders to hate-related crimes to things like the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq. Speaking of which: think of the reduction of financial crimes and conflicts of interest in the military-industrial complex as a whole! As a plus, we'd lose some talk radio shows altogether, and even see a decrease in the number of stupid opinions on race expressed by former Cabinet officials. Not that I would actually propose doing this. It would be wrong, of course, and impossible, but it's just a thought. You know? I'm just saying. Luis Rumbaut Washington, D.C. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
