“Sept. 11 has fleshed out where people sit on the fence of racial profiling,” according to Keenan Keller, minority counselor to the House Judiciary Committee. Keller addressed approximately 50 people last Thursday as part of a panel discussing racial profiling. The panel was sponsored by the Black Student Alliance, Muslim Student Alliance and Young Arab Leaders of America.
Panelists said that racial profiling has statistically been proven an ineffective way of detecting individuals who have committed crimes.
Kelli Evans, a civil rights attorney from the Washington, D.C. firm Relman & Associates, said that racial profiling might include stopping a driver, committing a search or asking someone to step off of a plane for any number of reasons.
According to Keller, a 2000 Justice Department data report showed that the success rate for contraband searches was 8 percent for blacks, 10 percent for Latinos, but 17 percent for whites.
Hodan Hassan, civil rights coordinator of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said the use of racial profiling condemns anyone fitting a certain profile to become suspect “until proven innocent.” Hassan said the Sept. 11 attacks “harmed our nation and damaged the image of our [Islam] faith.”
Hassan added that 1,700 cases of “backlash” against Arabs and Muslims have been reported to CAIR since Sept. 11, opposed to a total of 640 before that date.
Kareem Shora, legal adviser of the Anti-Arab Discimination Committee said that Sept. 11 has ushered in a number of new civil liberties concerns.
For example, the Immigration and Naturalization Service implemented a new policy Sept. 20 that gives it the ability to detain suspects without formal charges. Panelists also cited the Oct. 23 passing of the Patriot Act, commonly known as the Terrorism Act, which allows the indefinite detainment of non-U.S. citizens under certain circumstances, including “guilt by association” cases. According to Shora, donors to a terrorist organization may be held responsible if that organization is found to be connected with terrorist activities, even if the donor has no prior knowledge.
“When people are afraid, things don’t need to make sense, and that fear is pushing the United States of America into a climate that they will be embarrassed about once the smoke clears,” Shora said.
