Originally Posted by
GUWonder
The overwhelming majority of passengers in the US are of an ethnicity that has probed holes in airline/airport "security".
I was referring to documented cases of probes and dry runs documented by FAMs, e.g. "Flight 327". But yes, I guess you could say I myself am guilty of wanting to test and understand the limits of 'airport security' when I use my Nexus card and refuse to play the "name game".
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
"Middle Eastern" males in the US are a minority of passengers and generally underrepresented as homicidal or homocidal-suicidal criminals in the US relative to European, non-Arab Hispanic and African-American ethnicity males.
Racist profiling has its fans, even in this thread. If there is any evidence of racist profiling at airports or on airplanes being an effective state policy free of association with negative, longer-term repercussions that are even worse for security, its advocates haven't been able to supply any unimpeachable evidence of such.
Granted on all counts.
Although I have to say that the "homocidal" is a very ambiguous term. Garden-variety violent crime (the type that fills American prisons) is quite separate, in my mind, from "religiously/politically motivated acts of terrorism", and I wouldn't necessarily say that one was related to or a predictor of another. Does your "generally underrepresented" reflect the racial makeup of known terrorists or of criminals convicted of homocide?
Two easy examples are Timothy McVeigh and the Underwear Bomber (white and black, IIRC) so obviously terror is not restricted by race. But it is impossible to deny the strong ties between the current brand of terrorism aimed at US airlines and the Middle East.
To say that racial profiling is effective and to say it is "effective state policy free of association with negative, longer-term repercussions" are two completely different arguments. It is disingenuous to imply that failing to provide unimpeachable evidence of the latter disproves the former. It is extremely difficult to provide "unimpeachable evidence" of being "free of negative long-term repercussions" and if that were a reasonable standard, then Tylenol and Aspirin wouldn't be approved by the FDA.