Lesson to me: Posts will make more sense and exclude double negatives if not made before/during breakfast. Of course, now I'm posting late at night, which may be no better.
I meant to say that there were reports of screeners being afraid to select "middle-eastern"-looking people for additional screening at all because any such screening would look bad. These reports occurred mainly just after 9/11.
Of course, there was plenty of discrimination against "middle-eastern"-looking people too, but to some extent it did go both ways with favoritism by some and discrimination by others.
That's individual overzealousness/stupidity and not government. Any crank can call in such reports. They could call them in on me because I have a beard. The subset of people who think they can pick out "middle easterners" on sight is almost certainly less accurate at such selection than the general public.
Among the PC crowd, anyone who is not a white male U.S. citizen is in a protected category. Among the crowd of overzealous/stupid individuals I mentioned above, anyone who is not white is suspicious. I think both crowds are somewhat wacko.
I disagree that such data collection would be meaningful. LEOs/screeners who knew of the data collection but wanted to do racial profiling would do so and simply fix their percentages by stopping otherwise unsuspicious white people. LEOs/screeners who are just scared of getting in trouble will end up selecting people to meet the appropriate racial breakdown instead of based on actual suspicion. Neither scenario improves security.
Any time you inject race into a process searching for something that is supposed to be race-neutral, it corrupts the process. That's why I refuse to fill out racial data on job applications and HR forms; the only purpose it can serve is to make people focus on something other than merit.