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People who care about actually stopping the thing in question. It's a huge point of data that we're supposed to ignore, what, just because it gives you warm and fuzzy anti-racist feelings and you don't care about immigration enforcement anyway?
Not the person you're replying to, but as far as I'm concerned, that is neither here nor there. I care very much about the enforcement of anti-rape laws, for example, or indeed laws against cold-blooded murder; but even if some reliable statistics should show that in a Bayesian sense, the culprit is more likely to be black than white, I would still take the principled stand that the police should not be allowed to let that statistic enter into the identification of suspects.
Why not? Because it's wrong. Because it's wicked and counter to the fundamental dignity of Mankind. Because it perpetuates harmful stereotypes far out of proportion with the actual statistical fact, which if unchecked may be used to excuse vast-scale mistreatment of POCs as it was in the past. Because it is an insult to the memory of all black victims of slavery and segregation. A hundred reasons. I could talk about utilitarian concerns and the greater good, or I could talk about the moral necessity of making racist heuristics taboo for the sake of human dignity and civilization - I think these are ultimately two ways of looking at the same thing from different paradigms.
At the end of the day, yes, we're "supposed to ignore" this "huge point of data" for the same kind of reason that the government isn't supposed to install telescreens in every home. Whether it would work is not the point. It's wrong.
Racism works. It’s efficient.
How was it efficient for 2 decades 70 year old ladies had to take their shoes off at airports when we could have just racial profiled every Muslim male for additional screening? Then everyone could leave for the airport 30 minutes later because airport security did not exists for them. And here’s the thing about racial profiling it’s better for Muslim men too. Since they are about 1% of US airport passengers they would have a security guard screen that thoroughly for 10 minutes which still saves them 20 minutes of their day.
Suicidal empathy like you described worked as an argument 5 years ago. Today people just want a society that functions well.
Racial profiling is good because it improves net happiness in society.
I don't understand how this is supposed to be a reply to what I type. What I wrote: "Whether it would work is not the point. It's wrong." You: "But it works! It's efficient!"
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It should be pointed out that Israeli airport security includes racial profiling so the 70 year old ladies are not as scrutinized, yet their policies have largely escaped outrage.
Discrimination by Ashkenazim against Mizrachim does not line up with any US protected groups, so western SJWs (who are either American or have American-addled brains) don't care about it. (See also widespread blindness to anti-gypsy racism in Europe). But given the demographics of Israeli airports most of the people hit by racial profiling of "people who look like Arabs or Muslims" will be Mizrachi Jews, and Ashkenazi-on-Mizrachi racism certainly used to be a live political issue in Israel.
I do not think that TSA can distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims by sight*, and the people who support racial profiling against "Muslim" flyers are the kind of people who are just fine with generalised government harassment of brown people in the US, which is what it would turn into in practice. There are enough white ethnic Muslims (Chechens, Albanians etc, including Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev), fair-skinned Arabs who could pass with some makeup (including Mohammed Atta), white converts, and ADOS/Black British black converts that an organised jihadi group would have zero difficulty recruiting people who would not be profiled to actually set the bombs off.
* Note that traditional dress of Islamic cultures is not a good tell for "likely jihadi" because jihadis don't wear traditional dress while blowing things up. The 9-11 hijackers wore business suits, and the 7-7 bombers in London wore sportswear. They also shave their beards.
I support profiling by sex and age. Both German and Australian airport security profiled me when I was a military-age man, and were right to do so.
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