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Some folks just naturally bear some profiling

By Willard Hollopeter

Wood Lake, Neb.

In all this hulabalu about racial profiling and political correctness I figure the people responsible for safe guarding the American public had better blamed sure be doing some profiling and you know by now what I think of this political correctness thing.



If someone with middle-eastern features, and as crazy a look in his eyes as the bumbling attempted shoe bomber had, tries to board a plane, he had better be checked more closely than most passengers would be.

There is a big difference between harassment for the sake of harassment and common sense. The bad guys are of mid-eastern ethnicity and if someone, and the political correctness crowd, gets ticked off, so be it. That is a whole lot better than a planeload of people being blasted from the sky.



Some folks just naturally bear some profiling.

Someone comes in your store who you reasonably suspect has walked out with merchandise he didn’t pay for, you are going to try to keep an eye on that person … Profiling? sure, you have him pegged as a potential thief.

The family of a teen-aged boy who has frequently been in trouble with the law complains that the police are picking on him … Profiling? they probably do figure they need to watch him closer than they do other kids.

If I default on a loan I reckon that particular lending agency would sure enough have me profiled.

A convicted rapist is singled out for public notice under the auspices of the Megan’s law, which proclaims that people have a right to know that a rapist is living in their neighborhood, which is certainly a justifiable cause for profiling, and the civil rights folks are having a fit about that.

And somewhere along the road some of us, because of our actions, lose some of the rights of ordinary citizens, while others are unfairly but sometimes necessarily subjected to some racial profiling just because of something someone who looks or dresses the same has done. I don’t condone the treatment some American citizens of mid-eastern decent have been subjected to by fellow citizens. That is surely not right, and it was probably wrong for the pilot of a commercial airline to put a fellow off a plane because he fit the profile of the terrorists but common sense also needs to prevail and right now, if I was going to travel somewhere by air I would surely appreciate the fellow wearing a turban receiving a little extra scrutiny by airport security.


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