My son was repeatedly pulled over by cops when he was young, I was even in the car once late at night and the officer quickly backed away when he saw I was there… mumbling about how my son changed lanes. Was he being racist? He was white and so is my son. It was Friday night and I think he wanted to make sure my son had not been drinking. I am glad he pulled my son over… it made my son think twice about drinking and driving knowing even when he didn’t drink any erratic driving would get him pulled over.

Police do profile… but numerous studies show that their profiling behavior aligns with criminal statistics. That is not racist. As someone with African American grandchildren and white grandchildren, they are all taught that when a cop pulls you over someday as young man be polite, they are just trying to keep everyone safe. You never know how their day has gone and don’t make it worse or bad things could happen. Any injustice that occurs is best addressed at another time.

So do you think TSA is wrong when they profile people getting on airplanes to reduce the risk of another 9/11 event or should they search grandmothers for box cutters as much as young men?

You are correct about one thing… profiling is used by retail stores, law enforcement, the TSA, among other organizations to focus their limited resources at people most likely to commit crimes. If you fit into one of those groups, then you need to understand that its not personal and in the long run if you are not a criminal, it enhances your safety and lowers the cost of things you buy in the store.

Imagine how different people would feel and act if they understood the motivation behind profiling is not “racism” but reduced criminal behavior and that no one benefits more from reduced criminal behavior than minorities, who are the biggest victims of criminal behavior.

That is what we teach our biracial children and grandchildren and they are okay with what is going on… they are taught to trust the legal system, that if they have not committed a crime, then they are being targeted because they fit in a group most likely to commit crimes.

White young men are likely to be profiled far more than African American girls… is that racist? or sexist? or is it simply the fact that white young men commit more crimes than African American girls? Do African American girls enjoy “African privilege” or “female privilege”?

Old people of all races are less likely to be profiled than young people? Is that “senior privilege”, I thought it was my senior citizen discounts.

Racism is not when someone is targeted because of the color of their skin, but rather when such targeting is solely because of the color of their skin and not other factors that make such targeting reasonable. Would you accuse me of being a racist if we asked African American parents if sickle cell anemia ran in their families but not white parents, when a child presented with certain symptoms but not white parents whose child had the same symptoms? Is doing so racist or logical based on what science knows about the disease?

I understand that belonging to any group that commits far higher rates of crime makes everyone in that group a target of profiling and that can be uncomfortable for the both criminal and honest person in that group, but it helps if one understands the profiling is not done with racist intent, but simply a by product of the statistics. In Germany, “skin heads” are profiled and watched. They to have higher criminal rates and those poor white innocent “skin heads” are likewise aware they are being watched more closely because of it.

I find the (pardon the pun) cop out by the Camden police chief on profiling interesting. As an African American police chief the first thing he did was eliminate racial profiling in Camden, he replaced it with profile based on neighborhoods. At the end of the day, the same people were targeted, but rather based on the color of their skin, it was based on the neighborhood they were in. Both systems using crime statistics to target resources to reduce crime rates ended up in the same place.

So hopefully, those African Americans in Camden feel better that the police are pulling them over based on the neighborhood they are in and not the color of the skin. My guess is they don’t.