Racial Profiling Should be Acceptable

I wish I was clever enough to incorporate the use of emotion, exaggeration and misdirection with in my argument as my opponent alleges. Precedent For The Deprivation of Civil Liberties In consideration of the example I gave of a police sobriety check point and rule #1, it is allowable to examine the costs of the social benefit versus social and individual costs in instances of security versus 4th amendment. I do not agree that the examples given in terms of freedom of speech, the first amendment, demonstrate any type of precedence in a discussion of security versus intrusion of our 4thamendment, search and seizure. Efficiency and Common Sense: Racial profiling is not about using race as the sole deciding factor of a threat. If you read the definition provided above: "the consideration of race when developing a profile of suspected criminals; by extension, a form of racism involving police focus on people of certain racial groups when seeking suspected criminals." I would like to remind my opponent that I have already conceded that it is acceptable for police to construct profile that includes and “considers” race. It is the manifestation of how that information is used that is under consideration. Also, by the second definition it must be a “key” factor. Race is only a factor in the profile and police focusing on certain people of racial groups is not depriving anyone's civil liberty. And sometimes you don't have distinguishing characteristics of 'tattoos or birthmarks to go on.' And if you did, you wouldn't pull over suspects if they didn't have the distinguishing characteristics provided. I am afraid my opponent gets off track of the debate here. When a crime has been committed race and other identifiers should be used to exclude possible suspects as a means to avoid stopping and searching innocent individuals. Note though, using race to exclude people from search is not the same as using race to include people in search. Excluding an individual due to race avoids a breach of liberty. Including an individual in a search because of race promotes a breach of liberty. The more prominent race becomes as factor in the decision on who to search, the more innocent bystanders suffer through an intrusive search without due cause other than they are of the same race of some criminal. In a manner my opponent has provided clarity as to why it is acceptable to use race as an exclusionary technique, but my opponent has yet to demonstrate why the tactic of using race as a key factor is beneficial when deciding who to stop and search. When it is used as a key factor on who to stop and search the net remains too wide to be effective and too intrusive to too many innocents. My opponent continues to hound away with providing ludicrous scenarios and then bashing them as 'absurd.' I agree, they are absurd. And they aren't at all what I'm defending. No one is saying that all white males in X mile radius should be searched. Only that in cases involving serial killers, it statistically follows that cops should be on the lookout for a white male. No one is saying to stop and search every one. Only that it should be a determining factor in profiling. It appears that we may be in agreement that using race as a primary and key factor in deciding who to stop search when trying to apprehend a criminal does not warrant the grave breech of the freedom given to us in the 4th amendment. This is a clear example where the tactic of racial profiling is not affective and does not warrant the breach of individual freedom for the greater good of capturing a serial killer. This agreement is even despite that the murderer may have a chance to kill another victim. If security in this instance does not warrant such a broad violation of rights, when does it? And once again, my opponent sets up an absurd scenario to bash down. No one is suggesting that the law enforcement should discard all tactics and only employ racial profiling. All tactics should be in play and profiling should simply be another tool allowed to the law enforcement belt. Screening should continue. Security checks exist for everyone. But security officers must be aware that Muslim terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslim radicals. It follows that if a Muslim man is setting off the security sensors, he should be given a random search instead of a ten year old girl who may have also set off the security sensors. If you had to pick one or the other to search, it makes statistical sense to pick the one perceived as a higher threat. I am not certain how the impression was made that I advocated a discontinuance of screening. The main issue of using racial profiling in instances of preventative security remains the same. Since we have a baseline screening which is mandatory for everyone at an airport, it does not make sense to eliminate little girls who do not fit the profile from random more intrusive screening, as it creates a gap which could be exploited. My opponent also fails to respond to the wide breath of races that make up the world wide community of Islamic radicals who would do us harm. It is virtually impossible to use racial profiling as they are of all races. An Arab Islamic terrorist could clearly exploit the situation by recruiting a South East Asian radical Muslim with a 10 year old daughter. If using racial profiling in security, which of the three would have the best odds of getting illegal contraband through? The Unintended Consequences of Racial Profiling As for the final point, my opponent suggest that racial profiling will always be abused and will end up leading to bigotry. This is a possibility that exist. However, I'd suggest that racism leads to bigotry, not the employment of statistical data for the sake of apprehending a criminal or preventing crime. Race is never the sole determining factor in a non-abusive case of racial profiling. It is a factor. The BAU relies on such statistics and factors to hunt kidnappers, serial killers and murderers. My opponent discredits an extensive work of group psychology with no basis to do so. Minimal group paradigm is a social psychology method to discover what are the minimal conditions required to make one group discriminate another group.http://en.wikipedia.org... It has been discovered that something as trivial as using a coin flip to segregate people into groups causes perception and behavior changes towards the “out group” versus the “in group” enabling discriminatory behaviors. This is a real and proven threat. Let’s extend the concept of using racial profiling to illegal immigrants. It was suggested in the original argument that when looking for illegal immigrants one should focus on dark skinned individuals with broken English. The minimal group is immediately created as soon as law enforcement communicates a policy to stop dark skinned individuals with broken English. It is now “us”, law enforcement versus dark skinned individuals with broken English. There are plenty of dark skinned individuals with broken English who are here legally and would surely be stopped and asked to be shown papers for no reason other than having the wrong skin color and little experience with English. There is a very real and valid concern of creating bias and discrimination against those here legally because they continue to be a member of the “out group”. Once an out group is created as seen in the study I referenced where Hispanics and African Americans were treated very different than whites during traffic stops, it becomes almost impossible to stop discriminatory behavior against an out group. Ironically race boundaries are even ignored. When a person of the “in group” is the same race as an individual as the “out group” he will still discriminate. It is a real and valid concern and the social costs of creating government sanctioned “out groups” clearly does not warrant the use of racial profiling when other tactics are just as if not more effective.