>Michael, your challenge to Ysoie is unfair and racist at its
>root. And it’s a bad argument to boot. There are areas
>of Chicago that I wouldn’t want to be in (regardless of
>the time of day), but that has to do with what goes on in
>those areas—not what race of people live there.
>Avoiding areas of town that you feel are unsafe is not racial
>profiling. Targeting and discriminating against one specific
>group or race of people is.
Yeah but I bet you never lived in "those areas". How can you tell what those areas are? What is your basis for calling an area one of "those areas"? Let's see, because we read in the paper about those areas? Go to a city you are unfamiliar with. Tell me how you will make a determination if you get lost and go down a side street somewhere, if it one of "those areas".
Sorry but I don't think that racism and profiling are the same thing at all.
Profiling is based on certain statistical evidence. People who are X do Y more often than people who aren't X do. As a little white kid growing up in a neighborhood where little white kids were a minority, I learned VERY early that certain other kids liked to beat up on said little white kids and hence made the obvious choice (gasp "profiling") to avoid those other kids to help keep my lunch money and my teeth.
Cops (and you will find not just the WASP cops either) profile as if their lives depended upon it, as it often does. I don't think I can state enough that the only ones I ever see as anti-profilers are those who never really experience crime. Maybe a sweeping generalization but I believe that when we were told on the list that only WASPs support profiling, "sweeping generalization day" was proclaimed.