Bias, or Experience?

Racial profiling sounds like a dreadfully discriminatory and unfair practise. Just as you cannot judge a book by its cover, you cannot judge an individual by physical characteristics that place them in a category. Or can you? Well, you can do just that. You may not always be correct in your discriminatory judgement, but you may indeed be right on the other hand.

It all depends, doesn't it, on what the prevailing situation is.

We are all imbued with our biases, born out of experience. That is, decent, normal people, not those who look for differences among people to support their propensity toward racial intolerance. But if specific demographics have become noted for a certain set of behaviours that are socially averse and dangerous, then if those whose physical characteristics fall into that category present themselves under suspicious circumstances, it is natural to wish to avoid them.

Or, if you're involved in public security, to confront them, if suspicious behaviour leads to that conclusion. None of us really wants to be anything but distantly friendly to strangers, it's the decent thing to do. We don't ordinarily go out of our way to be unpleasant and cold to those whom we don't know simply because they're different than we are; if we share a society we also share an obligation to be civil toward one another.

But it is natural for people to wish to separate themselves from those whom we suspect of social deviance, or those clearly involved in illicit behaviour. And if we also recognize that someone fits the profile of those who pose a danger to society, we're naturally suspicious of them. If immigrants in Toronto from the Caribbean are known to be involved in drugs and smuggling and violent crime, we avoid contact.

And the authorities may select them for careful scrutiny. If young aboriginal people, over-represented in Canada's prisons are given special attention it is because there has been ample experience with their maladjusted view of society and their unfortunate reaction to it. If the police pay special notice to young black males fitting a specific profile, it is because experience has alerted them to undeniable potentials.

It may be a black police officer, or one born in the Caribbean, or an oriental officer pulling over a young oriental man involved in street racing. We cannot clear our normal and very human penchant for identifying people who stand out on the basis of their ethnicity or skin colour if there is a generally identified incidence rate of actions particular to them.

It makes good sense for those who have been trained to detect behaviours geared to avoid suspicion to pay attention to those they are tasked with identifying, like professionals at airports who must seek to identify potential threats to ensure public safety. It is indeed racial profiling when a suspicious, nervous-appearing individual of Middle East extraction seeks to board a flight without baggage.

Without the background of readily identifiable groups engaging in criminal or violent activities there would be little utility in profiling. Under the circumstances where groups are identified with behaviours that are seen to be inimical to the greater majority, it makes good sense to apply careful attention to those who fit a profile.

Suspicious behaviour allied with a physically-identifiable profile points in a direction one should be alert to. That it has been labelled politically incorrect to succumb to racial profiling in an effort to protect society at any level is unfortunate, but a workable tool is just that.

As a society we have an obligation to see that the workable tool is not transformed into a blunt instrument of injustice. It's as simple as that.