1. Jared Taylor in The New Republic
The following letter to the editor appears in the October 25 issue of The New Republic. In it, AR editor takes the TNR writer Randall Kennedy to task for his opposition to racial profiling by police:
Kennedy is on very shaky grounds when he recognizes the effectiveness of racial profiling but insists that we should outlaw it anyway. He notes that police officers routinely profile on the basis of age, sex, dress, and demeanor, and finds nothing wrong with this because these characteristics often indicate that someone may be a criminal. From a statistical point of view, race may be just as reliable an indicator but, says Prof. Kennedy, the police must be made to ignore it.
Must we once again set up race as a special category exempt from society's usual rules? We have already seen "non-discrimination" in employment metastasize into racial preferences and thinly-disguised quotas. Prof. Kennedy's alternative to racial profilinghire enough officers so they can spend their time "subjecting everyone to closer surveillance"is nothing more than law enforcement by quota. Presumably an officer would have to stop a certain number of blue-haired old ladies for every young black man. Why open up yet another part of society to the tyranny of racial head-counting, just when we are finally coming to our senses in hiring and college admissions?
No one would ever hire enough officers to do this anyway. Quota law enforcement would mean only that minorities who should have been stopped and arrested would go freeand would continue to prey mostly on other minorities.
Prof. Kennedy wants to abolish racial profiling because it produces resentment, but the resentment comes largely from ignorance. Men are stopped far more often than women, but this does not cause an outcry because everyone knows men commit more crimes than women. If our media were forthright about discussing racial differences in crime rates (Asians, by the way, have the lowest rates) it would help the public understand rather than resent the police.
To set up anti-profiling rules that Prof. Kennedy concedes would be "made to be broken" would only embitter the police and hamper their efforts to fight crime.
Jared Taylor, President
New Century Foundation