| Subject: Re: Racial Profiling - Semi-vent |
Author:
Raisinmom
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Date Posted: 18:36:37 10/11/02 Fri
In reply to:
Jen
's message, "Re: Racial Profiling - Semi-vent" on 16:52:07 10/11/02 Fri
>You mean Muslim extremists *do* wear their affiliation
>in a visible way? How?
You have missed the point. One can pick out, using nothing other than sight, a clean-shaven man of Arab descent. Can't do that for a white radical extremist.
>
>Can you, at a glance, tell the difference between a
>Christian Egyptian, or a midwestern banker of Iranian
>descent and a member of al-Quaeda? No, you
>can't....just as you can't tell a Tim McVeigh-type
>from your average white midwestern man. That is
>precisely why profiling is unfair, unjust, and not
>especially helpful.
If you read my original post, you will see I've already agreed with this -- that's why it's (to use a different simile) like using an omninet to catch a minnow. As I said earlier, the logic is sound, but the execution is unfair. The net may catch the minnow, but all the other fish are stuck too, and it will be too much work to find the one fish you want.
>As for the internment of the Japanese-Americans, I
>guess ruining their lives was *so* much better than
>killing them, I should be ashamed for making the
>comparison?
Ashamed? Not this time. But you should think before doing it again, for the reasons previously stated. When people start comparing far lesser evils to the Holocaust, it devalues the great evil of Hitler and the camps. Rounding up millions of Jews and exterminating them, methodically, in an effort to wipe them out completely is a far different thing than interning Japanese-Americans. Comparing the two erodes the utter horror of the Holocaust and simplifies the concept of "evil" to just bad things, each as bad as the other. And your sarcastic last sentence (why so defensive?) only highlights the fact that yes, having one's life ruined is better than having one's life taken.
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