Here is something that I do not entirely understand. When did profiling become a bad thing? It seems like nowadays people talk about being the victim of profiling. That a person’s rights were being infringed upon because of profiling. In general, my response is to ask the person, “why is this bad?” No matter how clinical and objective I remain, I find the conversation usually devolves into a discussion about racism, “the man”, and a gestapo governmental order. Profiling should definitely be added to Ms. Manner’s list of items not to be discussed when maintaining polite dinner conversation. It never ends particularly well. So of course, I want to talk about it.
Profiling: the practice of categorizing people and predicting their behavior according to particular characteristics such as race or age
My logical brain says that profiling is sound theory when the full truth of a situation is unknown. Its math applied to behavior, right? Playing the probabilities of many variables when there is no clear direction to pursue. No one seems to have a problem with profiling when it is used to capture serial killers in real life (a la the FBI). There is a billion dollar industry around forensic/detective literature, movies, and TV shows because people love it and ask for more. I mean how many CSI spin off are there these days? All of those are basically shows entrenched in the act of profiling….heck one in the late nineties was actually called “Profiler”. Yes forensics are great, but unless that fingerprint returns a match you still have to figure out where to find the person it belongs to. Yet when people encounter profiling in real life it seems to evoke a visceral “I was wronged” attitude. At most I can agree that it is an aggravating and unfortunate thing when you are in the group that is profiled. But I can’t come to hate the people that are acting on that information…it seems everyone is subject to some degree of profiling in their life. Every white male between the age of 16 and 25 has been subjected to profiling – their car insurance rates are jacked because observation and data have shown that they are more likely to be a high risk for causing damage. Every person that has attempted to highjack a commercial airplane in recent years has been male and a fundamentalist of some movement. I would hypothesize that most hate crimes against minorities are committed by white males. Most children are kidnapped by someone they know, so the suspects are checked out in order of proximity to the child. If this data trends over decades and is generally right, why wouldn’t you use that information to help your search? Why isn’t it logical and expected that police, insurance companies, military, etc. use this information?
Now, all of that said, I have to disclose that I can’t really recall ever being “profiled”. In my youth I was blamed for a series of thefts because I was tall enough to reach the objects being stolen. Turns out it wasn’t the tall kid that was doing it, it was two short kids working together. The adults had used deductive reasoning to start with a group of kids who would be most likely to commit this crime. I didn’t get mad, cause I knew it wasn’t me…but yes it was frustrating being blamed. And that is so insignificant that I don’t think it really is profiling.
So while I completely understand the frustration of the Islamic male who gets “randomly” searched at airports with alarming frequency, I don’t understand the anger. I can empathize that it sucks to have to add extra time cause odds are good you will be pulled aside. You doing nothing wrong, never have, never will, but you fit the profile of those who have. Craptastic.
What I don’t understand is why is it horrible to use data on things like socio-economic status, age, gender, race, and religion to help determine who is most likely to be involved in whatever it is you are trying to prevent or solve.
Enlighten me?
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