Profile This: Raspberry Is A Fool

His views are so old, one imagines William Raspberry pecking away at an Underwood manual typewriter.

In a deep analysis of the use of racial profiling at airport security points, Raspberry is able to come up with but one reason for doing it:

Random checks at least have the virtue of rendering us all equal. I can talk with any fellow passenger about the absurdity of having to remove my loafers, because that fellow passenger has been similarly inconvenienced. But with whom does a young Arab (or Turk or dreadlocked college student) share his humiliation?

More concerned with the humiliation of young, Muslim-looking men than the security of everyone else, Raspberry relies on familiar but largely irrelevant arguments:

Well, we do know what [terrorists] look like. They look like the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, but they also look like Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla and -- don't forget -- Timothy McVeigh.

Last time I checked, McVeigh didn't pass through airport security on his way to infamy, nor did John Walker Lindh. We can do the numbers. Raspberry scrapes the bottom of the barrel and gets to raise four weak rationales.

We skim the top of the barrel and find thousands of young men of Arab descent blowing up innocents in New York, London, Madrid, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Yeman, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan ... you get the point, even if he doesn't.

Racial profiling does not equal racial harassment. It can be conducted quickly, respectfully and intelligently. Raspberry can only see "Driving While Black" when he thinks of profiling, and it clouds his already stratocumulus-clouded reason.