Profiling Petulance: The Flying Imams Hustle

Walter E. Williams cuts through the nonsense like few people do. He's always a refreshing listen when he fills these shoes. Here he takes the rational approach to the necessities of profiling.

Charges of racial, religious and ethnic profiling swirl in the wake of US Airways' removal of six imams. According to police reports, the men made anti-American statements, were praying and chanting "Allah," refused the pilot's requests to disembark for additional screening and asked for seat-belt extensions for no obvious reason. Three of the men had no checked baggage and only one-way tickets.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), five of the men have retained lawyers and will probably bring a discrimination lawsuit against the airline.

Racial profiling controversy is nothing new. For a number of years, black Americans have made charges of racial profiling by police and store personnel who might give them extra scrutiny. Clever phrases have emerged, such as "driving while black" and now "flying while Muslim," but they don't aid understanding much. Let's apply some economic analysis.

God, or some other omniscient being, would never racially profile. Why? Since He is all-knowing, He would know who is and is not a terrorist or a criminal. We humans are not all-knowing. While a god would have perfect and complete information about everything, we humans have less than perfect and incomplete information. We must use substitutes such as guesses and hunches for certain kinds of information. It turns out some physical attributes correlate highly with other attributes less easily, or more costly, observed.

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It is clear, whether we like it or not, or want to say it or not, that there is a strong correlation between committing terrorist acts and being a Muslim, and being black and high rates of crime. That means if one is trying to deter terrorism and in some cases capture a criminal, he would expend greater investigatory resources on Muslims and blacks. A law-abiding Muslim who is given extra airport screening or a black who is stopped by the police is justifiably angry, but with whom should he be angry? I think a Muslim should be angry with those who've made terrorism and Muslim synonymous and blacks angry with those who've made blacks and crime synonymous. The latter is my response to the insulting sounds of car doors locking sometimes when I'm crossing a street in downtown Washington, D.C., or when taxi drivers pass me by.