Blowback and the War on Terror

So maybe my titling is a little exaggerated, but at the same time, the recent news from rediff.com and the Times of India about an Indian singing group being remanded for being suspected terrorists is alarming. The fact remains, if you are of brown skin, and pass notes, or switch seats amongst yourselves, then perhaps that is justification to be held over in an airport for questioning till 4 a.m? I guess for many people this is fine, you know, we must all do our part to fight terrorism. But perhaps it is different when your skin color is actually brown, and the potential for you to be held for questioning increases solely because of your skin color. This is my problem with many American attitudes about racial profiling and terrorism (I wonder how Dinesh D'Souza feels about this?) The simple answer is, profiling Arabs/South Asians won't stop acts of terror. However cliche this might be, but Timothy McVeigh was white and John Walker Lindh was white. Those examples alone show the difficulty in profiling and the weakness in the supporters of racial profiling's arguments. There is a lot more that could be added to this discussion, but I have to get back to my school work.

posted by sajit @ 10:48 PM