Is Profiling Racist?
Michael Ejercito
Is Profiling Racist?
by Walter E. Williams
Recently by Walter E. Williams: Racism or Stupidity
We live in a world of imperfect and costly information, and people
seek to economize on information costs in a variety of ways. If we
don't take that fact into account, we risk misidentifying and
confusing one type of human behavior with another. Let's look at it.
Pima Indians of Arizona have the world's highest diabetes rates. With
knowledge that his patient is a Pima Indian, it would probably be a
best practice for a physician to order more thorough blood glucose
tests to screen for diabetes. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as
common among black men as white men. It would also be a best practice
for a physician to be attentive to – even risk false positive PSAs –
prostate cancer among his black patients. What about physicians who
order routine mammograms for their 40-year and older female patients
but not their male patients? The American Cancer Society predicts that
about 400 men will die of breast cancer this year.
Because of a correlation between race, sex and disease, the physician
is using a cheap-to-observe characteristic, such as race or sex, as an
estimate for a more costly-to-observe characteristic, the presence of
a disease. The physician is practicing both race and sex profiling.
Does that make the physician a racist or sexist? Should he be brought
up on charges of racial discrimination because he's guessing that his
black patients are more likely to suffer from prostate cancer? Should
sex discrimination or malpractice suits be brought against physicians
who prescribe routine mammograms for their female patients but not
their male patients? You say, "Williams, that would be lunacy!"
Is an individual's race or sex useful for guessing about other unseen
characteristics? Suppose gambling becomes legal for an Olympic event
such as the 100-meter sprint. I wouldn't place a bet on an Asian or
white runner. Why? Blacks who trace their ancestry to West Africa,
including black Americans, hold more than 95 percent of the top times
in sprinting. That's not to say an Asian or white can never win but I
know the correlations and I'm playing the odds. If women were
permitted to be in the sprint event with men, I'd still put my money
on a black male. Does that make me a sexist as well as a racist?
What about when a black hails a taxicab and the driver passes him up
and picks up a white passenger down the street? Is that racism? Many
people assume that it is but it might not be any different from a
physician using race and sex as an estimator for some other
characteristic. Ten years ago, a black D.C. commissioner warned
cabbies, most of whom are black, against picking up dangerous-looking
passengers. She described dangerous-looking as a "young black guy ...
with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced
tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income
black neighborhoods. Cabbies themselves have developed other profiling
criteria.
There is no sense of justice or decency that a law-abiding black
person should suffer the indignity being passed up. At the same time,
a taxicab driver has a right to earn a living without being robbed,
assaulted and possibly murdered. One of the methods to avoid
victimization is to refuse to pick up certain passengers in certain
neighborhoods or passengers thought to be destined for certain
neighborhoods. Again, a black person is justifiably angered when
refused service but that anger should be directed toward the criminals
who prey on cabbies.
Not every choice based on race represents racism and if you think so,
you risk misidentifying and confusing human behavior. The Rev. Jesse
Jackson once said, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage
in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start
thinking about robbery – then look around and see somebody white and
feel relieved."