We can think of
profiling as a method to economize on information costs by using easily
observed physical characteristics as a proxy or a guess for some other
characteristic more difficult or costlier to observe. For example, say you seek
to hire people to manually unload trucks containing heavy merchandise. I’m
guessing that most would use sex as a proxy for strength and select men over
the women. That can be called sex profiling. Of course, if you assumed that men
and women have equal strength, you’d hire randomly…….As early as 1999, D.C.’s
taxicab commissioner, Sandra Seegars, who is black, issued a safety advice
statement urging the city’s mostly black cabbies to refuse to pick up
“dangerous-looking” passengers. She described “dangerous-looking” as a “young
black guy … with his … shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants
down below his underwear and unlaced tennis shoes.” Would anyone argue that
black cabbies who turn down black fares are racists?
A law-abiding
black person denied a taxi is rightfully angered, but to whom should his anger
be directed, at the driver who’s trying to protect his life or at the people
who’ve instilled fear by robbing and assaulting cabbies?
By the way, God,
unlike us mortals, wouldn’t have to do any kind of profiling, because he knows
everything. We mortals, with our imperfections, must find substitutes for his
omniscience.....To Read More....
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