The TSA is Here for You

Readers,
      Talk about civil liberties in class led way to a larger discussion about instances where the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was accused of racial profiling in airport security checks. The term "racial profiling" usually carries a negative connotation, and as soon as it was applied to the TSA people were up in arms. It implies racism, and the sort of impersonal discrimination that America has tried so hard to fight. But, in this case, is it really that bad?
      CBS wrote an article on it (which you can read here), that makes an interesting point. The claim was that although most seem to hate the idea of profiling, everyone knows exactly what the profile is. The demographic that they were talking about were "young males between about 18 and 35 who practice a fundamentalist strain of the Islamic faith, and generally hail from the Middle East, as well as largely Muslim nations in Africa and South Asia." I may be going on a limb, but I think that very few people can claim that they have never heard of this sort of profile. And if everyone knows it already, what is the harm in simply using it as another security measure? I'm not saying bring back racism, but if we know that terrorist attacks come from a specific group of people, I say we use that to our advantage. If they were looking for Caucasian males ages 16-18, I would have no problem submitting myself to extra checks if it meant the security of the nation was at hand. No one is being harmed by this profiling, it is simply, as the article puts it, "using crime data to identify possible suspects." If the data includes ethnicity, then it's just another thing the TSA should look for. Just don't make me miss my flight.