RACIAL PROFILING

Editor -- In his column, "The truth of racial profiling" (April 19), George
Will insists that "of course" certain ethnic groups disproportionately
commit crimes. He says this without proof.

The only obvious point is that minorities are disproportionately arrested
and convicted of crimes.

Minorities are more likely to be poor. Crimes that poor people commit are
far more vigorously enforced than crimes of the rich.

Nobody will go to jail for illegally manipulating California's energy
market. There is not one person wasting away in prison for making profits
from slave labor in the Third World.

There are thousands in prison for growing the wrong flower.

The fact is that law enforcement is often a tool of the class warfare that
Will clearly supports. To say that arrests rates are an indication of the
failings of minorities is intellectual laziness unworthy of a man of Will's
gifts.

DANIEL T. GRAVES
Berkeley