TARGETS BEHIND THE WHEEL

It used to be that when coming back to America from a trip abroad, my
stomach would start to knot the moment I walked off the plane. It was
then, I knew, that some perfect stranger would test my English by
asking me if I had a nice trip or, skipping that formality entirely,
would invite me into a small room where both I and my luggage would be
thoroughly searched. It turned out I fit some sort of profile for a
terrorist or drug smuggler. I had a beard.

I still do, but either the government no longer has its profile or I,
tragically, am too old to fit it. Whatever the case, I know how it
feels to be stopped by the authorities on the basis of nothing I did
but simply how I looked. In one incident at Dulles Airport, I so
baited the Customs officer who was ripping my luggage apart that he
snapped, "Look, if I had something derogatory on my face, I'd shave it
off." He left me speechless.

Now a more serious version of profiling is in the news. This is the
alleged practice of certain state police -- Maryland and New Jersey,
to name just two states -- to single out cars driven by African
Americans or Hispanics and search them for drugs. In Maryland, the
ACLU has filed a class action suit to stop the suspected practice, and
in New Jersey both the federal government and a grand jury are looking
into charges that state troopers target black men. DWB, this traffic
violation is called: driving while black.

Just last week, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman fired the head
of the state police, Col. Carl Williams, after his remarks seemed to
justify racial profiling. To be fair, Williams denied his troopers did
anything of the sort and insisted cars have been pulled over for
traffic infractions only. He should have stopped there.

But he did not. Instead, he proceeded to link this or that minority
group with this or that drug: methamphetamine to white bikers, heroin
to Jamaicans, cocaine and marijuana to blacks and Hispanics. By the
time Williams had furnished the Newark Star-Ledger his ethnological
analysis of the drug traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, he had triggered
an involuntary career change.

Certainly, Williams was insensitive, which is not the same as racist
nor, for that matter, entirely wrong. The New Jersey State Police
patrol a prime drug corridor. The New Jersey Turnpike links cities
with large minority populations -- New York and Washington, D.C., for
instance. It stands to reason that some drug couriers will be minority
group members. It also stands to reason that the vast majority of
African Americans or Hispanics using the Jersey Turnpike are
transporting nothing more than Advil. Yet they, too, get stopped.

In practice, most of us engage in profiling -- and so we may assume
the cops do it as well. After all, when we cross the street to avoid
certain people, we are reacting to a stereotype. When we avoid certain
neighborhoods, we are doing the same. When a storekeeper keeps an eye
on certain customers or refuses to allow certain people in, he is
engaging in a form of profiling.

But when the police do it, that's another matter. To be stopped,
frisked -- to have your freedom curtailed (even just for a while) can
be a frightening, infuriating experience. After all, the outcome is
never certain. (A grand jury is looking into why New Jersey State
Police fired on four unarmed black men who were traveling in a van on
the turnpike to a basketball game.) Police stops can be serious business.

My experience with profiling, as exasperating as it was, cannot
possibly compare with what happens to minority group members. In the
first place, my beard is hardly an indelible, irrevocable, part of me,
like skin color or ethnicity. Second, beards in general are not what
caused some people to enslave other people. No one got lynched on
account of a beard. That Customs official had a point: I could always
shave and avoid suspicion.

Being black or Hispanic is not probable cause. Being a minority is no
reason to have to drive slower than other people, to abstain from
wearing certain clothing, to avoid certain model cars -- to leave your
flash, your style, your individuality at home and attempt to blend in
with everyone else. When blacks or Hispanics are disproportionately
stopped, it defies logic to claim that it's for any reason other than
race or ethnicity. Cops who deny it are profiling in more ways than
one.

They think we're all dumb.