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.