COMPLETE INTERVIEW WITH JACK GLASER

Editor's note: The following is the first in a new feature of The Daily
Californian, The Inside Interview. Public policy professor Jack Glaser is an
expert on political ideology and hate crimes. He speaks here on civil
liberties post-Sept. 11.

The Daily Californian: How has the American perception of racial profiling
changed since Sept. 11?

Jack Glaser: That's a good question, and it's a very important question
right now because prior to Sept. 11, racial profiling was very much
condemned publicly by the populace at large and by policymakers, legislators
and even law enforcement officials.

They were all clamoring to condemn it and put an end to it, and you see
almost every level at government, policy-makers were saying, 'Racial
profiling is wrong, and we're going to put an end to it.' That was primarily
in reference to drug war profiling and which is where it really sort of
gained prominence.

If you look at the history, there's probably been racial profiling as long
as there's been law enforcement and racial stereotypes because racial
profiling is really the application of a stereotype to policing.

It really came into prominence in the 80's and 90's with the advent of the
drug war and the aggressive police efforts to try to catch drug users and
dealers, especially people who were trying to deliver drugs along American
highways.

That's been where profiling has been focused.

Nevertheless, once revelations came out in New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio and
even California and other states that police were using race as a proxy for
criminal suspicion, and they were stopping particularly young black men and
also young Latino men disproportionately, with very little other evidence
than race and searching them, people pretty clearly recognized that this was
a violation of those people's civil rights.

Again, there were only the most conservative commentators saying 'This makes
perfect sense. This is a rational approach,' assuming, of course, that there
are dramatic differences in criminality between races.

DC: But now, given the Sept. 11 attacks how has this perception changed?

JG: After Sept. 11, there's been, I think, a considerable shift in place on
the ever-present tension between public safety and civil rights. There's
been a shift in the direction of public safety and so people are a little
less concerned with civil rights and a little more or maybe a lot more
concerned with public safety or even national security.

Americans, in general, are willing to sacrifice some degree of civil rights
especially when it's not their own but rather somebody else's who is more
likely to be targeted by the police in order to gain that kind of public
safety.

Also, at least on some psychological level, the concern people have over
terrorist attacks, especially when we close our eyes and see the Twin Towers
crumbling, is much more powerful than the concern that people ever had over
drug movement or drug dealing.

So it's much more powerful in many respects, and then there's also this fear
of being attacked by people from outside. It's just a more fearful thing and
people are more concerned about it, and they're right to be concerned about
terrorism because it's a real threat although the potential harm to people
as a consequence of terrorism might be lower than the potential harm due to
the drug violence.

Across the U.S., maybe more people die due to drug violence or weapons or
standard hand-held weapons than weapons of mass destruction.

But anyway, so after Sept. 11, people are much more concerned about public
safety and they're willing to make these sacrifices.

DC: How has that or how will that affect the original uses of racial
profiling in the drug war?

JG: Well, as far as I can tell, that's still sort of in stasis. I don't know
that politicians or public policy-makers, who might be inclined to, have
pushed for racial profiling in the drug war. They don't seem to be trying to
make that argument, yet, and that's a big question right now, and I don't
know the answer.

Clearly, however, the government is engaged in racial profiling with regard
to terrorism, but it might not be based on the races that we're used to
looking at-African-American or Latino.

Now it's based on national origin or ethnicities like religion, Islam; and
then ethnicities of Arab national origin.

But clearly the government is engaged in that. They've been detaining
immigrants and non-immigrants and subjecting them to fairly dramatic
violations of civil liberties-detaining them without hearing, without access
to attorneys, without even disclosing who they are and having secret
hearings.

So there are clear violations of what we previously thought of as pretty
fundamental civil liberties based on racial identity or ethnic identity.

The public seems to be much more comfortable with that than they ever were
with racial profiling of African-Americans or Latinos.

DC: How have the Muslim- and Arab-American communities responded to the
increased racial profiling?

JG: There's been an ambivalent response. Clearly there have been responses
of rightful indignation by Arab-American groups who are pointing out that
they're being targeted disproportionately by the federal government, and
they've been supported by civil liberties groups like the ACLU and in those
claims.

But there are also some groups who want to demonstrate their patriotism and
their Americanism. There was an op-ed in the New York Times recently by an
Arab-American man, and the title was something like 'Go ahead, profile me,'
and he was essentially saying if we want to stop terrorists from hijacking
planes, then Arabs have to be stopped at the airports and checked more
carefully.

So you have these two different voices, one saying 'Look, this is
fundamentally wrong. It's as wrong as it was during World War II with the
Japanese. It's as wrong as it was with Latino and African-American men on
the New Jersey Turnpike, and it's wrong again today. It just looks a little
different so people haven't figured it out yet.'

But then you have these other people saying that this is necessary for
public safety; that we're willing to take a little harassment in the name of
public safety and maybe in name of restoring our image as American as well.

But the flip side of that is that if you allow yourself to be targeted and
treated differently, that's not going to do a whole lot for creating an
image of being regular old Americans just like everybody else. You're
acknowledging that you should be treated differently.

So it's changed quite a bit, and the question is, and I don't have an answer
for this, what will the effect be on drug war profiling and other forms of
racial profiling now that the public seems to have a greater tolerance or
appetite for racial profiling in the area of terrorism?

Psychological literature says that people like their attitudes to be
consistent. It makes people uncomfortable to have their attitudes out of
whack with each other.

So it might be if people start saying, 'Now that I see the wisdom of racial
profiling, and I'm comfortable with it in this domain, I would be a
hypocrite to criticize it in that domain.' So it's possible that there will
be greater tolerance for racial profiling outside of terrorism.

DC: Looking toward the future which could have military action in Iraq, how
will this perception of racial profiling change?

JG: There was already a piece in the New York Times the other day about
Iraqi-Americans and Iraqis in America being targeted by the government for
extra scrutiny because we do have an impending war with Iraq.

It's assumed that they are prime suspects as spies or as terrorists living
in our midst so I don't know if either of those concerns are justified but
that's the rationale.

That's already happening, and once we go to war which I'm afraid to say is
not completely inevitable but it seems highly likely-but once we go to war
that kind of pressure is only going to build because we're going to perceive
ourselves as that much more at odds with Iraq or with the Arab world.

There's going to be quite a response from the Arab world if we go to war
with Iraq especially if it's not seen as fully justified if we don't exhaust
any other possibilities.

That's going to only intensify the real threat of terror as well as the
perceived threat of terror which is only going to justify further racial
profiling.

DC: Are we going to see more pressure to racially profile people of Arab
descent?

JG: Iraqi-Americans might be particularly vulnerable, and it happened during
the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980 with Iranian citizens and Iranian
nationals in the U.S. being targeted for hate crimes and all kinds of
harassment, and we weren't even at war.

We didn't have a hostage situation technically with the government, but we
know better. But that was a milder case, and here we're potentially going to
war, and this is an aggressive and conservative administration.

Especially in terms of law enforcement they're very aggressive, and they
don't seem to have a whole lot of respect for the civil rights side of
things so they seem to be a little Machiavellian in that regard, so I
wouldn't be surprised at all.

This is a fairly aggressive profiling of Iraqis and other Arabs.

DC: Away from the policy of racial profiling, what about the way stereotypes
and prejudices regarding Arab- and Muslim-Americans have changed?

JG: That's interesting. I don't know of any research that's attested to that
directly, but my impression is that on the surface, people are trying very
hard to not be bigoted about it.

Even at high levels of government people were saying right after Sept. 11,
'This is not about Arab-Americans.'

So the rhetoric was 'Don't commit hate crimes. Arab-Americans are Americans
too.'

But then the policies of detaining people who were Arab were speaking out of
the other side of the mouth, so people got mixed messages.

I think at the conscious side or at the deliberate level, people are saying
we treat everybody fairly, but it's almost unavoidable. It's almost a
certainty that at more subtle levels or other levels of consciousness,
people have got to have biases that are growing against Arabs especially
when they've got these powerful stimuli-you know the World Trade Center,
thousands of people being killed-and that's all being done by Arabs. That's
going to be the stereotype and the prejudice so there's almost no question
in my mind that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice has grown since Sept.
11.

But I would say that people have been fairly disciplined by and large about
not exhibiting it.

Although we know that the hate crime rate against Arabs went up considerably
or even against people who look vaguely Arab, went up dramatically, by
orders of magnitude, in the months following Sept. 11, there has been little
explicit display of prejudice.

I think there's probably a big discrepancy between what people are feeling
deep down and what they're saying and doing.

DC: With military involvement in Iraq, what will happen to number of hate
crimes committed?

JG: I don't know. There are two sort of theories. One is that violence
begets violence, and the war will send a signal to people that it's OK to
aggress against people like that. As soon as Americans start coming home in
body bags, people start seeing that and feeling bad about it. That could
create more hate crimes against Arabs and Iraqis in particular.

But it's also possible, that if we feel like the American government is
doing something, individuals won't feel like they have to act if the
military is out there pounding Iraqis.

But it's possible that one or the other will happen for different people. I
wouldn't be surprised to see hate crimes rise during the war, particularly
if we're seeing casualties on our side.

That's the likely outcome. I just don't know how bad it's going to be.

DC: Why is there this inconsistency in viewpoint where Americans are willing
to support racial profiling yet are denying any explicit racism?

JG: Well, I think that people feel like we can have it both ways, that we
can say that 'I don't judge anybody by the color of their skin. I'm
colorblind, and I take each person as an individual and judge them on their
merits.'

But simultaneously, there is a perceived statistical correlation between
being an Arab and being a terrorist even though that correlation is
pathetically weak, if there is such a correlation at all.

But there is a perception of a correlation there, and so they think that's a
reasonable way to predict who's a terrorist.

It's quite hypocritical and inconsistent. I'm not saying there's any
consistency to it, but people seem to be able to live with that
inconsistency.

They've got their sort of high falutin principles about treating everybody
equally, but when it comes to preventing the next terrorist attacks they
think that those who look like those who are statistically related.

DC: How has the rhetoric of Bush administration-defining an 'axis of evil'
and using terrorist as a label-affected perceptions of Arab- and
Muslim-Americans?

JG: I think the Bush administration gets very high marks very early on after
Sept. 11 for coming out and saying, 'This is not Arabs in general. These are
extremists. Do not punish Arabs. Don't go out.'

They were really trying quell prejudice against Arabs, but I haven't heard
this recently. That was in the first few weeks but, it's really died off,
and I haven't heard much effort from them on that front since then.

The 'Axis of Evil' did sort of send that message, although again to their
credit (although), they went out of their way to include a non-Arab country.

I think people would argue that there are numerous Arab countries higher on
the list than North Korea.

It was their twisted form of affirmative action to put North Korea on the
'Axis of Evil'. But nevertheless, two out of the three were Arab countries.

I don't know the extent to which the 'Axis of Evil' sent the message.

I think it has much more to do with who they're detaining that's sending the
message. All of the terror suspects, that they're detaining, almost to a
'T'-I don't know of any exceptions, there might be exceptions-are Muslims or
Arabs.

They're not extremists necessarily. They're run-of-the-mill Arab immigrants.
Some of them might have some connections, but the fact of the matter is that
they haven't filed any charges except for immigration violations against the
thousands of people that they've detained.

Most have been released or deported, so it turns out the proof is in the
pudding. They were detaining people who they didn't have anything on, and
it's clear that they were detaining them based on their national origin.

When you don't get to see anything about those detainees because it's
completely secret, but you do see the footage of the folks in Guantanamo
Bay, I think that sends a pretty powerful image

You have these Arab-looking people who are shackled up in Guantanamo Bay,
and they're so clearly the enemy. Those guys, by the way, were enemy
combatants. They were fighting with the Taliban.

So that's maybe different but nevertheless, that's a pretty powerful image
of who's the bad guy. I think the most powerful statement has to do with who
they're targeting for investigation.

It's so political because they're focusing very strongly on Iraq as the next
big enemy, but they do point out that Saddam is the real target. They don't
blame the Iraqi people that Saddam is a monster, and he controls Iraqi
people, and that's pretty much true by anything I've ever heard.

But they really soft-pedal on Saudi Arabia which has a very repressive
regime as well as other Arab nations.

I don't think they see it coming out of the Bush administration that 'Arabs
equal bad' on any explicit terms.

DC: How has the identity of being an Arab-or Muslim-American changed since
Sept. 11?

JG: Oh, it's got to be dramatically different, I mean, living through the
months following Sept. 11, I'm sure that not only most Arab-Americans, but
just people who look like Arab-Americans because some of the hate crimes
were perpetrated against Sikhs, who are not Muslim.

There were one or two men who were killed because they looked like they were
Arabs or Muslim.

Just having to walk around, I've heard anecdote after anecdote about people
who were stopped flying and stopped going out in public. So that's going to
change your psyche just like being the victim, in terms of being the
potential victim of a hate crime, that's going to change your psyche.

But also just wondering if you're going to be able to get on an airplane
because there are lots of people who are turned away from airplanes not
because of anything they had done but strictly what they looked like or what
their names sounded like and so that makes you feel like a second-class
citizen.

They're marginalized so that's got to drastically change the psyche of
Arab-Americans

Talking to people I know, they're really looking over their shoulders and
they're really uncomfortable so I think it's been quite dramatic.

DC: Anything else interesting to note?

JG: The research that I do on racial profiling tries to get at the whole
point of whether profiling is even worth doing in the first place-if you're
going to argue that civil liberties sacrifices are at least buying you
public safety.

The research that I've done, which is to hypothetically model what happens
over time if you profile groups, shows that the dividends of profiling are
really trivial, if anything.

In fact, it can have an ironic effect where if you focus too much on a group
which is only slightly more likely to commit a particular type of crime, you
might be neglecting a lot of potential criminals or terrorists in the other
populations.

So it can actually backfire, but the gains from profiling are much
overstated.

You would need to have an almost perfect correlation between group and
behavior. It would have to be all Arabs are terrorists and there are no
Timothy McVeigh's or Ted Kaczyncki's or white terrorists in order for that
kind of profiling to really pay off and the same applies to the drug war.

So that's another angle to take, and constitutionally it's indefensible in
my opinion but even if you set the constitutional concerns aside, there's
not even much pragmatic basis for profiling.

It might have a more psychologically satisfying effect to know that people
who you think are causing the trouble are being targeted by the police. That
might make people feel good but on a practical level it doesn't actually
work.

There are other forms of profiling that are much more sophisticated and
there's some evidence that they work and there's evidence that some profiles
don't work at all.

The sniper case is a good case. There's nobody that would that have been
looking for two black men.

DC: But with the sniper case, the suspect is black and Muslim, two of the
targeted communities. How are people going to interpret that?

JG: That depends on which way you look at it, if you consider it to be a
terrorist attack.

But the interpretations have been that this is a serial killer case. There's
been no evidence that it was an act of terrorism, he left some funky notes,
but it doesn't sound like he was trying to inflict terror or lash back at
the government.

He was targeting civilians which terrorists do but there's no indication
that it was a terrorist act.

But if you interpret it as a serial killer profile then it completely defies
the profile which is the white male acting alone. Here you have black males
acting together so it depends on which way you look at it.

If you want to define it as terrorist, he's not Arab but he's Muslim but one
of them wasn't Muslim either. He's also a Gulf war veteran-I mean, it's
pretty complicated.

But the stereotypes of African-Americans is that they are criminal and
violent but they're not serial killers. That is not the stereotype and so in
that way, it really defies the stereotype.

The crime associated with black men is more typically associated with drug
crime so I think these guys defy the stereotype more than contribute to
them.

I also haven't heard any voices that are saying, 'See, we need to be
targeting these people.'

DC: Despite small returns on racial profiling, why is there still support
for it as a policy?

JG: Only in the anti-terror war and so that's where we have this strange
dissociation where in the drug war, people are not comfortable with it but
in the anti-terror war, people are comfortable with it.

I also think that the security checks at airports are sort of less intrusive
than pulling people over on the highway or there's more an immediacy for
concern.

People seem to have a special exception on the airplanes. It applies to
other courts and other areas and certainly the detentions we're seeing are
clearly racial profiling are not being done at airports.

They're just rounding people up. I think it really has to do with the fear
associated with terrorism that's just allowing to people to throw their
civil liberties to the wind and say 'I just want to be safe. I don't want to
die in the next terrorist bombing.'

Whereas the threat from drug problems is much more distant even though it
might be greater, it's not rational.