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| Americans worry about racial profiling |
| 2001-09-23 |
Adrian Estala, 27, a risk-management consultant in Houston who is Hispanic, is struggling with the same emotions. Mr. Estala is "absolutely against" racial profiling, he said, because it is one of the most fundamental violations of liberty he can think of. But asked the same question about sharing an airplane flight with Arab-looking men, he said he would be anxious. "Absolutely I have to be honest," Mr. Estala said. "Yes, it would make me second-guess. Anybody that says no, they're a better man than I am, or a better woman. I would feel nervous. I mean, who wouldn't?" On the other side of the divide, Arab-Americans are also feeling new discomfort about attitudes toward them. Nadeem Salem, head of the Association of Arab-Americans in Toledo, Ohio, said such views were extremely offensive. "Think what it really means," said Mr. Salem, a second-generation American-born citizen. "People's civil liberties are being tarnished, compromised. That's not what this country is all about." For many Americans who say they have deeply believed that it was wrong for law enforcement officers to single out members of minorities for special interrogation or searches, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 have prompted a painful confrontation with the sudden anxieties they acknowledge feeling in the presence of one minority in particular. With all of the roughly 20 hijackers involved the attacks believed to have Arab backgrounds, these Americans say, the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have ample reason to zero in on that group. "It's not right," said Virginia Hawthorne, a retired accountant from Bremerton, Wash., "but it's justified." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |