Walter Williams Discusses Racial and Sexual Profiling

With his usual bluntness, Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University explains why profiling is not always a sign of racism or sexism. And it certainly doesn't necessarily indicate animus. His column explains that rational profiling can lead to injustice for law-abiding young black men, but he hits the nail on the head by stating that any resulting anger should be directed at young black male criminals who make other people (of all colors) more likely to profile. The same could be said about young Muslim men who object to extra attention at airports. For the 99 percent-plus that just want to peaceably travel, it must be very irritating to deal with suspicion. But they should be angry at the radical Islamists who have created legitimate apprehension. I don't know if there are any policy lessons, but Walter's column (as always) is worth reading.

Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as white men. It would...be a best practice for a physician to be attentive to -- even risk false positive PSAs -- prostate cancer among his black patients. What about physicians who order routine mammograms for their 40-year and older female patients but not their male patients? ...Because of a correlation between race, sex and disease, the physician is using a cheap-to-observe characteristic, such as race or sex, as an estimate for a more costly-to-observe characteristic, the presence of a disease. The physician is practicing both race and sex profiling. Does that make the physician a racist or sexist? Should he be brought up on charges of racial discrimination because he's guessing that his black patients are more likely to suffer from prostate cancer? Should sex discrimination or malpractice suits be brought against physicians who prescribe routine mammograms for their female patients but not their male patients? ...Is an individual's race or sex useful for guessing about other unseen characteristics? Suppose gambling becomes legal for an Olympic event such as the 100-meter sprint. I wouldn't place a bet on an Asian or white runner. Why? Blacks who trace their ancestry to West Africa, including black Americans, hold more than 95 percent of the top times in sprinting. That's not to say an Asian or white can never win but I know the correlations and I'm playing the odds. If women were permitted to be in the sprint event with men, I'd still put my money on a black male. Does that make me a sexist as well as a racist? ...Ten years ago, a black D.C. commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom are black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described dangerous-looking as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Cabbies themselves have developed other profiling criteria. There is no sense of justice or decency that a law-abiding black person should suffer the indignity being passed up. At the same time, a taxicab driver has a right to earn a living without being robbed, assaulted and possibly murdered. One of the methods to avoid victimization is to refuse to pick up certain passengers in certain neighborhoods or passengers thought to be destined for certain neighborhoods. Again, a black person is justifiably angered when refused service but that anger should be directed toward the criminals who prey on cabbies. Not every choice based on race represents racism and if you think so, you risk misidentifying and confusing human behavior. The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Are Separate Prisons for AIDS-Infected Prisoners an Unconstitutional Form of Discrimination?

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't pretend any expertise on the legal issues, but this brewing controversy about prison policy in South Carolina strikes me as a case of political correctness run amok. The state separates prisoners with AIDS and sends them to a separate facility that has specialized medical treatment. This policy also protects uninfected prisoners from exposure due to rape. I suppose one could argue that this is a form of quarantine, but all prisoners - by definition - are being quarantined, so that hardly seems to be a compelling argument. A former staffer with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights division has a column in the Washington Examiner, which is excerpted below.

Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population. In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder's Justice Department. South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act. ...Justice raises three primary objections to this effective and humane approach. First, it prevents infected prisoners "from participating in activities and jobs of their choosing." Leave it to bureaucrats in Washington to concoct the grievance that prisoners have choices when it comes to activities in the first place. Second, DOJ claims the South Carolina program is unconstitutional, something the courts have repeatedly rejected. Once again we see the rule of law falling by the wayside when it comes to decisions of this Civil Rights Division. This is the same Civil Rights Division that was sanctioned more than $4 million during the Clinton administration for bringing cases as frivolous as the one against South Carolina prisons. Third, with all the pragmatism of a sociology lecture at Harvard, DOJ argues that the separation of the HIV/AIDS prisoners "stigmatizes" the prisoners. Ozmint responds, "Prison is a voluntary activity; breaking the law, earning a criminal record, and wearing 'state issue,' all stigmatize. Since one purpose of prison is punishment, this stigmatization is somewhat intentional." How refreshing.

Obama Is Greedy, not Racist

The Washington Post has a story, excerpted below, about people who think the tanning tax is racist because it targets a service used overwhelmingly by white people. And while some critics make a good point about how that would be the story if there was a tax on a product used overwhelmingly by blacks or Asians, I think it is silly to think that racism played a role in the imposition of the tax. First of all, my recollection is that the push for the levy came from Capitol Hill, where the Democrats who hold power are almost all white. Second - and more important, I don't sense any racism in Obama. To the extent he discriminates, it is against green - at least when that color represents money that you have that he hasn't figured out how to grab.

When an article about the fallout from the tax -- which took effect last week -- appeared on the Washington Post's Web site Wednesday, dozens of commenters questioned the tax's legality. The case can seem deceptively simple: Since patrons of tanning salons are almost exclusively white, the tax will be almost entirely paid by white people and, therefore, violates their constitutional right to equal protection under the law. But does the argument have any merit? Not remotely said Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School specializing in racial conflict and law. "There is no constitutional problem at all, because a plaintiff would have to show that the government intended to disadvantage a particular group, not simply that the group is disadvantaged in effect," he said.

Sexual and Racial Quotas and the Dodd-Frank Bailout Bill

Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute provides an additional reason why the Dodd-Frank bailout legislation is bad for the American economy. But this shouldn't be too surprising. Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank are akin to a couple of foxes designing rules for the construction of henhouses. So we get government-mandated racial and sexual discrimination in addition to more bailouts, more moral hazard, more red tape, more spending, and no reform of Fannie and Freddie. What's not to love about this festering pile of you-know-what?

In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry. In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications. The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors. ...the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." That last would appear to rope in law firms working for financial entities. Contracts are defined expansively as "all contracts for business and activities of an agency, at all levels, including contracts for the issuance or guarantee of any debt, equity, or security, the sale of assets, the management of the assets of the agency, the making of equity investments by the agency, and the implementation by the agency of programs to address economic recovery." This latest attempt by Congress to dictate what "fair" employment means is likely to encourage administrators and managers, in government and in the private sector, to hire women and minorities for the sake of appearances, even if some new hires are less qualified than other applicants. The result is likely to be redundant hiring and a wasteful expansion of payroll overhead.

The Evil of Lookism

Just when you thought leftism couldn't get any weirder, there's a column in the Washington Post advocating a government ban on discrimination against ugly people. If you read the article, there actually is a lot of research showing that attractive people have a big advantage over unattractive people (and Greg Mankiw has written about the advantage tall people have over short people). That being said, it is amazing that anyone actually thinks the government can somehow offset the lottery of genetic luck. But if legislation is enacted, I plan on filing a lawsuit against Gisele Bundchen because she clearly is discriminating in favor of tall, good-looking football players when she should be dating me:

In the 19th century, many American cities banned public appearances by "unsightly" individuals. A Chicago ordinance was typical: "Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting subject . . . shall not . . . expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense." Although the government is no longer in the business of enforcing such discrimination, it still allows businesses, schools and other organizations to indulge their own prejudices. Over the past half-century, the United States has expanded protections against discrimination... Yet bias based on appearance remains perfectly permissible in all but one state and six cities and counties. Across the rest of the country, looks are the last bastion of acceptable bigotry. ...in California in 2001, Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor, was denied a franchise by Jazzercise, a national fitness chain. Jazzercise explained that its image demanded instructors who are "fit" and "toned." ...In a survey by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, 62 percent of its overweight female members and 42 percent of its overweight male members said they had been turned down for a job because of their weight. ...Prevailing beauty standards penalize people who lack the time and money to invest in their appearance. And weight discrimination, in particular, imposes special costs on people who live in communities with shortages of healthy food options and exercise facilities. So why not simply ban discrimination based on appearance? ...Opponents of a ban on appearance-based discrimination...warn that it would trivialize other, more serious forms of bias. After all, if the goal is a level playing field, why draw the line at looks? "By the time you've finished preventing discrimination against the ugly, the short, the skinny, the bald, the knobbly-kneed, the flat-chested, and the stupid," Andrew Sullivan wrote in the London Sunday Times in 1999, "you're living in a totalitarian state."

The Feminist Equal-Pay Scam

Christina Hoff Summers of the American Enterprise Institute does a masterful job debunking the feminist notion that discrimination is responsible for wage differences between male and female workers. I'll just add one observation, which is that genuine discrimination is very costly. If an employer wanted to discriminate against women (or any other group), that would mean deliberately making inefficient choices. This, in turn, would reduce the competitiveness of firms with discriminatory hiring practices. In other words, the market penalizes people who do the wrong thing. This doesn't mean there is no discrimination. It does suggest, however, that market forces are the right solution, not coercive intervention by government:

Today is Equal Pay Day. Feminist groups and political leaders have set aside this day to protest the fact that women’s wages are, on average, 78 percent of men’s wages. ...The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has enlisted supporters to wear red “to represent the way the pay gap puts women ‘in the red.’” There will be rallies, speak outs, mass mailings of equity e-cards, and even bake sales featuring cookies with a “bite” taken out to represent women’s losses to men. ...this holiday has no basis in reality. Even feminist economists acknowledge that today’s pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women's different life choices—what they study in school, where they work, and how they balance home and career. ...In January 2009, the Labor Department posted a study prepared by the CONSAD Research Corporation, "An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women." It analyzed more than 50 peer-reviewed papers. Labor Department official Charles E. James Sr. summed up the results in his foreword: "This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers." ...Women are not as ready to sacrifice their deep interests in, say, history, psychology, or public policy—“all in order to fix, sell, or distribute widgets” or “to spend the best years of [their lives] planning air conditioning ductwork for luxury condos.” Men also work longer hours and are more willing than women to take dangerous but well-paid jobs as truck drivers, loggers, coal miners, or oil riggers. ...And of course women are much more involved with babies than men. According to a 2009 Pew Survey, “A strong majority of all working mothers (62%) say they would prefer to work part time . . . An overwhelming majority [of working fathers] (79%) say they prefer full-time work. ...American women are among the freest, best educated, and most self-determining people in the world. It seems unsisterly for NOW or the AAUW to suggest that they are being hoodwinked into college majors, professions, or part-time work so they can spend more time with their children.