The Slippery Slope of Racial Profiling Challenges of the New Terrain Chicagoans in Defense of Arabs, Muslims The Slippery Slope of Racial Profiling "Before September 11 we had almost succeeded in eliminating racial profiling, After September 11, it’s a whole new world," says Michel Shehadeh of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in the western region. "One thousand Arab Americans have already been detained and we don’t know who they are or what charges have been brought against them."Of those 1,147 Arabs and Arab Americans who have been detained, exactly zero have been charged with any formal offense in connection to the events of September 11. This, however, has not slowed the pace of the detentions. What it has done is give moral, political, and for the time being, legal sanction to stop, search, and detain anyone who appears to be Arab. Prior to September 11, 80 percent of Americans opposed racial profiling. Since that day, "There has been an immediate reversal of public opinion," says Michelle Alexander of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. Polls now show that 70 percent of Americans believe that some form of racial profiling is necessary, and acceptable, to ensure public safety. In the weeks following September 11, The New York Times, Newsweek, and other mainstream publications ran articles quoting scholars and average people alike saying that even though they were slightly embarrassed to admit it, they felt that racial profiling was acceptable. An ABC News/Washington Post poll on September 13 found that 43 percent of respondents were more likely to be suspicious of people who they ‘think are of Arab descent.’ In subsequent polls, 58 percent favored more intensive security checks for Arabs, and 49 percent favored special identification cards. Thirty-two percent supported "special surveillance." Alexander notes that, "What was most disturbing was that Afric...
