From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Profiles
Encouraged?
On Monday we
noted that the Justice Department was blocking the release of a New Jersey
study that found blacks on the New Jersey Turnpike were more likely than whites
to speed. Now City Journal's Heather Mac Donald, who last year penned
an article called "The Myth of Racial Profiling," weighs in. She
sums up the new study's findings, which offer some support for her thesis:
According to the study commissioned by the New Jersey attorney general and leaked first to the New York Times and then to the Web, blacks make up 16 percent of the drivers on the turnpike, and 25 percent of the speeders in the 65-mile-per-hour zones, where profiling complaints are most common. (The study counted only those going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit as speeders.) Black drivers speed twice as much as white drivers, and speed at reckless levels even more. Blacks are actually stopped less than their speeding behavior would predict--they are 23 percent of those stopped.
The study's lead author, James Lange, tells Philadelphia's KYW-TV: "It's a piece of the puzzle of how the troopers are acting. There are certainly a lot of other pieces that this study is completely silent on, but it does provide a bit of useful information." Mac Donald, however, goes much further. Her article is titled "The Racial Profiling Myth Debunked: New data show City Journal was right--there's no credible evidence that racial profiling exists." She says of those who disagree with her conclusions: "The medieval Vatican could not have been more threatened had Galileo offered photographic proof of the solar system."
Even putting aside such rhetorical extravagance, Mac Donald's sweeping conclusion is unwarranted. For one thing, these findings necessarily entail an element of doubt. As anyone knows who is familiar with critiques of racial preferences, equitable procedures don't necessarily lead to equal outcomes. The converse is also true; equal outcomes don't necessarily arise from equitable procedures. It's possible that police do discriminate against black speeders, but other, unknown variables lead to more whites being pulled over, so the final numbers are a wash.
A stronger objection is that not all highway stops are for speeding. Indeed, you'd think it would be harder to tell someone's race if he's zooming past at 90 miles an hour. Maybe blacks are slightly underrepresented among speeding suspects but vastly overrepresented among New Jersey motorists pulled over for having a busted taillight, for driving too slowly--or for no good reason at all.
Besides, there is credible evidence that profiling exists: the testimony of two former New Jersey state troopers. John Hogan and James Kenna were prosecuted for a 1998 shooting incident, and on Jan. 15, 2002, the New York Times reported on their sentencing after a plea-bargain:
The two men who began the furor by firing 11 shots into a van carrying black and Latino men from the Bronx on April 23, 1998, publicly acknowledged today for the first time that they had stopped the vehicle because its occupants were black and Latino. The troopers said their supervisors had trained them to focus on black- and brown-skinned drivers because, they were told, they were more likely to be drug traffickers.
But both troopers went on to describe the shooting as self-defense, and each insisted that he only opened fire after the van backed up toward Trooper Hogan and knocked him to the ground.
In her 2001 article, Mac Donald discussed this case, saying it "may have nothing to do with racial profiling at all":
If the troopers' version of the incident proves true, it is hard to see how racial profiling enters the picture. The van's alleged speed [74 miles an hour in a 55 zone] would have legitimately drawn the attention of the police. As for the shooting: whether justified or not, it surely was prompted by the possibly deadly trajectory of the van, not the race of the occupants. Nevertheless, on talk show after talk show, in every newspaper story denouncing racial profiling, the turnpike shooting has come to symbolize the lethal dangers of "driving while black."
This may have been a reasonable surmise at the time, but Hogan and Kenna's testimony appears to disprove it. Mac Donald charges antiprofiling crusaders with dishonesty: "Everyone with a stake in the racial profiling myth, from the state attorney general to the ACLU to defense attorneys who have been getting drug dealers out of jail and back on the streets by charging police racism, is trying to minimize the significance of the findings" of the new study. That's undeniably true, but Mac Donald herself makes overwrought claims and ignores contrary evidence. Both sides of this debate could use a little intellectual rigor.
Seeking
Moussaoui's Death
The Justice Department has decided to seek the death penalty in the case of
alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Our
friends the French no doubt will be displeased. C'est la vie.
Arab
League Follies--II
Who says the Arab League didn't accomplish anything in Beirut? "Saudi Arabia's
Crown Prince Abdullah and Iraq's presidential envoy Izzat Ibrahim hugged and
kissed," Reuters reports, "the first such high-level public contact
since the 1990 Gulf crisis." Even Kuwait and Iraq seem to be kissing and
making up, with Arab leaders saying they "welcomed Iraq's confirmation
to respect the independence, sovereignty and security of the state of Kuwait
and guarantee its safety and unity to avoid anything that might cause a repetition
of what happened in 1990." As we argued
last week, the Arab leaders are plainly terrified at the notion of a pro-American
regime in Baghdad.
The Washington Post reports the league also approved a version of the "Saudi peace plan," which would offer Israel "normal relations," whatever that may mean--though only after the Jewish state accedes to Arab demands for full withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. Reuters, the wire service so even-handed it won't call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, editorializes that the proposal is "far-reaching."
Why do the Arabs get credit for being peacemakers when they put forth a proposal under which they won't even talk to Israel until it meets all their demands, but Israel gets pilloried if it doesn't spend every minute negotiating with the very people who are murdering Israeli civilians on a daily basis? Just asking.
Osama
on the Net
The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper has received an e-mail message purporting
to be from Osama bin Laden, the New York Post reports:
Written in the flowery Arabic style for which bin Laden is noted, it said that the "battle of New York"--an apparent reference to the Sept. 11 atrocities--was "the beginning of the end, God willing," of what he called the "god of pagans," and called for Muslims throughout the Middle East to rise up against U.S.-backed regimes.
The message also denounced Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a "Zionist-American one in Saudi clothes," and called for continuation of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel.
"In light of the bloody events that our nation is going through, everybody is required to take up jihad, and grass-roots leaderships have to move to end this roaring bloodshed and to expose treacheries," the statement said.
UPI reports that a terrorist Web site posting attributed to bin Laden says a recent earthquake in Afghanistan was God's punishment for Afghans who supported America: "Calamities like earthquakes, wars and storms are signs to show that God is upset with the aggressors." If God were really on al Qaeda's side, though, wouldn't he hit America with an earthquake?
There's also a bin Laden Web log, Osama's bin Bloggin. It's fake but funny:
CNN reports that aggressor-in-chief Bush calls on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to "do everything in their power to stop the terrorist killing" after a Hamas freedom fighter kills 15 infidels and destroys an Israeli hotel. Now, I personally never cared much for Arafat--I think the wimpering little weasel is pretty much a has-been. But every time he keeps a promise to arrest some agents from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, it seems to me that the number of suicide bombings tends to increase, so who am I to complain?
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Arafat's
Revolving Door
Israel had previously pegged Abdel-Basset Odeh, the Hamas terrorist who blew
himself up yesterday in Netanya, Israel, killing 20 Jews who had gathered for
a Passover celebration, as a likely suicide bomber, after another Hamas terrorist,
whom Israel had arrested, fingered him. Ha'aretz reports: "Israel demanded
that the Palestinian Authority arrest Odeh. Ten days later the Palestinian Authority
said that they had arrested him, but later Odeh was released from prison. During
the last IDF operation in Tul Karm, soldiers tried to arrest Odeh at his home
in the Nur A Shams refugee camp, but were unsuccessful."
The BBC has some details of the latest Arab barbarity:
"Suddenly it was hell," said one of the guests, Nechama Donenhirsch, a 52-year-old history teacher speaking from her hospital bed. . . .
Mrs Donenhirsch said that as she and her relatives ran from the blast, they saw a little girl, about 10 or 12 years old, lying on the ground:
"The face of the little girl was so nice, it was as if she was surprised, big big open eyes, but surely dead," Mrs Donenhirsch said.
Another guest, 70-year-old Yitzhak, said he offered to help an injured woman get up.
"How can you help me?" he recalled her saying. "I don't have any legs."
In a "news analysis," the New York Times' Serge Schmemann (link requires registration) looks on the bright side: "There were also those who thought the bombing might just provide the vicious jolt needed finally to call a halt to the bloodshed." Comforting, huh?
The Syrian Civil Liberties Union
We caught this hilarious exchange last night on Fox News Channel, between host
Tony Snow and Murhaf Jouejati of the Middle East Institute:
Snow: Is it not the case that Arab nations deliberately kept Palestinians in squalor for many, many years in refugee camps in Egypt, in Jordan and even in Lebanon?
Jouejati: That is not the case, no. You take for example in Syria, where there over 550,000 Palestinian refugees. They enjoy the same civil rights as Syrians--except the right to vote, because they are not citizens.
Here's the U.S. State Department report on Syrian "civil rights." As for the "right to vote," the National Post's Jonathan Kay puts it nicely: "There are 12 democratically elected Arab MPs in Israel's Knesset. Looking beyond the Arab world's various Potemkin parliaments, that's 12 more than in the whole of the Arab Middle East combined."
Our Friends
the Saudis
The Middle East Media and Research Institute picks up a report from a Saudi
government magazine on Riyadh's efforts to export the fanatical Wahhabi brand
of Islam, even to the U.S.:
"The cost of King Fahd's efforts in this field has been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi Riyals. In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. . . . All over the world the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has supported and contributed in the establishment of mosques and Islamic centers. . . ."
A billion Saudi riyals is the equivalent of approximately $267 million.
Stupidity Watch
A group of Canadians are protesting a new film called "Death to Smoochy,"
"a black comedy starring Robin Williams in which a kids' show host (Williams)
goes postal after being fired," the Toronto Globe and Mail reports. They say
the movie is too violent and especially object to "the widely used image of
a kids' show character lying dead on a slab in the movie's publicity posters."
Jeff Deverett, who produces a kids show for PBS, backs the protesters. He seems to have a little trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality: "When the World Trade Center fell, it was like a movie happening," he tells the paper. "But when a mascotted character like Barney gets his head blown off, that's real. It's real violence on their level. To [kids], this movie is Sept. 11."
A
Spiritual Vehicle
"Christian Truck Crashes Into Mosque," reads the headline on an Associated Press
dispatch about an apprarent hate crime in Florida. What the heck's a "Christian
truck"?
Next
They'll Say He Runs the World Trade Organization
The BBC profiles Michael Moore, author of the best-selling autobiography "Stupid
White Men":
The writer's previous targets have included computer giant IBM in his book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation and the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
"IBM and the Holocaust" was actually written by Edwin Black.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Kansas City school officials have now confirmed that third-graders at Pitcher
Elementary School "were improperly strip-searched for missing lunch money,"
the Associated Press reports. We noted
the case Friday.
Up in Canada, school discipline is going to the dogs. The Ottawa Citizen reports that Christopher Laurin, a student at Ottawa's Orleans High, was suspended because a police dog apparently smelled marijuana on his ski jacket--even though the boy didn't have any drugs. "While even the school's principal admitted she could not smell any marijuana on Chris Laurin's coat, the dog's word proved final." That's ruff, Chris.
Let's
Sue All the Lawyers
Marta Sanchez, a University of Virginia law student, is suing Kenneth Abraham,
a professor, alleging assault and battery. The Associated Press explains the
case:
The lawsuit stems from an incident last fall in an introductory class Abraham teaches for first-year law students. As a demonstration of a legal principle known as the "egg-shell skull rule," Abraham touched Sanchez on the shoulder.
Sanchez said the touch--which Abraham has said was a "tap" and Sanchez has described as a "caress"--caused her to experience disturbing memories of rape, pregnancy and abortion that she suffered in her native Panama.
"She brought a lot of baggage with her," said Steven Rosenfield, Sanchez's lawyer. "She had been terrorized and victimized as a child, and although we don't hold Abraham responsible for what happened to her as a child, what he did is exacerbate and bring to the surface once again her vulnerability to men with authority and power."
That unexpected reaction is an example of what the egg-shell skull rule is meant to cover. The rule says that if a court decides that a wrongful act has occurred, the defendant is responsible for the damage caused by the act, even if the damage is greater than normally expected.
"Given the stuff I teach, this scares me out of my wits," says U.Va.'s Anne Coughlin, who specializes in criminal procedure and feminist theory. "The thought that you'd have to so carefully police yourself in the classroom that a misspoken word might generate not just a student coming up to you after class but a lawsuit . . . is really troubling."
If this keeps up, no one will want to become a law professor, which means there won't be anybody to train the next generation of lawyers. Though come to think of it, that would solve the whole problem.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Glen Smith, Damian Bennett, Raghu Desikan, Darren Gold, Michael Segal, Edward Schulze, Cliff Thier, Chuck Smith, Renee Morris, Charles Johnson, Hazen Dempster, Michael Roth, Tim Callahan, Dawn Eden, Rob Harvie, Frank Stirk, John Mueller, Scott Brown, Will Tysse and Christine Klein. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Woody Hochswender: May our karma run over Osama's dogma (link requires registration).
- Collin Levey: Liberals are shocked, shocked that some education critics have an agenda.
- Claudia Rosett: PBS likes capitalism more than the commercial networks do.
