Racial Profiling Violates the ConstitutionAfter the heinous attacks of September 11, were Americans forced to address the issue of racial profiling? Americans love to use data and statistics to justify their actions. What data might justify special searches on anyone who looks "Arab" at an airport? There are up to 7 million Arab Americans in the United States. If we add all those South Asians (1.6 million), Latinos, and African Americans who might "look" Arab, we have a rough figure of at least 10 million people. How many of these are bona fide terrorists? Let's say 100. This equals 0.001%. As a very rough comparison, consider that in 1999 alone, approximately 350,000 men were arrested for violent crimes. There are approximately 135 million men living in the United States. This is a percentage of 0.26%. Does this mean we should stop and search all men because they might act violently? Second, analyze the data correctly. Humans are notoriously bad at probabilities. For example, the fact that 100% of the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were Arab-looking men does not mean that 100% of Arab-looking men are terrorists. Furthermore, we focus on relative probabilities rather than absolute ones. So even if the Arab-looking man sitting to your left is 100 times more likely to be a terrorist than the Aryan-looking man sitting to your right, 100 times an essentially zero number is still close to zero. Third, don't overestimate the benefit. Is racial profiling really that effective? There will certainly be "false negatives", those who turn out to be terrorists but who do not fit the profile. Let's remember that many of the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks behaved poorly... middle of paper... a policy can be justified by numbers. And maybe it can. But even then, the moral principles embodied in our Constitution can prevail over utilitarian calculations. Isn't this exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court purported to do when it struck down helpful affirmative action programs because they allegedly violated the rights of innocent whites? Let's keep our word to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: "In the eyes of the government, we are just one race here. It's American." during all wars: we have a “combative constitution”, which is not a “suicide pact”. I am not an advocate of weakness or suicide. But I don't delude myself into thinking that the Constitution in itself makes us strong. It simply makes us worthy of our strength.