September 11 and Arab Profiling On September 11, this nation suffered a ferocious surprise attack on its own territory, by people of different races and cultures . Sixty years ago we suffered a similar surprise attack, so the comparison to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came immediately. We would do well to pursue the analogy, because the attack on Pearl Harbor led to the most massive government-sponsored violation of human rights in the United States since the end of slavery. Within months of Pearl Harbor, the federal government uprooted all 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, both foreigners and U.S. citizens, and imprisoned them in desolate camps in the interior of the United States. With over three million people of Arab descent living in America, we must now ask: could it happen again? The first indications are worrying. Mosques were defaced. Arab-owned businesses were hit by gunfire. Arab Americans suffered verbal and physical abuse in the streets. Internet forums are full of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans and threats. To his credit, Attorney General John Ashcroft has clearly condemned this wave of violence and harassment. “Such reports of violence and threats,” he said Sept. 13, “are in direct conflict with the very principles and laws of the United States and will not be tolerated.” These are welcome words, but they cannot assure us that we are not heading towards Arab-American internment. After all, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Attorney General Francis Biddle came to Japanese America's defense, boldly arguing that "the Bill of Rights protects not only American citizens but all human beings living on our American soil." . His words did not prevent the incarceration of Japanese Americans just a few months later. The risk of a repeat of 1942 is clear. In the public mind, today's enemy is not all that different from the enemy of sixty years ago. His religion is foreign, we tell ourselves. His devotion to it is suicidal. It's confidential. It's barbaric. His skin is a different color. And so on. However, the situation of Japanese Americans in 1941 and Arab Americans in 2001 is different in promising terms. The oppression of Japanese Americans did not just stem from military fears and racial hatred. Its main driver was economic. The historical record is clear: The most effective advocates for the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast were their white competitors, especially in agriculture. The attack on Pearl Harbor offered white farmers the chance to cap a program of economic nativism that had been in place for years. Arab Americans, while above the national average in income and education, do not represent a unified economic focus. Unlike Japanese Americans in 1941, who were concentrated in agriculture and some retail and service sectors, Arab Americans today are spread across a broad swath of the workforce. Arab America is also more prevalent in the country than Japanese America was in 1941. At that time, nearly ninety percent of all people of Japanese ancestry lived in California, Washington, and Oregon, where they made an easy target. Today, Arab Americans live across the country, with particularly large populations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Washington, DC. Unlike Japanese Americans in 1941, Arab Americans walk the corridors of political power. Two Cabinet secretaries are of Arab descent: Spencer Abraham, the Secretary of Energy, and Mitchell E. Daniels, the director of the Office of 1941.