The civil rights movement is dead, RIP

By David Horowitz

Published September 7, 2000 7:56PM (EDT)

Read the story

Racial profiling is wrong because it is unconstitutional. Our legal and justice system is based on one premise, i.e., that one is innocent until proven guilty. Racial profiling flies in the face of that principle. When blacks were lynched only because they were blacks, did the local police use racial profiling to catch the criminals? Statistics can be manipulated anyway one wants to fit an ideological bent. Unless the police have evidence pointing towards a person, the Constitution forbids unnecessary search and seizure. Is Horowitz willing to throw away the Constitution in order to maintain law and order?

-- Shekhar T. Venkataraman

So racial profiling is a good thing, huh? While I'm no huge fan of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, either, I would dearly love to debate Horowitz about this article. If he were a law-abiding black or Hispanic man he might feel differently about being presumed a criminal just because of his race. And, from Horowitz's last name, I might presume that he is Jewish. He might not so easily forget the sad past when Jews were scapegoated and blamed for all kinds of problems in Europe.

-- Amy Mathis

If David Horowitz's numbers are correct, then perhaps the real villains in the racial profiling debate aren't law enforcement officials but the black and Hispanic criminals who tar law-abiding minorities with the reputation of a criminal.

Police, however, still have to make a distinction between the probability that a minority person is a criminal and shooting him 41 times because he pulled his wallet on them.

Racism is not dead on either side of this debate.

-- Ken Tryon

Kudos to David Horowitz for speaking out against America's greatest taboo: black racism. People like Jackson, Sharpton and Farrakhan are truly dangerous. By constantly blaming whites (and now Asians, Arabs and Jews) for the problems of blacks they cause black racism. We need more people like Horowitz to speak out against this injustice.

-- Jim Lubinskas


By Salon Staff

MORE FROM Salon Staff


Related Topics ------------------------------------------