Racial Profiling After September 11

Hessian Abbess says he watched in humiliation as two security officers yanked clothes out of his carry-on bag in plain view of dozens of other travelers at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Hessian Abbess, an Arab lawyer going to a convention, was kept at the gate for 30 minutes that October day. He tried to show them a business card that identified him as member of the National Bar Association, but they paid no attention. "I felt threatened. I felt if I protested too much, I was going to eat airport carpet," Hessian Abbess says.

A US Airways gate agent told him he was detained because he fit a profile designed to identify travelers who may pose a security risk. But the agent wouldn't be more specific. Hessian Abbess doesn't believe it. "I fit neither a terrorist profile nor a drug trafficker profile. I was just F-W-A (flying-while-Arab)," he says.

Hessian Abbess’s resentment is shared by many Arab and Arab-American fliers who say racial and ethnic bias is playing a bigger part in who gets pulled aside for questioning and a thorough baggage check by airport security. Complaints like Hassan Abbass's have soared since the September 11 incident prompted stricter airport security nationwide.

The American Civil Liberties Union has received more than 1000 complaints this year, the most since the gulf war in 1991. Arab-Americans and Arabs have filed the most, the ACLU says. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has received 2000 complaints this year, 10 times more than in previous years.

"Profiling has become just a fancy word for racism or stereotyping," says committee spokesman Sam Hussein.

Federal officials won't say what criteria are used in profiling. But they deny any bias inherent in the syste...

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...lls aside to a more scientific ground. Criteria are understood to include fliers' travel patterns and destinations. Flynn won't elaborate but says the new system will "remove the opportunity for unconscious or conscious stereotypes."

Northwest Airlines is testing the system in several cities. Following "several" complaints, it has instructed gate agents to be less confrontational and more cordial to travelers during the process, says spokesman Jim Faulkner. The ACLU's Gregory Nojeim is skeptical about the CAPS system and thinks profiling should be abandoned. Bag matching, where airlines remove luggage from planes if their owners aren't aboard, is the most effective security method, he says. He calls profiling a placebo.

"It's an effort to make passengers feel that something has been done to stop bombing of planes, even though it is unlikely to be effective."