American Civil Liberties Union

New York City’s leaders, most notably its billionaire mayor, are bent on supporting a stop-and-frisk policy that according to the police department’s own numbers overwhelmingly target minorities.

I finally had a chance to read this extended debate between the security-ologist Bruce Schneier and critic-of-religion Sam Harris (yes that Sam Harris) over whether we should profile Muslims in airport security.

First of all, Sam Harris performs a useful function by articulating a more sophisticated version of what is the intuitive position for many Americans, which runs something like: “we know who the danger is, it ain’t old ranchers from Texas or pretty blondes from San Diego—it’s Muslims, so let’s focus airport security on them.” (I hear this regularly myself when discussing airline security in public.) By fearlessly arguing for such profiling—which many people might quietly suspect makes sense—Harris sets it forth explicitly so that it can be explicitly debunked. And Schneier not only debunks it, he demolishes it.

It’s been more than a year since I was pulled off that Frontier flight at the Detroit airport for reasons I can only ascribe to discrimination and racial profiling. It was the end of a long trip home for me, but the beginning of a life-altering experience that has ultimately led me to shine a light on this great injustice. We often think of racial profiling as a problem that impacts other people. I am proof that racial profiling hurts us all.

After seven days of trial testimony from both the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Latino residents of the county who have suffered under a pattern and practice of racial profiling, the civil trial against Sheriff Joe Arpaio came to an end last week. The U.S. District Court will now decide whether Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America, has targeted Latinos for discriminatory traffic stops and illegal detentions.