“If you adamantly oppose Affirmative Action and likeminded policies, you are a racist in the minds of leftists,” began conservative journalist Michelle Malkin at her speech last week to West Chester University at 7:30 p.m. in the Phillips Autograph Library to discuss the case for racial profiling in the War on Terror.”If you speak up against illegal immigration, again, you are a racist,” she continued, easing into her point that the nation is in dire need of stricter immigration reform, including profiling, which was the main topic of Malkin’s speech.
“Race is just one of many factors that go into profiling, but there are also marital status, purchase habits and behavior,” she said. “But it would be deadly for law enforcement not to enforce the immigration laws that they have at hand, including profiling.”
Profiling in the War on Terror, according to Michelle Malkin, is necessary because “terrorists do not have the word ‘terrorist’ stamped on their head.” She cited an example of a man named Williams who was suspicious of Arab men at a flight school, but did not voice his concerns because of “political correctness.”
Malkin linked her argument to a claim made in her book, “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror.” She asserted that in the 1940s, Japanese spies had in fact penetrated through the U.S. Military and that the claims of profiling being based on “racism and wartime hysteria” are just “conventional wisdom.”
“The relocation of Japanese Americans was not an act of racism, but an act of preemptive protection and the story needs to be accurately looked at.”
Malkin went on to cite that a little over half of Arab Americans in October 2001 supported the practice of racial profiling, while the proposed solution of profiling opponents has been to “do nothing.”
“I do not advocate rounding up Arab and Muslim Americans and putting them in cages. However, if stopping them at an airport to ask a few questions is a necessary inconvenience, it’s better to have that inconvenience than to be burning alive at your office in the World Trade Center,” she said, asserting that profiling can prevent terrorist attacks. “The War on Terrorism is an unprecedented war which needs unprecedented measures.”
During the question and answer session, members of the audience took the time to make political statements of their own, expressing either their own support or opposition to Malkin’s comments regarding racial profiling.
One audience member asserted a link to the Holocaust from racial profiling and that President Bush gave Americans the fear of terror, but Malkin replied, “You and I must be on different planets then, because Sept. 11 gave me the fear of terror.” That audience member promptly walked out of the library afterward.
Others asked questions of “How far does this go?” Malkin responded that this is the same argument of those who oppose affirmative action.
“If a racial preference in affirmative action is okay, then racial profiling in the War on Terror is okay,” she added.
When confronted on whether she would be in favor or opposed to profiling Pilipino people, Malkin’s own ethnic background, she said that she would indeed be in favor of it and highlighted a recent story about the arrest of a Filipino spy who penetrated the White House during the Clinton and Bush Administrations.