Thursday's deadly shooting at Los Angeles International Airport
provided a grim underscore to FBI Director Robert Mueller's words
at the American Muslim Council's annual convention last week.
Mueller stressed the need for the American Muslim and law
enforcement communities to work together in the war on terrorism.
The convention, which carried the theme "American Muslims: Part of
America," included discussion of new FBI surveillance tactics and
racial profiling.
Racial profiling of Muslims may seem like a relatively new
problem for Americans, but discussion of its practice with regard
to other American minorities has been part of the public dialogue
for more than a decade. A new Gallup poll* on racial attitudes
examines how the civil rights of many minority groups, including
Muslims and Arabs, are respected in the American criminal justice
system.
Generally, a majority of Americans believe that the civil rights
of all the racial groups tested in the poll are being respected by
the criminal justice system. However, the public expresses the
belief that some racial groups' civil rights are respected more
than others'. More than eight in 10 Americans (82%) believe the
civil rights of whites are respected, and 73% believe the same is
true for Asians. Significantly fewer believe that the rights of
blacks or Hispanics are respected: 62% for blacks, and 63% for
Hispanics. And just over half believe the criminal justice system
respects the rights of Muslims (55%) and Arabs (53%).
Civil Rights of Muslims and Arabs
Last October, President Bush signed the Patriot Act into law,
significantly expanding the government's surveillance and
intelligence gathering powers, and strengthening penalties for
terrorist acts. The law's supporters believe it will help law
enforcement agencies prevent terrorist attacks, rather than respond
to them after the fact. Its detractors say the government is
incorrectly de-emphasizing the public's civil rights. Specific
debate on this issue has centered on the civil rights of Muslims
and Arabs in America.
Though more than half of the general public believes the civil
rights of Muslims and Arabs are respected in this country's
criminal justice system, clear differences of opinion exist along
racial and gender lines. Men are more likely than are women to say
that the civil rights of Muslims are respected (64% to 48%,
respectively); a similar gap exists with regard to Arabs' civil
rights. Also, whites are more likely than Hispanics and blacks to
believe that Muslims' civil rights are respected -- specifically,
60% of whites believe this is so, compared to 43% of Hispanics and
just 36% of blacks. Again, a similar racial gap exists when
respondents are asked about Arabs' civil rights.
The Racial Divide
While its application to Arabs and Muslims has only been a major
topic of discussion since the Sept. 11 attacks, racial profiling
has been an important issue in the black community for some time.
As the summary table shows, whites and blacks have significantly
different opinions regarding the respect of civil rights in the
country's criminal justice system.
For every group tested, whites are significantly more likely
than blacks to say they think civil rights are respected by the
criminal justice system. Specifically, just a third of black
respondents (33%) believe the system respects the civil rights of
blacks, compared to a majority of whites (69%) who think so. Blacks
are even significantly less likely than whites to believe that the
civil rights of whites are respected in the country's
criminal justice system, 73% to 84%. These findings suggest that
blacks have more general distrust of the system as a whole, rather
than a belief that the system is specifically targeting the black
minority.
*These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly
selected national sample of 1,360 adults, aged 18 and older,
conducted June 3-9, 2002, including oversamples of 236 blacks and
263 Hispanics, which are weighted to reflect their proportions in
the population. For results based on the total sample, one can say
with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling
and other random effects is ±3%. For results based on the
samples of blacks and Hispanics, one can say with 95% confidence
that the maximum error attributable to sampling error is
±7%. In addition to sampling error, question wording and
practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or
bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
