Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Same Thing

It is something we hear about in the news all the time. An insidious scourge upon the earth. The government needs to do something about it. Laws need to written and rigorously enforced. It is this thing called, " profiling. " Gasp, that's right profiling. I looked it up and found the definition for this disease. Profiling is the extrapolation of information about something based on known qualities. It uses the personal characteristics or behavioral patterns to make generalizations about a person or groups of people. This must be stopped. This profiling of people or groups  Law enforcement does it ! The TSA does it ! What an outrage.
Guess what, Walmart does it too, along with just about every business you can think of. The only difference being it is not called profiling. It is demographics ! Demographics are fine. In fact there are entire corporations dedicated to demographics. They earn there living providing a demographic PROFILE  to their clients.
I looked up the definition of demographics. Demographics are the quantifiable statistics of a given population. Five areas are used to create the demographic profile. Your age, gender, income level, race and ethnicity. It goes on to say Demographic profiling is essentially an exercise in making "generalizations" about the group. Wait a minute, isn't that profiling ? To the uneducated and uninformed it would certainly seem so. Even just having read the respective definitions, they sound basically the same. How can this be ? You can not use profiles as a tool in crime prevention, such as terrorist activities, but you can use them to sell your products to the unsuspecting public. Using these " profiles " to target a specific group !
Why is it okay to use demographics, but profiling is so bad ? I'll tell you why. Demographics are used to make money. Demographics are information and information is power. Power is money, a vicious circle. Profiling aims to break that cycle. That's not good for business. Profiling is bad. The news and the liberals would have us believe that profiling is a racist thing. Profiling is putting a name to a dirty little secret. The government, business, and, gasp, even individuals use demographic profiling to their advantage. We are human. We make judgments  based on known qualities and make generalizations. There it is out. Now, is profiling so bad ? Semantics  my friends. We are living in a world of semantics.
Each one of us are being profiled every day. From the songs on the radio station to the type of toilet tissue we use. Demographic Profiling has been used. There are entire corporations that do nothing but create these profiles. Ever hear of the Neilsen ratings ? Profiled. Go to the Walmart in a predominantly black lower income neighborhood and look around, then go to one in a predominantly white middle class neighborhood., any difference ? You bet there is, they have been modeled after a demographic profile. The consumers have been profiled ! But that is just business. Isn't preventing crime a business ? A very important business ? Then why are we shackling our law enforcement people with the inability to profile ? If you use current logic I should be able to sue the Walmart for me buying the products I do. They profiled me and I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Isn't that what the criminals are saying ? You wouldn't have stopped me if you hadn't profiled me. The fact that I have illegal drugs and guns in my possession is irrelevant, I was profiled !
The truth is you happen to fit a demographic profile. Science has singled you out, not me. I'm just using the science in the performance of my job. 

No comments:

Post a Comment