Quote of the Day
“The stilted conversations that have followed these tragedies [Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin] have largely focussed on the meaning and implications of the nonsensical phrase “racial profiling.” Nothing better illustrates the slick, manipulative power of euphemism than the fact that our dialogue takes seriously this non-term. There is no such thing as “racial profiling”—there is simply racism. What subsequent action, what logical end, does racial profiling produce that abject racism would not? The supposed definition of “racial profiling”—that the alleged behavior of any fragment of a population becomes the basis for categorizing it in its sum, that epidermal hues are a valid means of reflexively predicting character—is what we, in more honest moments in our past, simply referred to as racism.”
-- Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker, in his post “No Such Thing as Racial Profiling.” He also has a good breakdown of Pres. Obama's comments after each incident.