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Editor: 

Racial profiling needs to be stopped. Yesterday I heard two impassioned men discuss the pros and cons of racial profiling. The pro argument seemed to boil down to, if you know a certain ethnic group has committed a crime, it’s only right to stop other people from the same ethnic group and see if they know something about the crime or if they’ve committed a similar crime themselves. 

To me racial profiling is counter-productive. When law enforcement focuses their attention on one particular group, other groups can have a field day. Remember how we were sure the Oklahoma City bombers were not “Americans” and valuable time was wasted in that investigation? 

President Bush recently issued an executive order setting aside certain of our constitutional rights. Combine this with racial profiling and we may quickly surpass the wrongs we committed towards the Japanese during World War II. 

Anne Smith 

Berkeley