Actually, Germans were interned as well as Japanese

Submitted by S. O'Hara (United States), Dec 29, 2004 at 19:21

I don't know about Italians. However, I remember reading that many Germans were also interned. While the Japanese were mostly interned on the West coast, the Germans were interned on the East coast.

Re. the use of racial profiling - well, it may make sense in certain cases. For example, if a white guy is reported as raping someone, the police look for white guys who fit the description. Unfortunately for the many law-abiding, decent Muslims in this country, the Swedish bikini team wasn't the group that hijacked those planes on 9/11. However, while I have no problem with the police respectfully questioning people, I do have problems with, for example, them detaining people for several days without evidence, etc. I don't have a problem with airlines more closely questioning young Arabic men, but I do have problems with them man-handling people or making racist comments. There are ways to investigate threats while still being civilized and still taking into account civil rights.

I believe that there are elements of the Patriot Act that violate civil rights, and that bothers me. Also, due to the war on drugs, we currently have unlawful searches and seizures going on which are also unconstitutional. We have to be careful - no matter how good the reason we should never violate the Constitution. Even in war time we should abide by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That means even suspected terrorists are innocent until proven guilty. I don't have a problem with racial profiling. Police have limited resources, and when most hijackers are young men it doesn't make sense to stop old women for questioning. But we still need to follow due process and make sure that their civil rights are not violated.

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