Racial Profiling

Racial profiling seems to be very common within our nation. Racial profiling has become second nature to most people because we readily make inferences about people and it is really hard to prevent that fact. It is almost a subconscious thought process that pretty much everyone has. It's kind of hard to protest against something that even you cannot help but do yourself. When airport security guards stop Middle-eastern looking people for "random" security checks, we think it is unjust. And it is. But most of us cannot deny that we get slightly suspicious when we see a Middle-easterner, especially at the airport. When we all have been traumatized by 9/11, and force-fed all the news about Al-Qaeda, we unfortunately have imprinted into our minds the image of people in the Middle East blowing themselves up. This is why racial profiling is so hard to fight against, and still exists strongly today.

Racial profiling--it's wrong, no matter how useful and helpful it is for the government or the nation. But is it even advantageous at all? I mean, if I were a foreign government sending in spies, I would send in the least suspicious individuals, i.e. those who don't look like people from my country. I would look for individuals who are in need of money, and are not necessarily loyal to the country on. There is no question that bribery is all powerful. No matter how terrible the act, someone will always do it for the correct amount of money. So almost certainly the American government's unwritten racial profiling policy is just wasted time and energy.
Yes, Clinton's administration felt they had to prove the GOP wrong, and perhaps show the American public that something was being done about China, but they had no cause to use racial profiling as their sole policy.

In the case of Wen Ho Lee, it was racial profiling to the extreme. I cannot believe how the government could single out one Chinese person with no real evidence, and take over his entire life, seemingly creating evidence as it went. How could so many ridiculously unjust things go on in the very government that is created for the people, by the people? No matter how many checks and balances there are, the corruption of power will always exist.

Now it is entirely possible that Lee was exaggerating a bit. It is understandable how having your life ruined would spur you to get sweet revenge. But I believe Lee is telling the complete truth. While it is crazy what the government did, I think a major reason why they so relentlessly attacked Lee again and again was the fact that he couldn't defend himself. With English as his second language, he couldn't say much more than "uh, um... I'm innocent", as evidenced in the section where he wrote down the exact conversation he had with the FBI. After reading that section, I could see that the language barrier was a significant reason why the FBI couldn't see the evidence for his innocence. I felt that if he had the ability to speak as he did in the book (with the help of Helen Zia), he would have been found innocent much earlier.