As a follow up to the news this morning that GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Scott McInnis wants to implement an Arizona-style racial profiling law in Colorado, I want to point out that McInnis in 2001 already went on record explicitly supporting overt racial profiling. Though this has (somehow) not been widely reported, on November 7, 2001, McInnis gave an impassioned floor speech explicitly endorsing the use of racial profiling on immigration matters - or, what he euphemistically terms "threat profiling." You can watch the video of that speech here. Here are some key excerpts:
The first matter I would like to discuss at some length would be profiling and the need for profiling for the national security of this country...
I have seen, and I have been very disappointed and discouraged recently, about some people playing what I would call the race card against profiling. We have to talk in a very serious tone and with thoughts of the consequences of doing things and not doing things, about tools of enforcement that we can utilize within the borders of our country and outside the borders of our country and for the people that want to cross the borders of our country and for the people that want to leave the borders of our country, tools that we can use to help secure the national security. One of those tools is profiling...
So how do we build a profile? What kind of profile am I talking about? I think, for example, ethnic background is a legitimate component of it...I call (it) "threat profiling.'' That is what I am advocating here, threat profiling...
What I am saying here is, for God's sakes, if we allow profiling for marketing purposes, if we allow profiling out there in our schools, if we allow profiling in every step of our lives, why do we not or why are we resistant at all to profiling to protect the national security of the United States of America?...
All I am saying is it is a huge mistake, a huge mistake for us to allow political pressure by a very select number of people to give any kind of commitment that we will not allow ethnic background to be considered as a component of a threat
profile...Once we begin to use ethnic profiling as a component, one of several components to build a profile, I think it is very legitimate. I think it is smart. Obviously, it is constitutionally protected...
So I urge that my colleagues take into consideration and run away from the politically correct theory out there, and to take into consideration just how much we depend on threat profiling for the protection of our society.
You can read the whole speech here. So while it's stunning to hear McInnis so forcefully endorse Arizona's racial profiling law today, and while its shocking to hear him say he wants to implement a similar law here in Colorado, it's consistent with his legislative history. McInnis has long been an ardent supporter of racial profiling - though he tries to make a semantic distinction between racial profiling and "threat profiling," he was adamant that we must profile people on the basis of race and ethnicity. The record on that is very clear - just listen to him say it over and over again in this speech.
We'll be playing clips of McInnis's 2001 speech on AM760 tomorrow and discussing the political ramifications of McInnis's new declaration about the Arizona law tomorrow (Thursday) on AM760. Tune in from 7-10am on your radio dial or on the web at www.am760.net.