Racial Profiling

Racial Profiling

2018/08/26 "Collateral Damage" on Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi

2018/08/26 60 Minutes Overtime "The Spy Who Wasn't"

Profiling of Asian Americans

On August 26, 2018, CBS 60 Minutes rebroadcast "Collateral Damage" nationwide with updates on the stories of Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi. Bill Whitaker reported on these and other innocent Chinese Americans wrongly accused of espionage-related crimes as the U.S. steps up the fight against Chinese theft of U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property.

60 Minutes Overtime, titled "The Spy Who Wasn't," further describes that "[a]s innocent Chinese Americans are being accused as spies, the impact on them and their families lasts far beyond the legal fees and dropped charges."

Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi are not the only Asian American victims of racial discrimination in U.S. history. Collateral damage for Chinese American scientists is also not a recent occurrence by random chance.

The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers beginning in 1882. Subsequent amendments expanded the exclusion to all Asians. It was one of the most explicitly discriminatory laws based on race and national origin in U.S. history. The Chinese Exclusion Act and its amendments were not repealed until 1943, and even then, disproportionate immigration quotas were applied to Asians until 1965.

During the Second World War, about 120,000 Japanese were interned under Executive Order 9066, about two thirds of them were native-born American citizens. Most of them were uprooted from their homes in the West Coast and sent to relocation centers for suspicion of disloyalty to the United States.

In combination with these historical and stereotypical backgrounds, the current state of profiling of Chinese Americans is further entrenched by:

Modern technology such as artifical intelligence and robotics is a major area of international competition for human talent. It also allows convenient collection of large amount of data and massive surveillance beyond the traditional boundaries, eroding civil liberties and privacy of all Americans and helping to target Asian Americans.

Economic espionage and trade secrets became part of the expanded scope of national security after the 9/11 attacks. Athough no person of Chinese descent is known to have participated in acts of terrorism, Chinese Americans became subjects of surveillance and profiling as potential economic spies and insider threats.

The rapid rise of China as an economic power in the past decades and its ambitious long-term economic and military development programs have become a threat to the U.S., both real and perceived. This threat is further promoted actively by the traditional military-industrial complex and the growing cybersecurity-industrial complex.

The national security strategy issued in late 2017 officially declared China to be a competitive rival to the U.S. Implementation of the strategy has followed with intensified information campaigns and additional legislations and regulations enabling the profiling practice, such as the "whole-of-society" approach advocated by FBI Director Christopher Wray when anti-immigrant rhetorics are also rising.

Modern federal criminal laws have exploded in number and became impossibly broad and vague," according to criminal defense and civil liberties litigator Harvey Silverglate in his book titled "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent." Without adequate transparency, oversight, and accountability, "prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any innocent individuals, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior."

In total or in part, these factors have led some innocent Asian Americans to recent persecutions as explicit targets, collateral damage, and scapegoats in the name of national security.

Racial Profiling

The use of race, ethnicity or national origin as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense

Mistake

An action or judgment that is misguided or wrong

Stereotype

An over-generalized belief about a particular category of people

Implicit Bias

Attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manne

Prejudice

Harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgment

Discrimination

The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things

Recommended Reading

Harvey Silverglate (2011)
Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent