More than 73 percent of Harvard University Law students would support racial profiling in airports if it cut travel delays by one hour, according to a recent study conducted by two Harvard professors.
Nearly 45 percent of students said they would accept racial profiling if it reduced their wait by only 10 minutes, according to the survey. Fifty-five percent of students surveyed said they would agree to racial profiling in airports if it cut delays by half an hour.
Harvard professors Richard J. Zeckhauser and W. Kip Viscusi conducted their investigation by surveying 95 students in the Harvard Law School. Zeckhauser said the pair used the law students because they were ‘sensitive to civil rights issues.’
The 69 students who would support racial profiling if it decreased their wait by an hour agreed to profiling on the condition that they were not the traveler singled out by the airport. That number fell by 45 percent when students were told they would be the traveler detained, however.
Zeckhauser said he was not surprised by the outcome of the study.
‘The results were interesting,’ Zeckhauser said. ‘We didn’t have much of a feel for what [they] would be. We weren’t trying to prove any points.’
Trisha Chilson, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said she was shocked by the results of the survey.
‘That’s ridiculous and selfish,’ Chilson said. ‘I’d like to have an hour cut off my time, but not at the expense of others.’
College of Communication sophomore Katie Noonan said she was not surprised by the statistics because the students surveyed were not the people who would be adversely affected.
‘White America would have a great problem with racial profiling if it were to affect them,’ she said. ‘If white America were targeted if they were stopped at the airport counters they wouldn’t support it at all.’
Noonan also said she felt a large part of the reason the surveyed students supported racial profiling was due to the unfounded prejudice against people of Mid-eastern descent.
Zeckhauser said non-white respondents opposed racial profiling more often than their white counterparts, although he said he based that conclusion on a sample of only six students.
Racial profiling, the singling out of an individual due to his skin and the way he looks, has been under fire recently due to heightened airport security. Zeckhauser said the study was prompted by the recent resurgence in debate surrounding racial profiling at airport security checkpoints.
The survey distribution did not address a definition of racial profiling, however.
‘[The survey] is based on what the students thought,’ he said. ‘Racial profiling is a politically charged issue. What you may mean by it is different from what I think about it.’
Chilson said she disagreed with racial profiling, but did not know how to rectify the problem.
‘In a perfect world that wouldn’t exist,’ she said, ‘but the problem is that people are prejudiced, and I don’t see how we can fix that. It’s ridiculous and unfortunate.’
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