“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down a street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” According to those who have slammed George Zimmerman for racial profiling, those words would qualify as the penultimate expression of racial profiling. Those are the words of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has led the charge accusing Zimmerman of racial profiling.
Jackson is not alone in his selective interest in combating profiling. Just as bad are those who protested alleged racial profiling in the Zimmerman case, but who have a long record of actively promoting religious profiling. To be specific, those who have made sweeping condemnations of priests, because of the actions of a small minority of offenders, include Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Maher, Kathy Griffin, and Alec Baldwin. All of them accused Zimmerman of racially profiling Trayvon Martin.
Doing a Google search of “religious profiling” turns up stories that are mostly about Muslims. Searching for “imams and” elicits stories about “caliphs,” “rabbis,” “rabbis and peace,” and “mosques council UK.” Searching for “Catholic priests and” garners stories on “marriage,” “celibacy,” “child molestation,” and “science”; the articles are mostly disparaging. When searching for “religious profiling and Catholic priests,” the first story is one that endorses sweeping attacks on priests! Later the New York Post ran a story titled, “Brooklyn DA Releases Names of 46 Convicted Child Sex-Abusers Who Terrorized the Orthodox Jewish Community From Within”; this covered a four-year period. This alarming story was not reported in the New York Times. Take note: there haven’t been 46 credible accusations made against 40,000 priests in the United States in the last four years.
The bias is nauseating. Priests, when compared to African Americans, Muslims, and Jews, are fair game. All should be treated with equal justice.
