[JURIST] The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund [official website] has released a new report on racial profiling [press release] in the United States.

From the Executive Summary: "Before September 11, polls showed that Americans of all races and ethnicities believed racial profiling to be both widespread and unacceptable.... On September 11, this consensus evaporated. The 19 men who hijacked airplanes to carry out the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Arabs from Muslim countries. The federal government immediately focused massive investigative resources and law enforcement attention on Arabs, Arab Americans, Muslims, and those perceived to be Arab or Muslim, such as Sikhs and other South Asians. Many of the practices employed in the name of fighting terrorism - from the singling out of young Arab or Muslim men in the United States for questioning and detention to the selective application of the immigration laws to nationals of Arab or Muslim countries - amount to racial profiling. But despite public hostility to street-level racial profiling, anti-terror profiling has flourished. At the same time, there is new evidence that "traditional" racial profiling remains prevalent after September 11. The persistence of both forms of racial profiling makes clear the need to revive the pre-September 11 consensus that the practice of profiling is always wrong and should be prohibited."

Read the full text of Wrong Then, Wrong Now: Racial Profiling Before and After September 11, 2001.