Last Sunday, while participating in a live  BBC  TV programme, I, along with other two guests, had to ponder over some difficult issues. None of them had easy answers and racial profiling was one of the topics under discussion. Though it is disapproved of by the home office in the UKand some might disagree with me, I decided to say that at times it might be unavoidable.My argument was that living in a multi-cultural society it was important to understand that communities need to contribute in a positive fashion to the country they live in, and sometimes racial profiling might be required to catch the ‘bad apples’. Not surprisingly, the BBC producer was thrilled to get someone form an ‘ethnic community’ who was willing to speak her mind ,as very few people form a minority community are ever willing to admit that perhaps they too make mistakes. Usually, we prefer the mantle of victimhood. Everything is the fault of majority, which cannot understand us or culture, and all are inherently racist is the common argument. I disagreed, and since that always makes good television (I suppose!), BBC flew me to Belfast to participate in what was a heated debate.

Of course, the danger lies in creating stereotypes, but racial profiling has become a dirty word in the UK because communities have protested that they have been unnecessarily targeted by the police. In fact, in some areas it has emerged that young black men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white. The question is whether this is related to crime figures or is this merely because the police is racist? I would like to believe that when the police simply does not like someone’s face or skin colour. While I also agree there will be, as happens all over the world, some racist elements in the police, one would be hard pressed to tarnish the whole force!

I have to say that while my on-air comments have got a lot of support, there are a few who have been rather furious with me: as someone of colour, and a particular ethnicity, I should be crying myself hoarse rejecting any ‘racial profiling’ rather than supporting these ‘stop and search’ operations. But my argument was simple. I believe that if a community is known to have miscreants, wouldn’t it be simpler to be stopped and searched to weed out those elements, rather than to protest, and find the culprits have got away because the police is trying to be ‘politically correct’.

Living in the UK and looking at the amount of transparency and constant scrutiny of the police (and indeed, even of the press and politicians, as we have recently seen in the leveson inquiry)- I find it difficult to believe that the entire force could be inherently racist and get away with it. The outcry over the death of one man, ian Tomlinson, during the G-20 protests in 2009, when he was allegedly hit by a police man wielding a baton, still rumbles on. The resulting well-published inquiry has been through and it is obvious that if the policeman is found to be guilty, he will be punished. And Tomlinson was a white man.

The excuse given for the start of the London riots last year was that the cops shot a black man, by accident- and when word got out the riots began. No doubt the great sense of anger bubbling within the black community meant that these riots were just waiting to happen. But shouldn’t the community also take care to ensure that the automatic response to what was allegedly a criminal act is not escalating crime in turn? The ease with which street gangs, of mostly black disenchanted youth, took over the cities and looted from shops showed a complete loss of any moral fibre. Should then the community complain if there is increased scrutiny from the police over them? After all, it was youths like them who had contributed to the breakdown of law and order last year, and the police was accused of reaching slow. The reason is precisely that in UK cops feel vulnerable when the minority communities indulge in crime. They are cautious because they know hey face the likelihood of being accused of bias and prejudice.

A similar thing happened when some members of the Pakistani muslim community were found recently to be involved in raping white british girls. The investigation showed that even though a complaint had been registered sometime ago, it was ignored possibly because of the ethnicity of the community involved. In trying to be ‘politically correct’, the police made a major mistake and decided not to investigate. And many more girls were subjected to horrendous degrees of rape and abuse before the truth emerged. It did so only when an official who belonged to the community itself decided to conduct a more thorough probe. Ultimately, in both cases ‘racial profiling’ seemed to be necessary evil but it was not pursued because the cops were scared of being branded as ‘prejudiced’.

The same sort of furore has been taking place after the appearance of islamist terrorism in the UK. While the community has protests against ‘profiling’, it is difficult to imagine who are the police would look for if not young muslim men who had been radicalized. I still reiterate that the police should thoroughly check each case- but sometimes random checks are required.

While my comments might have caused a stir, at the same time I think we need to be furious with those members in our community who give us a bad name- because they have the same skin colour and ethnicity as us- rather than with the police force which is usually (at least in the UK) only doing its job.