I like where you go with this in the second half, because I believe that racial profiling is pragmatically ineffective anyway. But I take issue with this state

I like where you go with this in the second half, because I believe that racial profiling is pragmatically ineffective anyway. But I take issue with this statement: "If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show what does." I think the burden of proof is on the person using those tools both to show that they have predictive power, and to show that the action being taken on that prediction is reasonable. Put a different way: a couple of principles which I think most Americans probably believe in are: 1) innocent until proven guilty 2) no guilt by association (there are laws that allow restrictions on known felons associating with one another, but at least in that case, the association is based on convictions for actions the individuals have taken, not assumptions about a class to which they happen to belong due to who they were born to). I don't like the idea that someone can look suspicious, without acting suspiciously. I know there's inevitably a lot of overlap and gray area between those two things. But what I'm saying is that even if you have some statistical model which you believe has good predictive power based on inputs of race and dress, and your model says that scruffy looking black men are more likely to commit crimes, you still don't get to investigate someone just because that person's a scruffy looking black guy. (sidenote: I just noticed this reply sitting unposted in a tab I opened a few days ago, so this might not even get read, but it was already written, so whatever.)