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Mineta Minutes

Did you see Norm on 60 Minutes? Political observers with a keen eye on our most pressing civil rights issue of the day were buzzing about the performance of Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta on last Sunday’s show.

I must confess that I didn’t know it was on and was half-heartedly watching the 49ers beat up the Bills. But better the Bills than the Constitution.

So I turned to the transcript, which is perhaps the best way to watch TV. Skip the showbiz and the histrionics and go straight to the text. And now that I’ve gone over it a few times, I’m simply astounded by Norm’s words.

The man’s not just our Asian Pacific American political hero. He’s the standard bearer for all. There it was on paper. Who else but Mineta would have the courage to stand up to 60 Minutes? The man’s a saint.

The issue was racial profiling. Long before it crossed anyone’s mind, I said in these columns that going after Arab and Muslim men after the Sept. 11 tragedy simply on the basis of race was tantamount to internment. Not the way Japanese Americans experienced it during World War II, but a new, improved internment. No messy horse stalls, no forced relocation. Just weeks, perhaps months in a cold, dank jail until authorities figure out you have nothing to do with terrorism. You just happened to be Arab or Muslim.

Sorry for the “temporary” inconvenience. Now go home and pretend it never happened.

The issue has become more serious as the stories of this “secret” treatment of innocent Arab and Muslim men since Sept. 11 has come to light. Each story reveals a Kafkaesque quality of our democracy we aren’t supposed to have. But instead of outrage, some are cheering. And now that the Justice Department has declared it wants to talk to 5,000 more Arabs and Muslims — all of them men ages 18 to 33 — who entered the U.S on non-immigrant visas. Sounds like racial profiling, doesn’t it?

Some would say it’s common sense to question Arabs and Muslims. What else do we know about the terrorists? As Steve Kroft commented on 60 Minutes “What we do know is that all 19 hijackers were young Arab men willing to commit suicide for their political cause. Does that mean authorities should pay special attention to young Arab men at airports and other security checkpoints?”

The framing of the issue leads to a knee-jerk answer. Yes, you might say.

Enter Norm with a resounding dissent. “You can’t say that a person, just because he is an Arab American and a Muslim, that he should be a suspect and be considered a terrorist,” he told Steve Kroft.

Kroft, the man who de-flowered candidate Bill Clinton by getting an admission on the scandalous Gennifer affair, went right to work in this confrontation (from the Burrelle’s transcript. I just saved you $17 bucks):

Kroft: Are you saying at the security screening desks that a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach, Florida, would receive the same level of scrutiny as a — a (note: this is the literal look of the hesitant stutter, a feature of transcription) Muslim young man from Jersey City?

Mineta: Basically I would hope so.

Kroft: We don’t know much about the people that hijacked those planes on September 11th, but we do know something. I mean, all 10 of them were young Arab or Middle Eastern men.

Mineta: But that doesn’t mean that we should be suspecting all Arab young men.

Kroft: That’s the only thing we know about these people.

Mineta: But that is not a characteristic that makes them a terrorist.

Score a major point for Norm here. But Kroft pursued.

Kroft: Can you envision a set of circumstances from a security point of view where it would make sense to use racial and ethnic profiling.

Mineta: On just that question alone, I’d say absolutely not.

Kroft: If you saw three young Arab men sitting, kneeling, praying before they boarded a flight, getting on, talking to each other in Arabic, getting on the plane, no reason to stop and ask them any questions?

Mineta: No reason.

You’d have the guts to say that too if you lived through what Mineta’s lived through.

But you can’t take such a position if you were only a bureaucrat. Credit 60 Minutes for allowing Norm to tell his story of being a young boy boarding a train in San Jose for a relocation camp. He was wearing a Cub Scout uniform and carrying a baseball glove and bat when MP’s took the bat away because they thought it could be a weapon.

Mineta’s moral authority gives his stand a weight that should make all Americans think about the Justice Department’s actions.

So Kroft balances Norm with Floyd Abrams, a noted constitutional lawyer and first on most legal reporters’ Rolodex under individual rights. Kroft points out that 25 years ago the courts upheld the right to search illegal aliens near the Mexican border. Another case in New York permitted the search of black men. Abrams added … ‘it would be crazy not to consider what people look like when we’re looking for people who may be involved in hijacking.’

That’s not all. Abrams calls it an emergency situation, and then says, “For us to say. ‘Well, you know, we just can’t think about that. We’ll just put that aside, because call it political correctness, call it anything, we just won’t think about it because … it makes us feel uncomfortable,’ is an appalling malfeasance.”

I think it’s appalling that a constitutional lawyer would not turn to the constitution, but instead throw it into the ash heap and say that concern for minorities is just “political correctness.” Besides, it’s more politically correct these days to cheer for an upcoming Arab/Muslim dragnet.

But leave it to Norm to uphold an unpopular, but morally correct position.

“If upholding the great Constitution of the United States is mere political correctness, then I’m sorry for those folks who feel that way,” Mineta said.

When Mineta first took the job last year as a Bush appointee, as a former Mineta press secretary, I wondered aloud what would happen when the Democrat ran up against Bush on some of the issues that make Mineta who he is. How would he deal with the bread and butter issue of civil rights?

But 60 Minutes showed us why Norm has always been admired by both sides of the aisle. He’s a standup guy, a man of honor, courage and integrity. 60 Minutes threw everything at him. Even had final edit. But Norm stared them down and never wavered. It’s good to know he’s still the same old Norm.