How can victim of profiling condone it?

To the editor:

In response to the letter "Cape Girardeau jogger hears racial slurs":

How can Saad el-Hamish be a proponent for something, but when it happens to him, he wants to write a letter to the editor? Racial slurs and derogatory comments are a form of profiling. When you look a certain way or fit a profile, people may treat you in an offensive way. Does that make it right? Of course not.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, people of Middle Eastern descent have been catching hell because of people with ideas like el-Hamish's. For any member of an ethnic minority to say that profiling is OK is just plain ignorant. Does el-Hamish think that just because he pays taxes, owns property and is a citizen that racial profilers are going to be any more sympathetic to him?

I am also an ethnic minority. People may look at me and think, "thief, drug addict, ignorant welfare mother." But I am an intelligent, ambitious African American graduate student. Believe me, I know what it is like to be treated differently because of the color of my skin. Because of this, I would never be a proponent of such oppression.

How dare el-Hamish be a proponent for such oppression and then expect someone to pity him.

WENDY TILLMON

Portageville, Mo.