As Mark Twain once said, "Youth is wasted on the young." I can appreciate your youthful zeal - but wake up and smell the roses. Groups within society develop negative idiosyncratic labels because large numbers of people in those groups regularly transgress society's rules. In plain English, the two ethnic groups to which you refer (Aboriginals and Lebanese) have a poor track record of social responsibility in the minds of the general public. Can we generalise about this fact? You bet we can!

The Report of the National Committee on Violence found: “In the area of Aboriginal affairs …it is possible to state with conviction that the level of violence existing in Aboriginal communities is of a scale that dwarfs that in any sector of white Australia…Aboriginal Australians are at least ten times more likely to be the victims of homicide …and overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence are Aboriginals…[The numbers of] Aboriginals in prison has been systematically documented – and the rate is up to 23 times that of non-Aboriginal Australians.”

This relates to your politically correct observation that “Aboriginal people have unacceptably high incarceration rates..” What's unacceptable, Ryan? There are more of them in gaol because more of them commit more crimes than the rest of us do.

Pull your nose out of your textbooks and get out there on Sydney's streets on any Friday or Saturday night. It's the Lebanese that supply the cocaine and ecstasy to all the nightclubs; it's the Lebanese who systematically sexually harass women, to the extent that many nightclubs just don't let "Lebo’s" in anymore; it's the Lebanese that bash taxi drivers for picking up passengers waiting on a taxi rank, rather than stopping for the ‘Lebo’ standing in the middle of the roadway.

Talk to any First-Class Sergeant in charge of any police station and you will find their top three problem groups - based on the hard reality that they deal with every day of their working lives – are (1) Lebanese, (2) Aboriginals, and (3) Chinese triads. This is not some politically incorrect labelling, Ryan -- it's reality!

Doc Holliday, you’re funny.

Pull our nose out of your..... and get out there in Sydney’s banks on any Thursday or Friday. It’s the WASPs that get involved in multi-million bogus currency trading scandals at NAB and which systematically bring down Enron, HIH, Arthur Anderson and Barings Bank. It’s the WASPs who bribe Saddam Hussein’s regime with $300 million in wheat kickbacks and then hold whitewash royal commissions to absolve themselves of responsibility. It’s the WASPs who launch wars to find non-existent WMD. It’s the WASPs who <insert hyperbolic generalised ridiculous claim here>.

Talk to any first-class Sergeant in the armed forces and will find the top problem group, based on the hard reality that they deal with every day of their working lives – WASPs keep sending them off to die in pointless wars in Gallipoli, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. This is not some politically incorrect labelling, Doc Holliday – it’s reality!

PS – Doc, if the Lebs are supplying all the illegal drugs to the nightclubs, what is the ethnicity of their customers? Or would it be too politically incorrect of me to ask?

PPS - Doc, don't you think that there might be more to the issues under discussion here than the ethnicity of the perpetrators of these crimes?

PPPS - You can see from my opening paragraphs how ridiculous it is to reduce complex matters to single-issue causes. If you persist in doing so then you are cruelling your own credibility.

Those who claim it is racist to profile, that is describe a person of interest by his/her racial profile have something to hide.
And by using the racist card in my opinion are acting in a racist way.

Is there any evidence that ethnic labelling actually helps the police locate suspects, possible victims or witnesses?

Or is it just one giant assumption?

Yes you are right strayan, I believe it is important to add to the literature by scientifically demonstrating that a physical description including ethnicity, (which entails such irrelevancies as... oh, say skin colour and hair colour) is a useful aid to the visual identification of police suspects.

Perhaps while we were conducting such a study, we could also verify that the sun does rise in the east, ice cream's melting is associated with increased temperature and that precipitation does in fact, increase the chances of one becoming wet in the absence of an umbrella.

This ridiculous PC aversion to statements of fact does no-one any good. Human beings categorise things - that is just the way we are built. It IS possible to separate out a simple physical description from associated assignations of stereotyped racial characteristics. To expect law-enforcement officials to effectively police without letting them use racial generalities of physical appearance as a heuristic, is tantamount to tying both hands behind their back. When a crime has been committed and seconds count, expecting police to fall over themselves in a frenzy of circumlocution in order that no-one be offended is ludicrous. The term 'of middle-eastern appearance' is no more racist that my being described as 'a 6 foot Caucasian male of lean build with short brown hair.'

Back to school for you Ryan..

I have lived all over Sydney, including the greater West and I can tell you that the terms "middle eastern" and "pacific islander" appearance are very useful identifiers in avoiding becoming the victim of crime.

Anybody who has spent a considerable length of time in the west (no, not your trip down the M4 on the way back from the Blue Mountains or your five minute stop in Auburn for a kebab) quickly comes to learn which groups present a likely threat.

If you're walking down the street at night, and you see four males of Tongan extraction coming the other way, you quickly cross the road. Similarly, if a hotted up hatchback with a group of Lebanese-looking chaps with white baseball caps or heads shaved at the sides slows down beside you, you start planning your escape.

You can talk about social theories all you like, until your own safety has been at stake, you have a lopsided view.