When auto insurance companies charge higher rates to 17-year-old boys than to 50 year old women, they are profiling. In fact, they are discriminating on the basis of age and gender. And that is precisely what they should be doing given the proven higher accident rates of 17 year old boys versus those of 50 year old women.

When one group of people, however identified, is known to be especially prone to certain problematic behaviors, it makes perfect sense to single that group out for a different kind of attention than is paid to other groups. No serious person would suggest that such "discrimination" is wrong. Yet the very word "profiling" now causes progressive heads to explode and generates entirely predictable accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, blah, blah, blah.

Jesse Jackson once said that, if he were walking down a dark street, he would feel more threatened by the approach of three young black men than three young white men. Do we conclude from that Jesse Jackson is anti-black? Or might we conclude that profiling is not inherently racist at all but is, rather, a reasonable reaction to the facts?

One such fact is that the demographic group that includes black males aged 15-24 indisputably is involved in violent crime at a higher rate than any other demographic group in our society. There is nothing racist about stating that demonstrated truth. It is no more inappropriate than pointing out that heavy smokers are more prone to lung cancer than non-smokers. That does not mean, of course, that every single individual within the demographic will inevitably follow the pattern. But patterns do exist. Most white males are not serial killers but most serial killers are white males. Ask the FBI. They did the profile. Likewise, most Muslims are not terrorists but most terrorists are Muslims. Patterns exist.

When you board a plane – be honest now - will you wonder more about the intentions of that bearded, mid-20s, swarthy-complexioned, Middle Eastern-looking man in line ahead of you or those of the elderly white (or black) nun behind you? Would you consider yourself "Islamophobic" for automatically feeling more uneasy about the former than the latter? Unless you were infected with a severe case of the progressive virus known as political correctness, you wouldn't. Nor should you.

The fact is that profiling uses certain characteristics including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, height, weight, eating habits, clothing styles, recreational preferences, and frequency of drinking or smoking to assess risk for a variety of purposes.

Profiling – all profiling – is about risk assessment. You identify where higher risks exist by correlating various characteristics with high risk behaviors. Sometimes those behaviors correlate with racial, ethnic, or cultural factors. When they do, it would be foolish not to include that information in your assessment simply in order to avoid having some goofy liberal (pardon the redundancy) call you a bad name.

Yet we see political correctness become reality when TSA agents pat down wheelchair-bound WWII veterans while ignoring the swarthy fellow mentioned above. One writer has called this lunacy "a tyranny of fairness."

Profiling is not perfect. Real criminals or terrorists might be missed. But playing the percentages makes sense. The simplistic "progressive" view is that profiling equals racism. Period. So such folks naturally believe that "stop and frisk" was a racist policy utilized by the racist New York City police department for racist reasons. Never mind that over half of New York's finest are minorities.

Profiling equals risk assessment. Nothing sinister there. It is not inherently bigoted in any way. Yes, like anything else, it can be misused. But the idea itself is simply the application of common sense to real world problems. Whether by insurance companies, police forces, or the Department of Homeland Security, profiling should be unapologetically accepted as the useful tool it is.