It Cuts Both Ways Racial profiling operates on both sides of the color line. by RICHARD COHEN In New York recently, I attended a lunch given by U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke for Rodney E. Slater, the transportation secretary. To my left was Ernest Green, now an investment banker here and the first black to graduate from Little Rock's once-segregated Central High School. Nearby was A. Bradley Mims, one of Slater's top aides. David Dinkins, the former mayor, was at another table and so were several more highly successful black people. My thoughts turned to racial profiling. What would happen if Slater, casually dressed, tried to hail a cab here at night? What if Mims tried the same? What if one of them got into some sweats, went for a jog, encountered some cops and reached in the dark for his wallet? Might one of the cops have yelled "Gun!"? Might any of the African Americans in this room have been riddled with bullets -- dead more on account of race than any other factor? Could be. Experience tells me that to say the "wrong" thing does not provoke debate, but hurtful charges of racism instead. And yet I cannot help thinking that if Diallo was killed because he was black, the cops were tried for murder -- not mere negligence or incompetence, mind you -- because they were white. The prosecutor, Bronx DA Robert T. Johnson, essentially conceded that point when he said that the cops acted on their "preconceptions" -- reacting to a racial stereotype held, as if for some unaccountable reason, by most whites. "There is every good reason to believe that some doctor on Park Avenue would not have been shot reaching for his wallet," the DA said. As we all know,affluent people are far less likely to commit violent crimes than poor people. If Park Avenue had mostly rich blacks and the Bronx had mostly poor whites, the crime statistics would remain somewhat similar. Young men, black and Hispanic alike, are more likely to be stopped and frisked than other members of society. They are more likely to be hauled over for traffic infractions, real or bogus. That's infuriating, to say the least, often humiliating and sometimes just plain racist. The cops in the Diallo case clearly exercised miserable judgment. Diallo was an immigrant. Did he think he was in trouble? His actions seemed suspicious, but he might only have been afraid. Abruptly, he reached for his wallet. The cops, maybe predisposed as Johnson said, saw a gun. But would black cops unfamiliar with the neighborhood have acted differently? Maybe not. Just as black cabdrivers sometimes pass up black men and just as blacks sometimes cross the street to avoid a group of black kids, race -- but not racism -- is a factor. The two are not synonymous -- not that you would know that from most of the commentary about the Diallo case. Bad judgment, even negligence, does not amount to homicide. The trial produced no evidence that the cops were racists, even that they sometimes used ugly language. It's true Diallo fit a profile. It's also true that the cops weren't on Park Avenue ferreting out Medicaid fraud. They were in the Bronx, on a block where 144 drug-related arrests have been made since 1997. They had good reason to be wary, even scared. This was a political trial. The harsh charges were the result of a public outcry about alleged racism. The charges persist and now the federal government is being asked to retry the officers for violating Diallo's civil rights. Would that request have been made if the cops were black? Looking around Holbrooke's dining room, I was both perplexed and sad. Any of the black men there could have been Amadou Diallo because he, almost certainly, was a victim of race. And yet the cops -- negligent, incompetent or simply poorly trained -- were also victims of their race. Diallo's killing was an unmitigated tragedy. But nothing can be done for him now. That's not the case with the cops, however. The feds ought to quickly clear them. Profiling has already produced one tragedy too many. Richard Cohen is a member of the Washington Post Writers Group. His columns frequently appear in the Flyer.